My Level of Awareness

One of the highlights of my holiday was a phone call from a certain young man who told me in a breathless rush of words that he absolutely loved the Christmas present I sent him and that he has been playing with it all day and it was so incredibly cool.

When you are in middle age, it’s great to know that you can still wow younger men.  That you are still ‘cool’.

I’ve still got it. 

As long as the men in question are twelve.

Thanks, Tristan, for making my day.

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 Gleefully Stolen from Drowned Girl:

 1. Egg nog or Hot Chocolate?
Both.  Except I actually prefer Silk Soy Egg Nog.  I know, I’m a philistine.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
I have a two-year-old.  Do you actually think I could get away without wrapping?  Heck, that takes away all the fun.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White.  We had white and blue last year, but this year I got lazy.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No.  Thankfully, Kris never needs an excuse to kiss me.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving, but I am slacking this year.  I haven’t even finished decorating the tree.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish?
Our sour cream christmas cookies.  The recipe has been handed down for at least 4 generations.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child.
Going to my Grandmother’s house - she always gave the best gift boxes.  And Midnight mass - it was always sung and candlelit.  I loved to hold the little candle.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
From my best friend, Bonnie.  I think I was five. 

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas eve?
Not until I was married to my first husband.  It was a tradition in his family.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
White lights and DOZENS of Moose ornaments.  Everything from white bone china mooses to cartoon mooses.  And gold garland.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it?
I love it in small doses.  I miss the way it used to cover the ground and make the world so quiet and still and sparkly.  But six months of it is a bit much.  That’s why I can never go home to NY.

12. Can you ice skate?
Yes, and I used to do it quite well.  Not as well as my mother did as a child - she was a figure skater.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
My first digital camera.

14. What is the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Playing with my son, cooking for the family, and spending quiet time.

15. What is your favorite Holiday dessert?
Pumpkin pie.  Hands down.

16. What is your favorite Holiday tradition?
Hmm.  Don’t know.  All of it, I guess. 

17. What tops your tree?
A pearly-white spire topper with gold scrollwork.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
Giving.  I like getting presents, but I like picking out the perfect ones for other people a lot more.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song?
O Holy Night.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
Yum - but a very specific yum.  I only really like the ones made with cane sugar and real peppermint oil.

 Merry Christmas to all - May your homes be filled with warmth, laughter and love this holiday season!

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It would have been easier to post the meme today.  But, as I said, I have been contemplating the meaning of the season, and the theme I find for myself this year is the Christmas message that centers around forgiveness.

I am, as a rule, a forgiving person.  I will give a person “one more chance” long, long after my husband (and any other sane human being) has written them off as incorrigible.   As I have aged, I have mellowed and my skin has become thicker.  My tolerance has grown as the red in my hair has faded.  But this year I have gotten a series of object lessons in what forgiveness truly means.

 And I am flunking Forgiveness 101.

Christmas is there to teach us the meaning of true forgiveness.  Not only the sacrificial quality inherent in forgiving our transgressors, but the necessity of it in acheiving grace.   I have realized, in this quest, I am just going to have to flounder a bit more before enlightenment descends upon me.  Human frailty has sidetracked me.

Here’s the thing about forgiveness.   It’s easy to give it when the object of the forgivness is remorseful for what they did, when they want to be forgiven, but don’t expect it.  When apologies have been given and accepted, forgiveness becomes a way to repair, to soothe, to smooth and to move forward.  This I can do.  Even when the hurt is deep, even when the trespass is great, I can release my pain and live in the acknowledgment that we all sin against each other.

But, what the Nativity tells us is that forgiveness does not require the transgressor to be sorry for what they did.  It does not require remorse.  Request is not a requirement.  Acknowledgement is not even a requirement.  “Give” is the operative syllable - forgivness is a gift, and gifts are given without expectation of return.  The transgressor does not need to “deserve” forgiveness. 

But, boy howdy, when they don’t, it makes that high road look unattainably high.

To my shame, not only have I fallen off that high road - I haven’t even reached for it.

When the hurt is deliberate and malicious; when it has been carelessly cruel and unrepentant, I cannot bring myself to let it go.  I hold this one in my heart like a hot coal, burning with my sense of righteous anger and indignation.  I cannot forgive, and at my basest, most primal level, I don’t want to.  There is a passion to hatred that can be almost as obsessional as love, but unlike love, becomes a heavier burden as it is nutured. 

So I fail at forgiveness.  On a spiritual level, I want to release the burden.  I want to extend the hand of grace.   But I am just going to have to claw my way up that hilltop a little longer before I will get there.

And I know when I do, God will forgive me for the journey.

That’s the part that keeps me even trying.

Wishing you all Peace, outside and inside, this Holiday Season.

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I am working on a meme and thinking of the Christmas season in all those nostalgic, sweet-sad ways that the rites of the seasons always bring upon me.  Until I can get my thoughts organized enough to post, enjoy a little of last year’s Christmas wonderings:

Amy-Renee posted yesterday on how much she loved Christmas.

Of the multitude of differences between my best friend and I (and “opposites attract” is about the only way to explain our close relationship), that is one of the things upon which we are in complete harmony.

I love Christmas.

I will start playing Christmas music as soon as it is seasonally decent to do so.  I lean toward traditional arrangments - most of the pop-Christmas stuff (with a few notable exceptions) makes my ears bleed.  Give me Nat King Cole singing “Adeste Fideles”, though, and I am in heaven.  And I will have to say, I miss snow.  When you grow up in the land of “Over the river and through the woods” where the “horse knows the way, to carry the sleigh”, you have to reach down deep for those jingle bells when you are running around in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt at Thanksgiving dinner.  The Louisiana years were tough in that respect.

Mostly, I have loved Christmas for the story.   THAT story.  The Nativity.

All my life the story of the babe in the manger has moved me. 

As a parent, it takes my breath away.

Children are born of faith and hope.  We bring them into a world that is deeply flawed.  A world of hardship and violence.  A world of hatred and division.  But we also bring them into a humanity capable of amazing acts of love and kindness.  They are the manifestation of our faith that the world will continue and somehow we will leave a legacy worth handing to them.   They are our shot at immortality, and in them we wrap our hopes for a future that will somehow, against all odds, be better than the one we live in.  We protect them, we nurture them, and we sacrifice for them.  But most of all, we love them with a love so boundless and fierce that it can manifest as a physical ache.  We look into the face of our infants and we project the world upon them.  Could there be no sacrifice greater than your child?  It is what makes the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis so horrifying a test of faith.

“And He so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son…”

That God so loved humanity that he would send his own son, in full knowledge of the suffering he would have to endure, is a symbol of unconditional love that could not be expressed as fully in any other way.  Whether you believe in the Christian canon or not, the power of the story is undeniable.  Could I look into the face of my innocent son and send him off to certain death and agony for the sins of another?

Forgiveness is divine.

I have been moved by Krishna’s dialogue with Arjuna in the Bhagavad Ghita and the lesson of devotion and sacrifice to purpose.  I have been moved by Taoist teachings on the beauty of the transitory.  There is a message in the stories of great religions that transcend the dogma of faith. 

Forgiveness is divine. 

Whatever religion you practice, or if you practice none at all, there is something we can all hold in our heart about Christmas.  If we forgive one person for their sins against us, we have held it in our heart.  When we comfort one person in need this season, when we give of ourselves, our time, our hope, our love, we have lived in the spirit of the Nativity.  We have taken one step toward being a humanity that is worth so profound a sacrifice.

Peace on Earth.

Good Will to All Men.

Merry Christmas.

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…I hate you.

That is all.

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The Days Inn in Van Ness - Not fancy - in fact the rooms are decidedly spartan, but clean, cozy, EXTREMELY convenient, and reasonable.  And, free wireless.  Of course.

Tesoro Italian Restaurant in Van Ness - The food was incredible, and the service was five-star.  The prices were not - a combination that makes this place irresistable.

The Washington Metro - God.  I love the Metro.  I want Metros everywhere.

Dinner with Jodi - She’s funny.  She’s incredibly cute (and I am incredibly jealous of it).  She knows great Indian restaurants.  And she shares my views on childrearing - which are that everybody is entitled to their OWN VIEWS.  I love it.

All in all, it was a perfectly satifactory trip to the Nation’s Capitol City - despite the disappointment of missing Potter’s Violins in Bethesda and a walk down the Mall, because it was too cold, dark, and rainy when my meeting finished.  And, of course the fact that I had to MISS MY FAMILY for three days.

(whine, whine, whine)

But that’s okay. 

I’ll be back in February.

Sigh.

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In the spirit of Bill Cosby:

They have eggs, flour, butter.  Add a glass of milk and juice and all the food groups are represented, right?

They are homebaked from only the most wholesome ingredients.  I even use free-range eggs.

This is the justification for my insistence that giving my child Christmas cookies for breakfast is a perfectly acceptable parenting technique.

God I love being a mom this time of year.

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If you like mysteries, buy this book.

If you are fascinated with insights into the autistic mind, buy this book,

If you were ever bullied in the schoolyard, buy this book.

If you ever had a best friend and lost them, buy this book.

This is more than a mystery.   More than a book about autism.  This is a book how our choices, and those of the people around us, mold and shape our lives.

This is a book about life found through death.

Seriously.  Buy this book.  You won’t regret it.

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At the beginning of November, I got a rather polite email request to review a children’s book that was being released that week.  Normally, I ignore such review requests, but this one was worded so nicely, and the story behind the author and illustrator intrigued me.   So I told them I would be glad to take a look and a week later, this arrived in the mail:

This is one of those books that doesn’t really have an ending.  When you are done reading the mother’s love song to her son, the book flips over, and retells the “story” from the little boy’s point of view. 

It’s a sweet book.  It didn’t make me weep in the way of I’ll Love You Forever, but I didn’t feel “manipulated” either. Some of it seems corny reading it as an adult, but if you can step back into yourself as a little child, you realize that is how children think - they make up analogies based on what they see and their favorite things. Children have their own unique set of superlatives.  The book is kind of a combination between I’ll Love You Forever and Guess How Much I Love You.  Not as clever, perhaps, as the latter, but not as syrupy-sweet as the former.  It’s a nice balance, and the childlike, colorful illustrations round it out nicely.  The illustrations are a treat of soft, vibrant color, which really appeal to the young eye.

But most importantly, my son likes the book, really likes it, and I don’t mind reading it to him, which, as anyone with a two-year-old knows, means reading it over and over and over.

Overall, it’s a warm, feel-good, little book, which would make a perfect gift for a mother and son (or even a daughter).

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My son has developed a fondness for Thomas the Tank Engine.   In fact, “fondness” doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of my son’s obsession with all things Thomas.   It makes his early love for Elmo look like an infatuation.  It far surpasses even his addiction to “Cars” that resulted in my ability to quote the movie line-for-line.  He knows all the cars by all their names.  Next to Thomas himself, his favorite train is “Percy”, the mispronounciation of which has caused many a raised eyebrow in the toy section of the local Wal-Mart.

 My son’s favorite Thomas manifestation is a Thomas that toots and plays his theme song when pushed along.  It is the last thing he carries out the door with him in the morning and the first thing he looks for upon being strapped into his seat after evening pickup.  Lately, Thomas had ceased singing quite so cheerfully and had devolved into emitting a long repetitive series of mournful whistles.   Thomas has developed the most common toy condition known to man - degenerative batteritis through parental neglect.  After Harry attempted in his frustration to “fix” Thomas by hauling out the tool bag and staging an impromptu dissection, we decided it was time to add batteries to the shopping list.

This morning, Thomas had his operation and underwent a full recovery.  Harry’s reaction was complete and contagious - he beamed with radiant happiness.  He pushed Thomas and squealed with delight.  He clapped his hands together, and danced a little happy dance, twirling through the kitchen at every repetition of the Thomas theme.  He was simply ecstatic.

I stood watching him, his smile spreading to my face.  How wonderful it was to be a child whose worldly woes could be fixed by three small batteries.  How such a small thing could bring such unqualified joy, and how as we become “adults”, with adult worries, adult woes, we lose the ability to give ourselves over to these small moments of complete contentedness.  How our problems become so complex, by the march of time or by our own machinations, they they cannot be fixed using a screwdriver and three minutes of time.  How inevitable is our discontent.

And I reflected also my son’s fortune at being born into a world where, even as a child, his worries can fixed by a suddenly reattentive parent.  How so many children, through fate and human frailty, face problems much larger than a tired toy.  Born with pain from illness that does not respond to a quick battery change.  Born into places torn by poverty or war, where the hardship of no batteries takes a backseat to having no toys at all, or no food.  Born to parents whose neglect extends far beyond failed memories, unable to turn to adult arms to find comfort, and worse, whose problems are inflicted by those very people charged with their care.   Those are the children whose faces may never show those sunshine beams of joy, secure in being loved and attended.

I am grateful.  Grateful for being, through no design of my own, born into one of the most privileged countries on earth, to parents who could and would provide security and love.   Though modest by the standards of my society, I have enjoyed the contingent benefits of life in a nation of plenty unimaginable to much of the rest of the world.  I AM the fortunate.  I am the privileged.

As I look at my son, playing obliviously with a little blue train, I am thankful that he is fortunate, too.  And that he has the luxury of his innocent ignorance.

There is time enough for enlightenment later.  Now it’s time for Thomas.

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