kstreetjournal | A pony a day keeps the money away —

~ At last, Noel ~

Posted on December 24, 2010 by K

I cannot bear the story of our salvation. It’s easier, I suppose, if you see Christ as someone apart from us; someone so holy, he must not have had a human heart to hurt; so much god that pain and disappointment would hardly loom large on his radar.

But when I allow myself to see it, really see it, I find that the reality is too much for me. The sacrifice too great. And the Christ only too real, and altogether too human and dear.

He was only thirty two or so when they killed him (though that is not the focus of this fete we are now celebrating). A young man. Family to us. So much family to us.

It is safer if we picture him only as a small piece of the nativity, or the glowing element in a fine old painting. But he really was a baby. The Son of God, a spirit so elegant and so powerful, all stuffed into a small, warm, cuddly baby.

His Father knew what was about to happen in the world – how much was riding on the choices this child would have to make. What does that say, then, about Mary? About God choosing Mary to be the guardian, the teacher of the crux of human salvation? She had the care of the tiny boy—in whom the soul of our saving was hidden. She taught him human love, human comfort, human manners, human self-discipline. She must have been one heck of a woman.

And Joseph, a man who dreamed of an angel and took the dream seriously, who loved a girl and believed in her story, who was willing to raise the child of another – what does the story tell us about him?

I don’t know how to explain the little I understand about how we came to be born in this place, and what we are supposed to do here; but I do believe there are things we are supposed to do here. To take care of one another. To create beauty. To protect the weak. To learn gratitude – born in wonder as we stand beneath a blazing sky at sunset, or in the holding of our own children.

What I do understand is this: that had this baby not been born, had Christ not condescended to enter the world as one of us, sharing our human experience of life and then giving up his own on the altar – none of the love we have felt in a lifetime, or the goodness we have done would have amounted to any meaning, and we would have been lost after our own deaths. Had that baby not been born, all mortal life would have been nothing but an academic exercise, an interesting ripple in eternity that faded in darkness and failure.

But he was born. And Mary loved him; Joseph too, I think. And that boy grew, making the choices that threw open the doors and windows of eternity and bathed us in light and gave our lives wings. Made our lives something significant.

He didn’t have to come here. But he did it.

And taught us what love might be.

Starting it all as just a little baby boy. Trusting in our arms. Hoping for our love. Poised to be our light.

May your celebration of Christmas be bathed in light and love. For surely, we have each other here to hang on to. And surely we bring him relief and joy in our own mutual joy and service. So hope. And sing. And be still and quiet of heart, knowing certainly that your life matters. Because the baby came for you.

Beloved family. Dear friends. We are so grateful for you. And to those who read, but I don’t know you – thank you for allowing me to sing to you.

Merry Christmas. Merry, merry Christmas.

Love and best wishes –

Posted in Christmas, Epiphanies and Meditations | Tagged Christ, sacrifice, wonder | 21 Comments

::Yule Shindig 2010::

Posted on December 23, 2010 by K

Every year, we have the same party. (see this and this and this and maybe this if you want some history – or repetition) It’s pretty much the only party we have anymore. And it’s a mean son-of-a-gun. We started it 31 years ago, and it’s been the same basic people with a tiny change here and there for all those many years.

Here’s the nutshell version: you have to hand make a tree ornament. Each person. (This has devolved into some couples playing one between them.) You bring it, wrapped up. You bring your favorite holiday finger food, too. Unwrapped.

You throw your ornament into my pot, where it stays till the game starts, at which time all ornament packages are placed in the center. We draw numbers. Number one opens a package. We all make admiring noises. Number two can either steal from number one or open a new package. And so forth. Ornaments belong to the third owner – out of play. Number one can choose from all un-3rd-ed ornaments at the end.

We have crying. Pleading. Fainting. Much laughter. Good-natured mockery. And friendships that have lasted a long, long time – between people who might never have met each other without this mayhem. Here are too many pictures. Think of it as a short video clip by frame:

Chaz, busily making her ornament.

The sumptuous table.

Rachel made THOUSANDS of cute food. THOUSANDS.

And all of this, too. Meshugana.

See? Am I right?

Build a big enough room, and they will come. To stand around in the kitchen.

But not everybody.

It’s great fun to mix and max contexts, making a big fat new one.

Friends who might never have known each other without US!!

Terry’s splendid petit point.

Dick’s cymbales. Hand made. Uh-huh. “This is what we might call a cheat,” she said, looking the other way.

One of two. Husband and wife made these together. Gordon and Lynn.

Shoot. I cannot remember who made the match-stick nativity. I was taking pictures so I didn’t get to hear everything. I am so sorry and stupid. Was it you, Rebecca?

Johanne’s angel. Chaz loves her face. I love the drape of her robes.

Steve’s silhouette of Bethlehem. Watercolor wash – ymm.

Rosemary’s quilt square. Such tiny work.

Laura’s elegant Victorian. That image in glass is actually one of her photos.

Steve’s carved rhino. A Christmas rhino? Hmmm. What the heck – I love the way the man works the wood.

The second silver.

Cam and Lorri’s cube. It’s covered with tiny images of ornaments past –

Jeannie’s fused owl. I wanna eat him.

Phil’s pineapple knot. The secret of these ornaments: the best ones carry the heart of the maker. On the outside, Phil is a chemical engineer. But he’s really a horseman. His was the first horse my children ever touched. Leather knots are just Phil. As glass is Jeannie – clear and bright. Cam is camera images. Johanne is an angel. Steve is meticulous and imaginative – and so it goes.

Chaz’s first fusing. Done in a microwave, no less. “What,” she croaked, creaking as she leaned over for a closer look, “will they think of next?”

Ginger’s burst of joy. Very like her.

Debbie’s delicious mobile.

Brian’s sled, worked metal and wood. MINE. I won it and it’s MINE.

Dave’s fused owl. (You said Jeannie helped you with it, huh Dave?)

G’s beautiful tied feathers. What kind of bird, I wonder? Best part of it: brushing these lovely feathers across your cheek.

Mine

Rachel’s sweater. (Thank you Linda!) Warm, brightly colored, whimsical. A great self-portrait.

Tracy: a family tradition – a poem that concerns suckers and beards and Santa. This clay illustrates what happens when the former sticks to that member of the latter.

M’s cheese loving mousey.

Gaye’s scrappy baby Jesus. I love his smile.

Bob’s. You might not suspect him of being a hot pepper, but good things come in tall packages.

Melanie’s meticulous illustration of a beautiful scripture.

Phil and Tucker.

Phil, sitting next to Johanne as she opens. We are so helpful to one another in these cases. Is he actually going to grab that ornament and run for it?

The group. My deep apologies to Paynes and Buehners, all of whom should be in this shot, but for my messing up of the email list.

This is not my fault. Really, if you’re going to stick your face into the lens like that, it’s going to freeze that way.

Following:

Shots of exactly the same party, but taken by Gordon, who is an actual, employed camera guy. Notice that he is smart enough to avoid the whole low-light, tungsten problem by going to the essential and pure medium of black and white. And that he has a lovely way of seeing.

Ornaments wrapped in tinselly paper. (Allusion: An Axe, an Apple and a Buckskin Jacket, as read by Bing Crosby.)

Me, bossing.

Me, still bossing and taking no guff about it.

The kibitzers.

Gaye, pleased.

Cam with Toby.

L with her mother-in-law. Notice that we are glowing.

Lynn, getting ready for the big decision. She will have been robbed TEN time by the end of this game.

Cowboy, reading cowboy poetry.

Lynn, pleased. But she won’t have that for long.

And NOW:

A photo essay treating the act of shooting a group picture by employing the combination of tri-pod and self-timer.

Me, setting up the shot.

Me, looking for the self-timer button. Like I can read those tiny things on the back of the blamed camera.

Okay – is it over here then? Is that it? Wha??? Rachel!

You have one of these dang things. Come find this button.

Okay, then. Steve – you spend all day fixing these dang things. Come tell me how to –

Wait. I think Rachel’s got it. Is that it? Did she — whoa. It’s ON. She did it. It’s GOING. Holy cats! Move. MOVE!!

RUN!!!!!!

There. Flash. Shot taken. The end.

Hip-hip HURRAY!!!

May all of your celebrations – with family, with friends, with a great play-list, a great book, a couple of dogs, or a few moments of quiet wonder and gratitude – be sweet and joyful and deeply satisfying.

Here is a fun thing that came to me at the end of an email. Thought I’d spiff it up a little (a very little) and share it with you:

………….(¯`O´¯)

…………..*./ | .*

…………., .*♫*. ,

……….~ • ‘*♥* ‘ • ~

………’ *• ♫♫♫•* ‘

……..’ ‘ *, • ‘♫ ‘ • ,* ‘ ‘

…….’ * • ♫*♥*♫• * ‘

……’ * , • Merry’ • , * ‘

……..’ * ‘ •♫♫*♥*♫♫ • ‘ * ‘

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

M e r r y C h r i s t m a s!

P e a c e o n E a r t h!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Posted in Christmas, Events, friends, Fun Stuff, holidays, Making Things, Pics of Made Things, Rachel, Seasons, The kids | Tagged Christmas, ornaments, party | 22 Comments

~:: White Christmas? ::~

Posted on December 22, 2010 by K

What we woke up to yesterday (i’d say “Out of the blue,” except it all had come down unexpectedly in the night):

Can you tell the snow is still falling hard?

While inside it was cozy.

Neighbors, digging each other out—

Sad tomato cages and hanging baskets, dreaming of spring.

Then I jumped into this vehicle, the one with four wheel drive (POWER), and went down to the barn.

Hibernating tractor

This is what an irked horse looks like.

Then back home. From my window upstairs:

Stings of Christmas lights, heavy and drooping and some of them simply buried. About five minutes after I shot this, half a tree—heavily snow laden—broke and crashed down right here, taking the rest of the lights with it. We lost about ten branches.

See that big branch just over the corner of the roof there? That’s the one.

And dogs, playing arctic fox, searching for – what? – under the snow.

By three o’clock, we’d amassed about a foot and a half of snow. But it was almost forty degrees outside. Even as the snow still fell, thaw was running off the roofs. By three in the afternoon, snow had turned to rain, and by dark, all the snow we’d been digging out from under was pretty much gone. And rain all day today. Flooding in the south of the state. Not sure I get all this, and I’m afraid it will be a mucky Christmas day. But it was beautiful that morning. And I got to use the 4 wheel drive. Pretty good Christmas cheer – –

Posted in Images, Seasons, snow, The outside world | Tagged Christmas, dogs, Horses, snow | 18 Comments

~:: Of Birth and Holy Birth ::~

Posted on December 21, 2010 by K

I have to explain how I feel about nativities. My first experience with one was when I was in high school and my dad built a bunch of crèches in his workshop. Every year, he made stuff in the shop – one year, dainty keys, about a foot long, painted with intricate Pennsylvania Dutch detail, and lined with useful little hooks. It was a key-keeping key. I still have one. With keys on it. They were gifts for friends and neighbors. And so were the crèches – made of wood, a stable for the Christ child. I don’t remember the figures we put there.

And there was the tiny one I put carefully on the tree every year. I’d find a safe, deep cave in the greenery for it, a tiny stable with a little picture of the Family pasted on the back, the roof covered with glitter.

Low light. A little blue. But the vinietting around the sides is cool because it’s actually real condensation on the lens – I had just come in from an hour or so of shooting the tremendous snow we got last night, and digging out the horses at the barn.

When I grew up and had my own house and children, I thought about buying a nativity set. But I found that I couldn’t love ANY of the ones I saw. They all had the baby in a manger, which – yeah – fits the story and all. And Joseph standing to the side, always looking a little non-plussed. But it was the way the artists did Mary that put me off. She was kneeling first of all.

Show me a woman who wants to kneel right after giving a birth.

And she was mostly always praying, her hands pressed together, a look of holy rapture on her face.

It was wrong. Not the reverence. But the humanity.

You don’t give birth to a warm little person and then kneel there and pray to him. He’s your BABY. He may be the Son of God, but he’s still your baby. Later, you’ll yell at him for missing the caravan home from Jerusalem and scaring you have to death. But in those moments of his birth, sky full of angels not withstanding (could they hear those angels in town? I don’t think so, or more than shepherds would have known) – that mama is going to have that baby in her arms, pressed against her cheek. She’ll be tearing up and loving him—you KNOW she would. And Joseph? Would he really be standing aside, watching his newly post-partem wife kneeling on the ground?

I looked for years to find a group that spoke to me—of the terrible/wonderful thing that had happened that night, of Mary’s travail, and of her mother’s heart – of the dearness of that little baby, so new, and just as helpless and innocent as any baby, just born onto a rough and tough planet like ours.

And then I found one.

And I added all the animals and shepherds and attending angels I could find.

But at the center of all that, the family.

Just as it always should be.

Posted in Christmas, Epiphanies and Meditations, Explanations, holidays, Images, Seasons | Tagged baby, Christmas, Jesus, Mary, nativity | 18 Comments

~:: Tis the Season ::~

Posted on December 20, 2010 by K

The horse arena is sopping. Sopping, soaked, swampy. And there’s more rain coming. We woke to snow. But the rain washed it away. This on top of other snow and subsequent rain. Even the high stalls are now turning to mud, and the mud everywhere is the consistence of heavy chocolate frosting.

All these shots are in low light, and so are blurry. This is our creche. There are not many nativity sets I have liked; the Pure of Heart one is my favorite. But I am a scrap quilter in all ways, so we stick together whatever we like – including camels from Egypt, home made sheep, child painted reindeer—all there to love the baby Jesus.

Guy has been walking like a fragile old man, having put his back out. He’s spent a lot of time on the floor. And the rest of the time doing more than he should, considering.

Before this noon, I had not yet wrapped a single gift. And I am usually finished with all that by the first week of December. I trotted my gifts for the neighbors around yesterday, so behind that I left some hanging on door knobs when people weren’t home, rather than going back to deliver good wishes face to face.

REALLY blurry. But I love how the inside lights reflect in all the windows, and the outside lights mix with them, reflecting front to back. The white lights are our two deer – who have presently, in all the rain, shorted themselves out.

This takes me by surprise. Even the Great Party ornament (the Party will be its own story here, in the next post) was made at the last desperate moment. I don’t understand how all this happened. Or why we are getting rain instead of snow. Or why some of the lights in the back yard are shorting out. But inside (dare I say this?), we are cozy, and fat with Christmas treating.

The pre-party house. Clean. CLEAN, do you hear?

I had time to make some things. I’ve put up pictures that showed the first couple of peppermint skins. Finally finished the little herd. I never do enough to get to everyone I care for. And here I say, it’s so hard for me to give away things I’ve made (like giving away my kids) that only four people in all the world have one of my hardy little horses. Yeah. I’m stingy. I know it.

Gin’s filly in the middle. My very favorite one.

Or wait. Maybe Murphy’s is my very favorite.

Remember this? I asked if anybody knew what this was. Chaz guessed.

Now, you know. I really like this guy. Did you notice him at the creche?

And his little brother, the ornament.

Much doing. Much decorating. Much merry making in a rushing around, overwhelmed and sleep-deprived way.

I hope you, too, are making Merry – even if it’s madly.

Posted in Christmas, Events, Family, Fun Stuff, holidays, Knit Stuff, Making Things, Pics of Made Things, Seasons, snow | Tagged bad backs, Christmas, G, knitting, ornaments, party, rain, snow | 14 Comments

Just a little news for us

Posted on December 13, 2010 by K

We lost a friend today. He’d had a long, long, full life. A man I’ve known for thirty two years now, and respected, and loved. He sat in the very back of the chapel with his wife – his dear wife, the woman who taught me how to make really killer peanut brittle. A woman of great heart and kindness. Now a widow. Jess gave me some great gifts. He made me feel like I was okay. Like I had a right to use my share of air, to take up room on the planet. Like I have done well. Of all the people on the earth, he could make me believe those things – if only for minutes at a time. I wish you could have heard his voice. It was lovely. And when he spoke of what he believed, I believed him. Like a rock. A solid, wise, loving rock.

I’m gonna miss him.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations | Tagged Jess | 13 Comments

~:: Take it again, from the top – ::~

Posted on December 12, 2010 by K

Ah, the time wings by, doesn’t it? How can you “keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household should,” and still have time to write about the experience?

Here is the coolest possible thing in parenthood: when your grown up, single, working daughter has a mess of errands to run on a Saturday before Christmas and knows her mother is not about to sally out into that mess of a commercial world (not with the mound of surprises yet to be prepared here at home), she turns to her pretty much grown up little student brother: “You wanna come with me?”

And he says “YES!!”

And they spend the entire afternoon together, and have a great time doing it.

After all the years of family building—this is a deep reward and a marvelous satisfaction.

Especially when they bring home the dinner.

I don’t know when he started to do it. Come to think of it, I don’t even know when he first discovered the book. I’ll ask, but he won’t remember and he’ll get snippy about that. But my dad used to read us the entire Christmas Carol (Chas. Dickens) out loud every Christmas. It took a week’s worth of evenings, he in his chair by the Christmas tree and the rest of us lolling about – usually on the floor (all except mom, who was almost never a floor person).

The very book, now a little brittle around the edges, and without its clear cover –

Reading aloud was a thing he’d done while we were growing up – Robinson Caruso, The Promised Land series, Fairy Tales. I remember him doing it in LA, when I was about nine. I don’t think I remember it later than that. But he read the Dickens to us every year. Every year that I remember.

And he was good. (He still is. Feeling a little eulogized, Dad?)

He had a great voice for reading, and a marvelous connection with the Dickensian phrase; together, my father and Mr. Dickens could turn an adjective as though it had a nap to it, and a shape you could feel in your hand. Juicy as a James Christianson bauble.

It was inevitable that he’d end up angry at some point. He didn’t understand that we were listening to every word, even when we seemed to be messing around. I know how he felt; I’ve read it every year to my own kids. And what I have learned is that, messing around or not, they nearly have the entire story memorized and will (annoyingly) say full sentences of it right along with me as I read them.

There are literary snobs who turn their noses up at this story. If they call it “popular fiction” or brand it “commercial,” they are, of course, right. Dickens wrote for money and much of his stuff was published in magazines as serials. But I will tell you that, after all my classical reading, I have never found words more evocative, more satisfying to the mouth that forms them, or more delicious to the ears that will hear than you will find in this piece of writing.

Man with three dogs.

The words. The words. The words. They shimmer. They are luscious. But most of all, they speak. And when my father spoke them, he used his voice like an instrument, and when I read it aloud myself, I echo him, because his voice and the words are now inseparable in my mind. And I am also a dang good reader.

The new room, which I call the LL (long and light). Now full of ornament boxes.

At some point, after I was long gone and bringing up children of my own, my dad sat down with a tape recorder and recorded his reading on cassettes. Not happy with the first effort, he did the whole thing again. Years later, I made him sit down in the studio, during a visit up here, and do it again. Nothing is quite the same recorded as it is live, but he came very close. Very close to what I remembered. And now my children have the mp3. And they listen to it.

Last week, Murphy started us off for the season by insisting that we start the reading. And as I knitted madly away at small peppermint horses, he did the work, his interpretation of the text sounding like his mother sounding like her father.

We are a family that loves traditions, making them into something like small boxes of scented wood to hold our mutual memories. We become our own micro-culture, with our festivals and rituals and ways. Like other families I know.

Traditions tie us together. And Murphy’s children, long after I am a memory, may very well tap into the same rich vein as the rest of us, listening to their father read to them, and then reading the story themselves, sounding like their father, who sounds like me, sounding like mine.

Posted in A little history, Christmas, Epiphanies and Meditations, Family, Fun Stuff, holidays, Images, Making Things, Memories and Ruminations, The g-kids, The kids | Tagged Christmas, decorations, Dickens, kids, quilt, the tree, tradition | 14 Comments

Into the Halls of Wisdom

Posted on December 7, 2010 by K

Today, I taught a university class. Which means I was up earlier than I wanted to be, exercised, cleaned up and slightly damp as I tramped across the entire campus of my alma mater. The campus is so changed from my days there – new buildings where old ones are expected, more new buildings where there once was grass. Odd. Disorienting.

I was to address Communications majors, almost all of them print journalism majors, on the heady subject of “The Life of a Writer.” Hmmmm. There have been times when I could have done this with more aplomb—back when I was regularly published. But I suppose a has-been has a certain perspective to share. Well, I know she has one—because I shared it today.

Basically, what I told them was this: if you want to write with any depth, any true passion, with grounded perspective—be part of a family. Anchor yourself there. Sacrifice for your children, or your mother, or your cousins. Be full time there. Otherwise, you are writing about the ocean from the perspective of a sea-foam borne organism.

When I say be part of one—I mean: not a nasty, cynical, standing-outside, rolling your eyes kind of member, but a participating, sacrificing, functional, compromising (not your principles, just your pride) one. Protect someone. Provide for someone. Be responsible for someone. And if it’s not the family you were born to, build your own – out of relationships that are difficult and complex and wonderful and that you mean (mutually) to keep permanent in your life. (Love affairs do not come close unless they come under contract.)

This is how you find depth. This is how you learn meaning. And this is how it might turn out in the end that your writing is worth the time it takes to read you. Even if you’re only a journalist. (smug novelist jab)

Oh. And I mentioned something about the terrible power of words. And the mirroring responsibility of a writer. And there must have been something else, because I was there for fifty minutes.

Anyway, that’s mostly what I said.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Just talk | Tagged families, writing | 12 Comments

~:: A little more about thanks ::~

Posted on December 2, 2010 by K

For me, when I can’t get to the keyboard to write, it’s like having to sneeze in the middle of a solemn assembly. But when I can sit down and start pounding the keys, the relief my fingers give me is glorious. It’s always been that way from me – once I’d got hold of my first electric typewriter. (Holy cats – what if I’d been born before parchment was invented?)

There are so many things I’ve been wanting to write about. Part of the function of this—personal log—is that it actually counts as a journal. The rest is all about writing a letter to people I like. People I want to share my heart with. I still have Disneyland and weather and dogs and ideas all backed up – if this were a physical condition, they’d be prescribing unpleasant cures for me. And I’m, like, sixty eight blogs behind in my reading.

My last night with Gin, my fun sister and her hubby – having really quite miraculously escaped death on the highway, driving home from my house where they were when I wasn’t – got to spend the evening with us. (If you want to read an incredible story, post me – what they went through was a-mazing.)

But it’s all about time: I realized day before yesterday—I am three weeks behind – in business, in dust, in holiday preparation, in bills. But now, Thanksgiving is celebrated, taxes paid, some dust allayed, the inside lights all put up for Christmas, the outside ones almost finished, the decorations (boxes and boxes of them) hauled down, gone through, and put in new places (since the remodeling has changed the shape and flow of our long-time home).

And I even sort of cleaned up my little artsy/craftsy area. Have you ever noticed how any kind of deep cleaning is like knocking over one domino in a line of hundreds? Cleaned out the hutch, and the kitchen cabinets, and the den – which is now the a/c area referred to above. Then I force the children to take the stuff I can’t stand to get rid of completely. Anybody need some mugs?

a goofy person

the friend I brought him – all the way from Disneyland

I don’t know how you mamas with children manage to write as much as you do—especially those swell tutorials.

Now (I was writing this Sunday), the kids are at church in their own wards and G is at meetings (poor thing) and the puppies are rampaging in the piles of snow that were dropped on our heads last night.

This is not a picture of the piles of snow. This is a picture of a storm we got long before Thanksgiving – on the 20th of Nov. I was impressed with this dusting of white – then.

See? Those trees still have their flaming leaves.

I finally have a chance to write something.

That last entry? The one about Eden (not really about Eden) I put up a few days ago? Yeah – that went out before it was finished. Somehow, I hit the publish button long before I’d done it up right. So now you will get a double dose of pictures. Hope you don’t mind.

Goofy person demonstrating Karate

Have I lost you yet?

No. This is not our idea of inventive and economical Christmas decor. Though I will admit – there is a festive cheeriness effect going here. In reality, this is a dog-proof fence, to keep the Wandering Tucker from getting himself squished in the street. I have put this picture here to keep you from getting away before I’m finished with you.

The Actual Entry:

At church today we were having a discussion of gratitude, being asked for synonyms of the word. In the end, someone said, “Humility.” And the word rang with rightness. When you realize that the things you have – whatever they are, love, shelter, intelligence – are all a gift, that you can work towards having them, prepare for them, desire them – but that, in the end, it’s really kind of a miracle that you end up with them, that is the beginning of gratitude. From there, amazement takes over.

There are mornings when I wake up making lists. They start with “Thank you for – .” Honest, I’m already doing the list thing even before I come full awake. This is not any kind of sign of my virtue, but rather, I believe, a desperate act of amazement when I find myself still alive in spite of everything. Because I do not deserve any of the things on the thank-you list. Most of them, quite the opposite.

M is a little stretched here by the lens. But the smile is the same.

Sometimes the list starts with toilets and running water. Sometimes with mercy. Thank you for mercy. Without it, I would be in sad shape.

So right here, I am going to make a partial list of things I’m grateful for. I don’t really expect anybody to be terribly interested in these things, but this is my journal, and I’m gonna write them down anyway.

Love. I have to start with love. It’s the frame of the world for me. And the corollaries begin with family. I believe that family is the most precious of all amazements. You can live anywhere under any conditions if you are together in it. I am grateful for parents who had tremendous qualities of integrity, faith, forgiveness, determination. They took us camping, taught us to work, taught us to be honorable, and to laugh. Very different from one another, my mother and father, but an unbeatable combination – solid, philosophical, funny, unfailing.

Thanksgiving dinner. This looks like a solemn moment. It wasn’t one.

I am thankful for my beloved and beautiful sister, and my crazy, kamakazi brother. For my Aunt Jeannie, who is both friend and godmother. And for my cousins, some of whom have become dear friends.

I am deeply grateful also for friends who have become family, for my crazy, dear, right-hand Rachel, and for Geneva, who has kept us alive under trying circumstances. And so many at church, people I’ve known now for multiple decades – still fresh, still fun, still deeply connected – and their children, many of whom feel like they are my own. And for a few really, really wonderful old friends found through music, or through my writing, or though my teaching years – we are all shining, helpless debris, happily caught in each other’s comet tails. I know people who should be canonized – for their goodness and service, for their courage in the face of great difficulty, for their constant kindness to me.

This is beginning to sound like a very big group. I wonder if you can only tell how many people loved/hated you by who shows up at your funeral?

The mongrel, random table – I LOVE scrap-quilt decorating.

But to be a little more concrete:

Toilets. And antibiotics. And trees. Color. Eyes to see with. The smells of lilacs and onions and hot butter and new bread. A brain that can do acrobatics – it’s just a pleasure to feel the thing running. Legs, arms, finger joints, feet with toes that can grip and push. Ideas. Materials like glass and paper and clay and mud and fabric. People who work in factories and make these things in so many colors and thicknesses. The mail service. Electronics. Wheels. Rivers. Creeks. New apples. Dryers you can pull hot clothes out of. Drains: one of the great mysteries of our time. Trash removal. Phones. Talking. Tongues. Thumbs. Fences. Open spaces. Drifts of snow. Drifts of cherry blossoms. Hot dogs.

Other people’s imaginations.

Can you guess what this thing is?

Printing presses. Freedom. Laughter. Puns. Handel. Harmony. Refrigerators. My house. That it can be kept warm without blowing up. The flash of fish. Horses. Puppies – even the ones who chew up stuff. Needles (sewing, knitting). (I could NEVER make any of these things for myself.) Paint. Thread. Spots and stripes. Clouds that catch fire with the sun behind them. Airplanes that stay up. Cars that stay down. Zebras. LIGHT. COLOR. Canyons. Kind people.

Mercy. Justice. Compassion. Knowledge. Curiosity. Determination. Words. Words. Words. Thinking. Sleeping. The fact that going to the bathroom is not a flipping sin.

Holidays. Eyes to look at. Marbles. Lawn mowers. Hay. Pumpkins. Seasons.

CAMERAS.

The internet. Opportunities to give heart. Getting heart. Food I don’t cook.

For not having cancer (at least, not yet). For being taught about the eternal nature and beautiful purpose of life.

For hope. For try. For try again.

Hearing. Languages. Touch.

Peppermint and chocolate.

Balsamic vinegar.

People who put their knitting patterns up on line just for fun.

Skinny little knitting needles. Colored rocks. Huge mountains. For not having to jump out of an airplane. Christmas lights, dancing, jumping, climbing. Leaves. That leaves change color. Hedgehogs (I’ve never seen one). Libraries. Freedom to choose. Freedom to fail. Fireworks. Pie. Computers. Babies. Eggs (don’t you think eggs are magical?). Circles, squares, rugs, weaving, pieces of things that can be put together in new ways, problems to solve, red shirts, fancy riding-sorts of boots (I don’t own any). Presents to give. And to get. White fur against black or red. Books, books, books—the kind with pages. Pillows. Soft things. Textures.

Birds.

Okay, I’m not running out, but I think I’m finished.

Phone calls from children who are on their way home. Safety. Courage. Happy endings. Purpose.

Tomato soup.

I’m stopping. Really.

You can add things to this list, though. Go ahead. Drop some things into a comment. Do it. Fun. I’m thankful for fun. And for conversation. And for the chance to know people and love them.

There.

I stopped. Choirs.

Dawn.

Love.

Ha. Full circle.

These last two shots are the actual piles of snow I was talking about earlier. Happened on Sunday. Three days before December.

I am thankful for the first real snow. And the coming holiday. And hot chocolate.

And stopping.

So there you are.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Family, holidays, Images, Just talk, Knit Stuff, Making Things | Tagged blessings, First snow, home, Santa Fe, thanks, Thanksgiving | 21 Comments

~:: Bits of Eden ::~

Posted on November 28, 2010 by K

My father just turned 88. He outdid his own father’s life by almost 30 years. I’m not that ambitious, myself. Happy birthday, Daddy.

The perfect, perfect, perfect day:

Saturday after Thanksgiving, the great feast eaten.

Two days spent setting the stage for the next celebration, the children here to help. The weather, cold enough to make the fireside a cave of warmth and safety, but not cold enough to be worrisome. Horses fed. Dogs asleep at our feet. Turkey leftovers in the refrigerator. The Big Game on at one-thirty. M and Chaz with us. And Luke, who took care of the house and dogs while we were gone, comes too. For the moment, rushing life settles drowsily in an over-stuffed chair. For this moment, there is content.

We lost the game. It was a bummer – by one point in the last four seconds, after a really, really controversial, lousy call. To our way long-time rivals. But yelling together is its own reward.

I settled into the feeling of the day the way an aching body sinks into a really good mattress.

We had Santa Sandwiches. Chaz and I and Johanne discovered these in Sisters, Oregon at the quilt show some years ago. G made them for us today. I share the secret with you:

Very good bread – homemade if possible, whole grain, flavorful. Rye, is what I recall the funky little sandwich shop using.

You can use mayonnaise, which I do. But on top of that, you lay a nice, fat foundation of cream cheese, and then you crown that with just as healthy a layer of cranberry sauce. This year, we used a wonderful cranberry-orange relish (NOT made by me). Then the turkey. And finally, crisp lettuce. A fine sandwich.

A noble sandwich. I’d love to have you all over and I’d give you one – if I could hire a sandwich maker for the day. G is the resident one, but I don’t want to wear him out. Especially after his stroke of genius yesterday, when—in a moment of pure inspiration—he added a thin layer of the left-over twice baked sweet potatoes. I don’t throw the word “bliss” around lightly.

This morning (morning after) has been odd. It was in late May that all the children (except M, who was still in Argentina) finally all had their own real houses. M came home in late June. On the day he signed a lease on a college apartment and moved himself over there, the nest cracked wide open. Empty—all the birds flown. Since then, I’ve had one rushing deadline after another – and the trips, the babies, the holidays.

Until this morning. We’ve had M for Thanksgiving weekend, and Chaz has been hanging out with us, free till her teaching position claims her tomorrow. But they are gone now, and this Sabbath morning, just before church, G and I are blinking in the silence.

This morning I realized: the thing you get back when the kids grow up and plant themselves in their own places? Control over your focus. Your attention is yours again – no one grabbing your face and turning it for you, which is a mother’s life. This possibility had occurred to me before it became a reality, and with it came the fear that I’d be dead bored. Or just sort of aimless. But it didn’t turn out to be so. I do like being in charge of the direction in which my eyes are looking.

Still, having my kids back, even for a few days – maybe especially for a few days – is sweet, and energizing. Much laughter. New perspectives. Fun. When they are here, they wear me out. When they leave, the house is flat with the silence.

Posted in Epiphanies and Meditations, Family, Fun Stuff, holidays, Just talk, Seasons, The kids | Tagged celebration, empty nest, houses, kids, motherhood | 18 Comments

Blogroll
Buddies
Cool Places
Lovely lives
The Artist's Heart
January 2025

M T W T F S S

1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31

« Feb
Pages
Meta
Archives
Archives
Looking for this?
Andy Autumn birthday Books Cam Chaz Christmas construction crafts Dad dogs family felt Frazz friends G Gin Guy Hickory horse Horses kids knitting Laura leaves light Lorri love Max Murphy ornaments party pumpkins puppies Rachel Rhode Island Sandy Santa Fe Scooter snow spring summer tractor writing yard

Here is a fun thing that came to me at the end of an email. Thought I’d spiff it up a little (a very little) and share it with you:

Low light. A little blue. But the vinietting around the sides is cool because it’s actually real condensation on the lens – I had just come in from an hour or so of shooting the tremendous snow we got last night, and digging out the horses at the barn.

REALLY blurry. But I love how the inside lights reflect in all the windows, and the outside lights mix with them, reflecting front to back. The white lights are our two deer – who have presently, in all the rain, shorted themselves out.

The pre-party house. Clean. CLEAN, do you hear?

Gin’s filly in the middle. My very favorite one.

Or wait. Maybe Murphy’s is my very favorite.

Remember this? I asked if anybody knew what this was. Chaz guessed.

And his little brother, the ornament.

The very book, now a little brittle around the edges, and without its clear cover –

Man with three dogs.

The new room, which I call the LL (long and light). Now full of ornament boxes.

a goofy person

the friend I brought him – all the way from Disneyland

This is not a picture of the piles of snow. This is a picture of a storm we got long before Thanksgiving – on the 20th of Nov. I was impressed with this dusting of white – then.

See? Those trees still have their flaming leaves.

Goofy person demonstrating Karate

The Actual Entry:

M is a little stretched here by the lens. But the smile is the same.

Thanksgiving dinner. This looks like a solemn moment. It wasn’t one.

The mongrel, random table – I LOVE scrap-quilt decorating.

My father just turned 88. He outdid his own father’s life by almost 30 years. I’m not that ambitious, myself. Happy birthday, Daddy.

Find something:

Recent Comments

on the menu:

Blogroll

Buddies

Cool Places

Lovely lives

The Artist's Heart

Pages

Meta

Archives

Looking for this?