Words from The Crone

As our family was contemplating what to do to celebrate New Year’s Eve, my youngest DD commented, “I don’t celebrate New Year’s Eve anymore, it’s just another day followed by another year with a new number and the same life.”  At first that struck me with profound sadness.  In all of my 70+ years, New Year’s Eve followed by January 1st was a day of renewal, of new hope for a better year, or a happier year, or a healthier year, or a wealthier year.  Or maybe it was new hope for a new job, or a new baby, or a new car, or a new waistline, or a new almost anything.  The sadness I felt came from the thought that 2011 would be the same as 2010 – for anyone. 

And, yet, maybe 2011 will be the same for many, many people.  Folks like you and me that are well settled into life and really not much happens to change our life day in and day out, year in and year out.  In reality, it may even be a pretty good life.  In reality, it may also be a pretty bad life.  For others, I guess it may just be a mediocre life.  Life is like that I have found.

So, we have several choices looking into a new year.  We can do nothing and let life wash over us.  We can look forward not backward and try to make some changes, big or small, that might give us a better life or at least a different life.  Or, we can slide backward and fall into a life that is even worse than last year.  Someone once said that you have to play the cards life deals you.  Yup, you do.  Anyone who has ever played a card game, or any other game where both luck and strategy play a role, knows that you have to play to move forward, backward, or at least stay even. 

Well, January 1^st may just be another day like any other day of the year.  But, New Year’s Day can be a day that you make up your mind to play your cards differently.  Maybe smarter, maybe more clever, maybe with more knowledge of past strategies that worked or didn’t work.  The one thing that no one should ever do is walk away from life without playing a card.  For that one card could be just the card that changes the game of life and January 1^st will not be just another day.

Happy New Year to all!  Remember, it does not have to be “Just another day!”

Christmas Day was the last day I was deliberately active.  It was the usual get up in the morning and open gifts kind of morning, and, the usual clean up the house and get ready for dinner and guests in the late afternoon.  I was busy, I was happy, all was good!

 And then the snow started very late that night.  At first it was just the tiniest snow flakes barely grabbing hold of the ground.  Then, by the next morning those flakes were a bit larger and larger and LARGER!  Normally, I just love a good snow storm and the calm of it all, the beauty of the freshly fallen snow and the faint music of Christmas carols in the background!  I curled up with the book my friend Pat had written – a “Momoir” it was called and it was a good read.  Hot cocoa in the afternoon, more music, more snow.  More snow.  More snow, but ah, yes, so restful.

Well that usually works for me for about six hours and then I usually find things to busy my body with and keep the red corpuscles moving around.  But, oddly enough, not this time.  For starters I didn’t get out of bed until 11:00 a.m. the next day.  Unheard of behavior for a decent lady, I thought.  Ah, but my R brought me the newspaper, a hot cup of coffee, and a perfectly made omelet in bed and pampered me no end.  While I enjoyed all this attention and reckless abandon, I thought to myself that I was really just being a slug.

Everyone knows a slug is this big blob of brownish-green yuk that just sits there doing nothing.  An occasional slither moves it about a nano-inch at a time, but nothing that indicates there is any real life in it.  Yes, I was a slug, just lying there in bed reading the paper, enjoying my coffee, while getting out of bed was the last thing on my mind.

Of course, I did finally move that nano-inch and got up and dressed.  But, I moved around like a slug all the rest of that day, and the next!  Nothing much got done, I just looked at the snow, read my book, listened to music, ate some Christmas candy, and well, just vegetated like a very good slug.  All the slugs in the world would be very proud of the way I imitated them!  And, for those past two days, I just loved it.  I wasn’t busy, I was happy, and all was still good.  I was a good slug.

So, I guess being a slug for a day or two is good for the soul.  But, being me and being a type-A, very un-slug-like person, I was up early this morning, getting out the ingredients to bake bread, and slipping into my jeans to help my friend, Pat, move from one place to another.  Slug or no slug, life is good!  Thanks be to God!

In the midst of a celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace, we have war.  Not the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the war of the greetings.  A war that somehow signifies a broken world, but in a world that yearns for peace.  This war is not about those words, “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.”  It is a war about how we approach this season, this day of Jesus’ birth.  It is a war about what Christmas really means to us, or to you.  It is so sad, heartbreaking really that we even have this war.  We need peace now, not fighting over what to say to each other.

 Whenever it was decided that Christians should celebrate the birth of Jesus, who even knows what that celebration looked like or what people said to each other.  I am certain it didn’t look like any normal birthday party I ever attended.  We played games and ate gooey cake and watched as the birthday boy or girl opened the gifts.  We took little party favors home and that was that.  Birthday over.  We also didn’t go around for weeks ahead of time saying, “Happy Birthday,” to anyone we met and so far as I know there was no shopping frenzy days ahead of the birthday.  And, for sure there was never an entire worship service celebrating his or her birthday at the church.  Even our national “birthday” holidays like Lincoln’s or Martin Luther King’s birthday are more celebrated with store-wide sales and days off work than anything else.  And, that I believe is the crux of our different greetings, our different attitudes of the day.  Those on the religious “Merry Christmas” end and those on the “Happy Holidays” end.  One goes to church, the other goes shopping.  The meaning of the season, however, is common to all of us.

 Many say that it was decided by early Christians to have Christ’s birthday celebrated as a counter point to the pagan celebration of the winter solstice.  Maybe, maybe not.  Celebrating the winter solstice was a celebration that the light in each day would now be longer.  Christians’ celebration of Jesus’ birth is our way to celebrate a new light in our life.  Light has always been a symbol of hope and everyone has hope.  Hope for lighter days, hope for lighter hearts, hope for lighter feelings, hopes for the future, and most importantly, hope for peace.   And, that my friends, is what we are really celebrating.

 Whether you are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist, or just a plain human being, the one thing we all have in common is hope and a strong desire for peace.  Hope drives us forward each day no matter what.  Peace is that time and space when we are all put together and all is well with the world.  Peace in our life, peace of mind, and peace among all men, women, and children.  Let’s end the war of the greetings.  It matters not what we call it.  Christmas for “Christ mass”, or the holidays for “Holy Days.” Anyone, anywhere, anytime, can find holiness for we are all God’s creatures.  This season of hope is a time to renew and regain our perspective on how to live a better life, through Christ, or not, as is your choice.  Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy Holidays to all.

The day didn’t start out very well – I broke a nail!  Well, no big deal, it will grow back, but it does mean that my hands will not look as perfectly manicured as they were yesterday.  And then the phone rang and I got the news that my close friend’s grandson had died.  He was eighteen and although he was living on borrowed time since the day he was born, it was a shock.  It always is.  This little boy was born with only three chambers in his heart.  It was a miracle of modern medicine and some primordial will to survive in this baby’s soul that he survived this long. 

I only met him once last year and while he was seventeen he looked about ten years old.  Not having a healthy heart his entire life took a toll on things we take for granted, like growing up big and strong.  He was a happy child in spite of the surgeries and hospitalizations he lived through.  Somehow God bestows an extra measure or two of equanimity and courage on such little ones.  You know it because it shines through on their faces.  I have seen it.

What makes his death so much more disturbing and unexpected is that he was in the heart-transplant section of the hospital and was waiting for his new heart.  A new heart that would give him a new lease on life.  He was number one on the list.  There was so much hope for him and so many prayers for this miracle.  But, it was not to be.  His frail body couldn’t hold out another minute.  It was too late.

Wherever our souls go, or wherever they reside after our earth-bound bodies give up, is such a deep mystery.  But, we inherently know in our own hearts that wherever that may be it is to new life.  And so this Christmas I’ll not worry about a sorry broken nail.  That is so trivial compared to the pain and shock and dismay and hurt and anguish this young man’s family is now suffering.  They are in terrible pain right now.  God be with them.

We know however, that the pain will ease over time and the memories of this courageous boy will fill the hearts of his family.  It always does.  For eighteen years he graced their life and going forward it will be his courage, light, and love that they will remember and cherish.  He wasn’t mine, but I weep nonetheless.  Sometimes death is the ultimate gift of God’s healing.  This is one little boy who will suffer no more.  May God whisk him into Eternity.

This morning as I was brushing my teeth alongside my R, I looked at my thick waist and said, “I have a very matronly figure, don’t I?”  R looked at me, smiled broadly, and replied, “Oh, my yes, you certainly do!”  “I don’t like it,” I said.  “Why not,” he replied?  “Because I have lost my waist,” I said, with a definite frown on my face.

“What did you say,” R asked tentatively?  I said, “I have a matronly figure!”  He said, “Oh, I thought you said you had a major league figure!”  Oh, my, I laughed so hard.  Once we had straightened out that miscommunication, my R, bless his soul, told me that he loved every inch of my matronly figure and that for a woman of my age he thought it was a major league figure.  Well, you just have to love a guy who thinks like that!

Thinking about my disappearing waist, I could have been pitched into the despair of the darkest, longest night.  But, aha, no, I will not.  I have given up the hope that my waistline will ever be the same, but I have also resolved anew to eat healthy and to be whatever I will be with whatever waistline I will have.

Thus, I have given up on lo-fat, no-fat, less sugar, no-sugar, no “Lite” anything, and for sure no non-fat.  And definitely no “High fructose corn syrup.”  As I think back about fifty years or so ago, we all ate the same amount of food.  Maybe one in fifty or a hundred was what we would consider fat or obese.  It was not the norm as it is today.  I have this theory that whatever it is that has been done to our food has done us in.

They have taken the fat out of everything.  This is not good.  We need a certain amount of fat in order to metabolize our protein and sugars.  Without it our digestive systems run amok!  Bring on the fat.  Fat, when eaten in the natural proportions of nature, is actually good for us!  Milk is a well balanced food and it has 4 percent fat.  Throw out that skim milk and get back to milk as the cow delivered it.  Or, for that matter, as mothers deliver it to their babies.  Forget lo-fat cottage cheese, or non-fat yogurt.  If you look at the labels they have taken out the fat and added high fructose corn syrup!

 Sugar, another name for carbohydrates, are not good for us without some fat.  When all you eat are carbohydrates and proteins your body turns them into your needed fat!  Duh, this is also not good and thus, I believe, it leads to our rampage of obesity and my thickening waistline.  So, I am going back to the way nature wanted it.  I have banned high fructose corn syrup from my pantry shelves.  My R and my DD#2 laugh at me.  But, I believe that if we eat naturally occurring foods with a natural balance of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, we will not overeat and not be overweight.

 I may never have that 24-waistline again.  I don’t care because I am now old enough to have earned a few inches here and there.  But, I will eat unprocessed, unadulterated, un-high fructose corn syrupy foods and try to bring my metabolism into some normalcy.  Good bye you lo-fat rascals, you’ll never see the inside of my refrigerator or pantry.  Good-bye high fructose corn syrup, go back into your ear of corn where you belong!  Hello, health, and a wonderfully matronly, major league figure!

When I was a little girl we were Southern Baptists and, as far as I can remember, we didn’t do Advent in any official sense of the season.  The seasons of the church didn’t actually come into my life in God until I became an Episcopalian.  But, we did have the anticipation and the waiting.  Oh, yes, the waiting and waiting and waiting.

 Waiting for Christmas was always filled with such sweet misery and mystery.  Oh, I can’t wait to see what Santa brought me.  Oh, I can’t wait to open my presents.  Oh, how many more days will I have to wait.  As a child, while I knew that it was Jesus’ birthday, it was really all about the gifts I would receive.  And, I think it was this waiting for my gifts and that sweet anticipation of waiting that has given me two wonderful gifts in my life.

 That first gift is the gift of waiting.  And not only waiting, but delighting in that waiting time.  Whether we are waiting for a red light to change or waiting for our Christmas gifts, it is time given to us to savor.  I use my waiting time to do crossword puzzles to keep my mind sharp or I use my waiting time to pray for those on my prayer list.  If it’s a small bit of waiting time I may just sit and wait for God to touch my heart or whisper in my ear.  Sometimes I even listen!!  Given longer periods of waiting, like Advent or waiting for a long awaited vacation or celebration, I try to be productive, to plan life’s events, to enjoy the delicious moments in my life, to think of my children, my spouse, to enjoy a sunset (I’m not a sunrise person) and to appreciate each waiting moment.  Some might call it meditation, I call it living in the moment.  I have a sign on my computer that says, “This moment is the only time there is.”  Puts things into perspective for me when I get impatient.

 And the other gift I received from waiting for my gifts, was the joy of giving gifts.  One day it dawned on me that if I enjoyed getting a gift so much, I could make others happy by giving them a gift.  Anyone who knows me, knows I just love to give gifts.  Small, large, tangible, intangible, of myself, of my time, of my talents, out of my riches, and even out of my poverty.  Long ago I stopped waiting for my gifts.  It was much more rewarding to give gifts to my friends, my family, my neighbors, and even a stranger here or there along the way of life. 

Waiting through Advent these days is a joyful time when I shop, bake, or make something to give others to honor Jesus’ birthday.  I’ve always told my children that we give gifts to each other as if we were giving Jesus his birthday gift!  But waiting and gifting isn’t only for Christians or Christmas, but for all those special moments for which we wait and anticipate and for all the gifts we give and receive!

So, settle down, settle in, enjoy your waiting moments and always remember the best gift you give is of yourself, and the best gift you receive is the smile on someone else’s face!

And all through the house….  Ah, that oh, so familiar poem we all know and love.  Yeah, yeah, I know it was the “night” before Christmas, but here I am the week before, you know what.  I’ve often said that the pagans have taken over the holiday, but this year I’m not so sure.  More people are saying “Merry Christmas” at the cash register and our waiter even wrote it on the bottom of our check at the restaurant.  And, on an episode of “Bones,” they even mentioned “Jesus” and “Christmas” in the same sentence.  Amazing!

Of course, we still have Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer, but for the first time in a long time we also have Jesus, the babe in the manger popping up everywhere.  I’ve even seen some mangers on town greens and some of our Christmas cards say “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays.”  It warms my heart and actually puts me more in the frame of mind to really enjoy the day as I haven’t done for years.

So, twas the week before….and, I’ve sent all of my cards, our Christmas letter is done and sent, and all but a handful of gifts are already wrapped and under the tree.  Our tree was up by December 4^th, an exceptionally early record this year.  I’ve even listened to about ten hours of wonderful Christmas carols and other seasonal little ditties!  We even endured bitter cold weather to attend a Lessons and Carols service in the unheated 1771 Old Christ Church.  I can honestly say that I have a modicum of joy in my heart and I am actually happily anticipating Christmas day with friends and family and our traditional prime rib roast and yummy Yorkshire pudding!

My DD #2 and I engaged in a mother/daughter cookie/brownie bake off for the holidays.  It was rather hysterical as we over measured sugar, forgot the oil, made way too big cookies, produced overly chewy brownies and learned NOT to use Splenda® in brownies.  My attempt to make a batch of some lo-sugar goodies turned into a pan of very unattractive, brown, cardboard, flat, definitely not tasty somethings.  They were not worthy of the name “Brownie.” 

And, today it snowed here in slower, lower, middle of nowhere, southern Delaware.  It’s not quite Christmas, but I could watch the snowflakes blanket the world outside my window and imagine that it was.  Twas the week before Christmas and I can’t wait for Santa to deliver the gifts, Rudolph to dance on my roof, Frosty to wink and send me a kiss from the backyard, and for the celebration of Jesus’ birthday to begin!  Bring it on!