Thoughts Happen

In Defense of Orneriness

“Poor ornery people” always jumps out at me when I hear “I Wonder as I Wander,” as I did in service last Sunday, it having been well within the noted 12 Days of Christmas, which if you are a good Lutheran you know means that Christmas isn’t over until the last carol is sung on Epiphany Eve.  

Cantankerous, crotchety, having a difficult and contrary disposition. Stubbornly obstructive and unwilling to cooperate. Bitchy even shows up as a synonym.  

“Poor ornery people like you and like I.” Makes me think of a crotchety old man with tufts of white hair sticking out of his ears and worn out old slippers that scuff the floor like sandpaper when he shuffles to the door to tell me to keep off his lawn. Yeah, he’s ornery. But am I ornery?

Am I ornery when I don’t say the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer at service anymore? I find I am unwilling to cooperate when everyone else starts, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth ...” Am I being difficult? Stubbornly obstructive? 

And don’t get me started on contrary. As the mother of a ‘tween I know from contrary. Daughter has gotten into the annoying habit of contradicting me whenever I say anything that is the tiniest bit imprecise, thus driving her mother insane and fulfilling the primary drive of ‘tweendom.  

Me: “It’s quarter after now, so we’ll get there about ten o’clock.” 

She: “It’s 9:17”

Me: “Gaaah!” (occasionally reaching for the ever-popular witty retort, “What-ever!”) 

It pisses me off because as a writer and a wordsmith, I feel I should be precise in my language, and I don’t like being called on it when I’m not. I don’t like being contradicted. 

But would I really rather she just went along? It took me thirty years to decide for myself that I’m not sure I believe in God the Father Almighty and am not willing to go along anymore when everyone else says they do. 

In contradicting me (again and again and again), she’s just practicing a life skill that will come in handy as she gets older. Precision is something she obviously values quite highly, and if calling me on it is her way of sticking to her guns, I say be ornery, baby.  

Be ornery when the popular girl asks to copy your homework, be ornery when the cute boy who asked you to the dance wants you to slip outside with him for a smoke, be ornery when “all the other kids” are doing whatever it is that you know you really do not want to do. Be as ornery as it takes. 

But I expect you back by 10:28.

 

The Christmas House

The Christmas house in our neighborhood was at the bottom of the hill on the corner lot next to the Limeport Pike — we passed it anytime we turned onto the pike to go into town (love the word pike — “Something’s coming down the pike”).   

We passed it whenever we took the sea-green Rambler to the IGA or to the Moravian church in town or to my best friend’s, who lived near Hopewell Elementary where I went to first through third grade before they redistricted and sent me to Liberty Bell Elementary and I was The New Kid for the first, but not last, time. 

The Christmas house was small and white, and perpetually decorated. A four-foot-high plastic snowman of three perfectly spherical plastic snowballs topped with a black plastic top hat stood in the yard, smiling his black plastic coal-lump smile day in and day out. Were there reindeer, yes,  and plastic candy canes and Christmas lights too? I remember that there were, but I could be wrong. 

And was there a white fence around the yard? The kind with two rows of rough horizontal boards with tapered ends tucked into slots in the fenceposts? (And would I be a better writer if I knew the word for that kind of fence and could pull it out of an index file in my head at exactly the right moment?) I squint and I can see the fence clearly, but I do not know if it is real.

Every school-day morning my older sister and I waited at the bus stop next to the Christmas house after walking down the hill, and every school-day afternoon we stepped off the bus to walk back up the hill. We never saw who lived there, but I imagined it was a little old lady with stooped shoulders and white hair. I didn’t really want to meet whoever lived there. I was shy of strangers and did not know what kind of person lived in a house with Christmas decorations up all year round.  

Walking home up the hill from the Christmas house, the days I liked the best were days it had rained, because a stream, a mini river almost, ran down the hill on the side of the road in the little ditch of asphalt. We didn’t have proper gutters, as there were no sidewalks — the grass from people’s front yards ran right up to the road. 

On the way home on the days it had rained I would dawdle behind my sister and look for rocks and sticks to make dams in the river at the side of the road, and if it was fall there would be leaves to plaster in between the crevices to make the dams even bigger. Where the water backed up, a little pond would form. And maybe I would find a curly leaf to float in the pond as a boat for the imaginary people who lived on the banks of the river.  

I would stay until I absolutely had to go home or I got cold, whichever came first. And the snowman at the bottom of the hill stood watch, smiling his perpetual smile as the dams disintegrated overnight. 

Photo courtesy Valerie Everett via Creative Commons license 

The oddest Christmas party I was ever at

One December day in the age of Terence Trent D’Arby and Swing Out Sister, I picked up the cordless phone at my friend Larry’s place (not his real name) and dialed the number on the ecru invitation card in front of me. Larry stood close by, shifting his weight and fidgeting. 

A man’s voice answered. 

“Hi,” I said. “We got the invitation to the Christmas party you left on the windshield and wanted to let you know that we can come.”  

The voice on the other end sounded a little surprised. “Is this the apartment with the cute little guy with the blonde hair?” he said. 

“Yeah. That’s my friend Larry.”

“Well, okay, we’ll see you then.”

I hung up. Larry’s normally fair complexion looked a bit paler than usual.  

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. For some reason that I can’t recall, Larry was convinced that the handwritten invitation he’d found on his windshield was to a gay Christmas party in his apartment complex. And based on my phone conversation, I thought he was probably right.  

Larry was cute, in a preppy kind of way, little — about 5'-7", and a homophobe. 

I knew him not that well — only as an acquaintance, but had jumped on his offer to live rent-free at his Mission Valley apartment for a few weeks before I found my own place. He never, ever tried anything with me, and just seemed to be a nice professional guy who liked the company. His homophobia was never mean spirited, but he made it known that he did not like gays.

He wore khakis, deck shoes and button-down oxfords or polo shirts in yellow, mint green or pink, or if the occasion lent itself, a two-piece navy suit and tie, and was as fastidious in other aspects of his life as he was in his appearance — he made custom mixes of alterna-pop, naming them in alphabetical order according to a featured song (“'Absolute,’ is for ‘Absolute Beginners,’” he explained). 

I once proclaimed him as “the straightest person I know,” but I was too naive at the time to see that Larry was so far in the closet he was practically in Narnia.  

He showed me the invitation when I got back from work that day, wondering what he should do. He didn’t want to be rude, but he really, really did not want to go to that party alone. “Come with me,” he pleaded, and asked me to make the call to RSVP.   

And so, at the designated hour, we headed over. We entered into an apartment done in shades of cream set off by tasteful red Christmas decorations and holiday lighting. A group of about a dozen people were settled in the living room/dining room area around tables spread with hors d’oeuvres, eggnog and drinks. 

We were the only mixed-gender couple in the place. 

We stuck out like pugs at a cat show. But for once I wasn’t the most awkward person in the room. That would have been either Larry or our host, I’m not sure which. However I didn’t have anything invested in this situation, so I gamely struck up a conversation with the couple across from us while nursing a White Russian. Larry and I hung around for about half an hour before politely excusing ourselves. “Oh. My. God,” he said as we headed back to his apartment.

Several months later, in the spring, I ran into Larry and a guy I didn’t know shopping at Target. He’d grown a blonde moustache and was wearing a tank top over shorts and flip-flops. We had a few minutes of forced small-talk before each going on our way. 

That was the last time I ever saw him.

Merry Christmas, Larry

Photo courtesy TraCataldo via Creative Commons

Give a Gift in Honor of Someone - Alternative Gifts International

How wonderful it is that nobody has to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." — Anne Frank

My family enjoyed Thanksgiving weekend with some close friends, and while we did bring a laptop, I didn't use it. I admit to checking email on my phone, but it seemed more important to enjoy our friends than to spend time updating the blog, so there was no post last Wednesday, and Saturday Morning Surf was postponed to Sunday.

But I didn't want another week to go by without letting you know about Alternative Gifts International, seeing as the gift-giving season is upon us. 

A gift you select from AGI is given in honor of your recipient to a carefully screened charity that address one of a myriad of social and environmental issues around the world. Gift levels range from $3 to provide groceries for one person for one day to feed hungry and homeless people in the U.S. and Canada to $240 for a year's worth of participation for one Haitian family in the Model Communities project which protects children in extreme poverty so they aren't sent away to slavery. 

When I first found out about Alternative Gifts, I loved the idea, but felt a little funny about giving them to my family — we were pretty used to doing things the traditional way. So instead I started by putting some alternative gifts on my own wish list, so people could get me something from AGI if they wanted. I always feel like Santa Claus when I open an AGI gift because not only am I getting a surprise, I know I am helping someone else, and that feels really cool. 

Since then my family has absorbed them into our tradition, and we do a combination of regular and alternative gifts. They are great for the hard-to-buy-for and people who don't really want more stuff. 

AGI also started a pre-paid gift card option this year, where you select the gift amount you want to give, but the recipient gets to decide which cause the money goes to. Each charity address one of the following eight categories: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger; Achieve  Universal Primary Education; Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women; Reduce Child Mortality; Improve Maternal Health; Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases; Ensure Environmental Sustainability; and Global Partnership for Development.

Alternative Gifts International was inspired by the Anne Frank quote above. We really can start improving the world right now. 

via www.alternativegifts.org

In every Saturday Morning Surf I highlight a link that I think is worth sharing. I hope you find them intriguing and thought provoking. Please leave your comments here or on the Thoughts Happen Facebook page.

Epiphany in Music

I love to sing. But sometimes I forget that. Daughter said she wanted to go to the Epiphany Eve Carol Sing at our church, so we went together, but I ended up enjoying it at least as much as she did, and not only because of the cookies and cider afterwards.

Epiphany eve, sometimes called Twelfth Night, marks the official end of the Christmas season. Epiphany is the day the Three Wise Men, or Magi arrived to visit the baby Jesus, and falls on the 12th day after Christmas, January 6. (You knew those songs about the Twelve Days of Christmas and We Three Kings went together, right?)

The service was billed as the last opportunity to sing favorite Christmas carols. I love singing Christmas carols. It’s true. I love their familiar tunes and cadences and the continuity they bring to the years. Over time I learned the alto harmony to many of them, and I love singing next to my sister and mom on Christmas Eve, trading off melody and harmony, hearing our three voices weave in with the rest of the congregation. But there’s just one problem; there’s never enough of them.

To get in all the traditional favorites and still leave enough time for the rest of the service, we usually only get to sing at most one or two verses of the same carols every time. I feel like I’m just getting warmed up and we are off "Angels We Have Heard on High" and on to "Joy to the World".

But the Carol Sing was perfect—it could have been called the “All Carols All the Time” service. We called out requests, and while we still didn’t sing every verse, we got to sing more than just one from each carol. We even did a few I had never heard before: “When Christmas Morn is Dawning” and “Jesus, Our Brother, Kind and Good.” We stumbled through the Spanish verse of “Fum, Fum, Fum” and all got to sing the solo parts of “Oh, Holy Night.” At the end we lit candles just like we do on Christmas Eve and sang all the verses (including one in German) of “Silent Night.”

I tipped my unlit candle into Daughter’s flame and realized I was happy. I had my daughter next to me, wonderful music all around, and I had remembered again how much I love to sing.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattwright/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Not-So-Perfect Christmas

 My mantra for my personal life this year has been, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough.” While that’s a hard concept for a recovering perfectionist to wrap her head around, it’s stood me in good stead when I’ve remembered to apply it. I’m thinking of it particularly this year as we get ready to host Christmas for my family. This isn’t the first time our home has been Holiday Home Base, so I’m a little more relaxed about it than previous years. I don’t feel I have anything to prove as a hostess, and my main concern is that everyone is comfortable, well-fed, and enjoys each other’s company. To keep my goal in mind I find it helps to acknowledge the ways our Christmas will be not-so-perfect, and then let them go.

• The house is not spotless, but it’s clean enough
• Our meals will not be gourmet feasts, but I’m accommodating both a high-protein and a vegetarian diet with tasty yet healthy food
• The Moravian Star is still in its box, and we’ve gone another year without outside lights, but the house is reasonably decorated and the tree looks beautiful
• We do not have any plans for holiday festivities, but we’ll have plenty of puzzles and reading material at home
• Not everyone is as healthy as they could be, but it looks like we’ll all be together for another year, and for that I am truly grateful.

Sometimes it’s hard to let go of that Perfect Christmas ideal, especially so if you're spending the holiday away from family or without a special loved one. But, to paraphrase yoga instructor Cyndi Lee, “While your Christmas will never be perfect, at the same time, it already is.” 

 I know this is a busy (understatement) time of year, but I’d be interested to hear comments about how your Christmas was “good enough,” this year. 

 Wishing you a very Merry Not-So-Perfect Christmas, -Louise

Photo courtesy  of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jumpyjames/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0