Christmas Memories

I have a quiet piece up today, at TikiTikiBlog, where I am proud to contribute monthly.

My mood is a reflective one this week, and the words I've written of a childhood memory, Black Velvet, say what I've long felt in my heart.

Childhood lives on in us forever.

Peace.

***

Be Gentle As You Walk With Grief

Walking with Grief -- A Celtic Prayer

Do not hurry as you walk with grief
It does not help the journey

Walk slowly, pausing often

Do not hurry as you walk with grief
Be not disturbed by memories
that come unbidden

Swiftly forgive and let
Unspoken words, unfinished conversations
be resolved in your memories

Be not disturbed
Be gentle with the one who walks with grief

If it is you, be gentle with yourself
Swiftly forgive, walk slowly,
Pause often,

Take time

Be gentle as you walk with grief

--Author Unknown 

***

We Can't Be Silent About Sandy Hook

It's 2:30 in the morning, and I am commenting on every blog I see that posts on the tragedy of Sandy Hook today. I'm like a woman who's lost her mind--I need to honor and remember and cry tears over tender lives so tragically lost. I'm on a mission to read and leave words and say, yes, those children were here, to recognize their lives--even though I know it changes nothing; for me, it's doing something.

How can we say nothing? How can we write nothing? How can we go on to our next day and not talk about how the earth stood still today?

The twenty children of Newtown that we've lost--so very small, the youngest in the school, at that wonderful tooth-missing-in-the-front age. Just learning how to sound out words, just learning how to write their names. How can we not cry until our tears are gone?

The teachers and staff killed, standing against a monster gunman, taking their place as best as they could, in the way of the shooter, knowing our job is to protect the little ones.

We are to care for our smallest ones, not murder them. They're so little--they need our protection. They're so small--they can't take on what we can. They trust and count on us, and their lives weren't meant for a madman to come into their school while they paint in reds, blues, and yellows, while they practice their songs for the holiday concert, while they make a special card to take home that day and give to their mothers and fathers. There's not supposed to be a bad guy who walks through the hallways of their school firing away at them until their sweet,young life is gone.

They're children, their last thoughts would be of what is most precious to them; Christmas, Hanukkah, for their parents right at that moment when they've never been more scared in their lives. Their last thoughts, of the mama and dad that love them; their last thoughts, of I don't want to die.

I can't make sense of this. Where will a town find twenty little coffins? What funeral homes can accommodate services for so many children. I cry for the parents, running to the school as if they themselves were on fire, hearts pounding, praying out loud, please let my baby be safe, please let my baby be safe.

I think of the nightmare the parents find when they get to the school, seeing other children reunited with their joyfully relieved parents, but their child nowhere in sight. I think of the dizzying disbelief and denial as they keep looking, praying, frantically scanning the crowd of screaming, crying children for the face of their own. I think of them, ushered to a different area than the general one--the one specified for children unaccounted for.

I think of the words they hear, how their knees must have buckled, when they were told to go home and wait--while others weren't; their hearts wrenched to return to a house where they look at and wonder if the Christmas gifts wrapped under the tree will be opened by the child they were bought for. How their child began Hanukkah with them, and now, is not there for its last day tomorrow. My mind wants to scream as I think of the holiday cards that have already been sent out--showing full families that now no longer exist.

It's been 15 hours since I first heard the news, I thought I would have run out of tears by now.

But they just keep flowing, and I've given up trying to fight them back.

Heaven became a little more loud, a little more joyous today. Can you hear it? The sound of the most beautiful voices of angels entering your gates today to run through your golden grasses.

***

To the families in this incomprehensible loss, let us share your burden, let us cry our tears over your unimaginable devastation.

You have a nation of love behind you, around you, underneath you.
 
Our prayers, our broken hearts, our hope that this senselessness stops are with you, and your eternally beautiful children.

 We are so sorry.

 photo credit: horizontal.integration via photopin cc

 

Breaking News: Titanic Sinks and Social Media Interferes With Real Life

photo credit: Heritage Vancouver via photopin cc

We were all sitting at the family dermatologist's office (yeah, group rate, what of it?) waiting for our names to be called. I was flipping through magazines older than the hills telling me a ship called the Titanic sank, when I saw an article in a magazine from 2009. The blistering title and byline was "Social Media--It's Taking You Away From Your Real Life."

The paragraphs go on to tell me all that I could be doing by logging off. Strengthening real life relationships (like online ones aren't real?), developing a hobby (got one, it's twitter), exercising (bawk! that chicken sound, you know?), and re-organizing my life (what's wrong with sitting on laundry?).

Right, all these things I could be doing. Could. That's the kicker there, the author assumes I'd be doing things if I weren't online. Oh, my sides, my sides from the laughter. Yeah no not so much.

Here's my list of "All I Could Be Doing If I Weren't Online":

--Staring at my fingernails, willing my lazy butt go get out of the house and get a manicure.

--Poking around snack cabinet deciding on what to have for second breakfast.

--Walking around the house with two pairs of socks on to stretch out my new winter boots.

--Letting Bethenny Now! exercise DVD play in background while I finish up sweetnsalty chips kids left out last night.

--Walk downstairs to basement with intention to cull toys dvds books. Walk back upstairs after three minutes.

--Be at local yoga class where teacher there always waits until I'm relaxed with my eyes closed to sneak up on me and make me jump ten feet into the air by whispering "namaste" into my ear.

--Or I could be at Zumba, where instructor tries again to talk me into leading Zumba Silver.

--Pull blankets off beds to let sheets "breathe" as Martha Stewart Living advises. Consider that my gold bar of housekeeping for the day.

--Decide to have lunch with kids at school, show up with McDonald's bags only to have them grab bag out of my hands and say, "Thanks mom you can go home now. No, really, you can go home now."

--Look down at jeans with permanent knee mounds, take myself to Old Navy for new pair. All are too long and too tight. Refuse to try double digit numbered ones. Drive to Hefner's Cup O'Custard, sit in parking lot, licking wounds metaphorically through death by chocolate triple scoop in cup. Consider death by chocolate literal invitation.

--Drive to afternoon matinee. Suffer through "Playing for Keeps" about hypersexed soccer moms wanting to do aging soccer star Gerard Butler at every which way while he coaches their little ones on for a team win! Try and guess which mom is the one who gets behind the scenes reffing. I win.

--Rummage through husband's sock and underwear drawer. Hoping to find something linking him to exciting past Bourne identity life, find only saved tags from boxers in case new ones don't fit.


Oh, the undeniable Jezebel that Social Media is. We need no more proof than this list right here. 

Peace out. 

Wanted: Dead or Alive

photo credit: hugovk via photopin cc

The other morning, my ten-year-old son came downstairs, and walking past me, said, "Mom, seriously, that dinner you made us last night tasted like you were trying to kill me or something."

And good morning to you too, honey. Before I even had my head half way whipped around to ask just what he meant by that, the two teens saw their in and jumped at it.

"Yeah. It's like you think you're a wizard or something, making up potions."

"You've made up stuff before, mom, but this one would get the blue ribbon in a chemistry class."

"I know! Like the time she chopped up the left over turkey hamburger with the left over spaghetti and then made into a pie. I thought I'd be dead by midnight that night."

"Remember when she scrambled up the tofu with the left over hash browns and made it into a casserole with that saffron stuff? I wanted to put Wanted: For Murder posters up in the hallway."

The ten year old feels the power of his brothers' back-up and so now he's up on his toes, "No! The worst was when she laid out that old bread flat in the cookie sheet and then covered it with that shiny sauce and she got mad when I told her she should be on America's Most Wanted..."

It was like inmates rattling their tin cups against the jail bars. I put my hand up and looked over at my husband. I raised my right eyebrow at him, wasn't he the sheriff in town?

My husband just slunk into his newspaper, nervously clearing his throat, "ehhem, ehhem."

With my hands in the air, I tried to explain; I'm busy. I had to be at work. The food is perfectly safe. They're too picky. How about doing left overs like the rest of the world??

But between me and you and the lamp post, I couldn't deny it. I mean, I can deny the murder part, or the food poisoning part--I label everything with a sharpie and discard within 3-5 days. The meal was a pretty bad concoction, one of my worst. That night's fly out the door dinner was so bad that after I threw it at the kids and rushed to work, I had to confess to my boss as soon as I got there, "Whoa. What I made tonight for the kids to eat was really bad."

"Oh, it's all right," she tells me. "We all have those days." [she really is one of the finest humans on the planet]

"No, this was bad. I mean left over boiled potatoes, chopped up deli meat, sliced tomatoes, all skilletted together with Catalina dressing over. Sliced peaches for dessert."

"Oh." [first time I've ever left her speechless]

The slapped together last minute meal. Why would I even try, what was I thinking, I mean throwing a hot dog and a bag of chips at them would be better.

I think it's that hope--that somehow blindly optimistic or else thinking too highly of myself, with some hating-to-waste ethics I grew up with, that have me thinking it's so crazy, so crazy that it just might work. I know it's a kitchen fail as soon as I start rummaging through the refrigerator--I'm surprised the kids haven't picked up on that behavioral clue yet. When mama starts moving aside the tupperware containers in the fridge to see what's in there, might wanna fill up on some bowls of cereal first.

The Desperation Dump Dinner. I don't want to admit that time got away from me. I don't want to say I couldn't do it all today. It's never laziness or lack of desire to give them a good meal. I try to ignore the voice in my head that pops up when I look at all those round containers of left overs in the fridge and says, "and so you think it's all right to use your kids as the garbage disposal?" As my ten year old told me, "Either way, mom, it goes down the sink, or comes out of our butts."

The ten year old is right. I need to start over and be open to the reality that some nights may just be frozen chicken patties and a sliced banana. There can be honor and beauty in accepting your limitations.

I could also do without the price on my head.

***