In Which Owen Gets Red Converses And Christmas Turns Out To Be Finer Than Fine

Lord, Lord, Lord. Bring a torch, Jeanette, Isabelle.

Honeys, it has been some Christmas.

Honestly and absolutely one of the very best I can ever remember.

Christmas Eve day started out with Owen getting here and eating oatmeal and Clementines with his Bop and his grandmother and how could a day that started like this be anything but good?

Aunt Jessie came out and Owen's life was complete. We played and took a walk, all of us, and at one point I swear, Owen looked up at Jessie who was pushing him in the stroller and said, "Hey Jessie!" just as clear as can be.
We all cracked up.

I made the traditional chicken salad and Jessie decorated it with the traditional red and green grapes and pecans.

Lily got off work and came here to find a sleepy boy and she and her son went back to our bed and took a long, long, sweet nap.

Hank and May showed up and the merriment began.

There was much imbibing of beverages (except for May, of course, and Jessie too, mostly) and okay, hilarity ensued.


Yes. Lily is holding Jessie on her hip. They have been doing this since Jessie weighed twenty-seven pounds. They are still good at it. When Lily is my age, she is going to regret this circus act bitterly, but for now, it makes us all happy.


Everyone helped with the pizzas and they were, well, check it out.


Yeah. Uh-huh. They were good.
So was the chicken salad and the ribs Aunt Brenda sent from Texas. They were REALLY, REALLY GOOD! We ate them like beasts.

After dinner we all played with the...Wii...which Bop bought as a gift for us all (him) and it has been in use for two days now (by him). We all created our own avatars (Mii's) and actually, that was the most fun for me. Then we played a rousing game of Jeopardy. We laughed so hard.
And May and I ate fruit cake until Lily finally took it away from us. May and I are not usually the big eaters but put a fruit cake in front of us and we can't stop.
Really. Lily took it away from us.
Bless her heart.
(Thank-you, Lily.)

Then to bed and up this morning to start all over again.

Bop and Owen looked out the window at the birds and studied the bird book.


Owen played with his Auntie May


And his Uncle Hank

And ate apples and cuddled with his mama


until breakfast was ready. Hank cooked us sausages and eggs and we heated up sweet pastries and Granny came out and we all sat down and ate and then, then, THEN the true madness started.

So many presents. And such good ones.
Hank made us all calenders,


each one different, with pictures from his blog and other ones he'd found, depending on whose calender he was making, each customized and perfect and works of art. I mean really- you can't believe how beautiful they are.


Perfect. That Hank. He done real good this year, that boy of mine. We gave him a round of applause.

The present opening was just chaos.


And Owen finally broke down but before he did, Mr. Moon took this beautiful picture of him and his daddy.


And then...I opened up a gift from Kathleen.


She had knit me a shawl from wool the colors of the waters of Cozumel and as soft as a tender wish and with silver bells woven into the fringe on ribbons.
I cried. May had to get up and hold me, I was so damn overcome.

And Mr. Moon got me the earrings I wanted, flat tear-drop shapes of turquoise


simple and perfect.
And my children- they all went together and got me the object of my lustful desire.


The Lucky Brand Abbey Road purse.
Oh fucking kill me now.
It's soft. It smells like heaven. It's perfect in all ways. I love the buckles, the big zipper, the pocket on the outside where I can put my phone, my keys, the pockets on the inside, one just for PENS!
Oh. It is heaven.
Oh, oh, oh. (Imagine sexual-sounding groans of pleasure here.)

And no! We are not done!

Owen got a four-wheeler. For toddlers. What? Yes.
I was like, "Why would you get him a four-wheeler? That's ridiculous! He's too young!"
And then his daddy showed it to him, showed him how to make it go and he swung his leg over that thing, sat down and pushed the button.

He is not too young.
Owen! Stop growing so fast! You are breaking your grandmother's heart!
It goes up to TWO MILES PER HOUR!
Not too fast. It's okay.
As you can see, even Buster the dog was amazed and impressed.

And before the kids left to go to other-parents' I made them stand in front of the Christmas tree.
Here they are, my beauties, my babies, my loves.

The angel on the tree looks down and the deer on the wall does too.

It is three o'clock in the afternoon on Christmas Day and I am wrapped in the shawl of the colors of Cozumel which is so long it could wrap around me three times and which my friend made when she was having chemo and which silver-bell tinkles when I move and the rain is starting to fall from a pewter sky when just an hour ago the sky was as clear and the sun was so bright that I said, "This is why we live in Florida," and my husband and Jessie are either bowling or playing archery or boxing with the Wii and I am drinking coffee and Bailey's and this is my report of Christmas in Lloyd, 2010.

Ay yah.
It finally came, this Christmas Day and despite all my frantic anxiety and my fears and my melancholy and my bitterness and my bitchy, bitch bitchiness, it has all been so fine.

And there is pizza and chicken salad in the refrigerator should I ever want to eat again and even more fruit cake and perhaps I'll even play some sort of Wii game with the man and when I go out, I shall take my red bag with me and it will carry all of my stuff and I will wear my turquoise earrings and be a hippie and that is right and good because I am one.

And oh! One more picture. This one for Jo
because I have been wearing the beautiful warm tights she sent me last year all day in honor of Christmas.


Like my outfit?
I do.

I swear- I hope your Christmas has turned out to be as lovely as ours has. When Lily left today she said, "Thank-you, Mama. It was magic."
And I know she said that because she knows that more than anything else I would wish for my children to know magic and to have some small part in that and damn- her saying that was the sweetest thing she could have said.

Bring a torch, Jeanette Isabelle.
We done pagan'ed it up and Christmased it up and loved it up and Wii'ed it up and ate it up and drank it up and lit it up.

We done did it all.

And it was sweet and it was good.

Merry Christmas, all of you. I feel you in my heart right here under this soft, soft shawl in this old heart which is full and bright and just tight with light.
And love.

Merry Christmas.

Love's Light Reflected

Christmas night and every one has gone home and Mr. Moon is in the woods hunting and it's very quiet except for some frogs in the back yard who sound like birds, singing duets and trios, trilling and thrilling the night peace.

And for whatever reason, for whatever miracle, the Christmas demons which have haunted me for so many years have not made their appearance today. At all. Do you know what that means to me?
Some of you do.

Everyone opened their pillowcases and there were beautiful gifts and silly gifts and sweet gifts but the gift we all loved the most was this one, of course:


Here's a picture of that boy with his great-grandmother on my side of the family, my own mother:

Even that, having my mother here, was okay and not so bad. She is trying. And so shall I. And she loves that boy. She's always loved babies. I'll say that for the woman. And she still does. And I know that she never had the opportunity to be with her grandchildren the way I have with Owen. She hasn't had a tenth of the joy in her life that I've had. I know that.
She brought over a picture she'd recently found of her and my father when they were a very young couple. I wish I'd taken a picture of it. She really doesn't look that different now, sixty years later, except her hair was very dark and longer and she was younger, of course. I looked into her face in that picture and my father's, too, and tried to find my own face there and I couldn't. Not in either one. But it was something, to see those young, smiling faces, standing up tall to life. And maybe, finally, that was my father coming to see me on Christmas. Who knows? Who the hell knows?
He was sort of cute, that father of mine. Had a forelock of dark hair. But his face was too mysterious for me to really judge it. Black and white photo, crinkled edges, they were at the beach, Mama's baggy jeans rolled up, she was wearing what looked like my daddy's big white shirt. Who were they then? What did they give to me? What have I taken from them?
I don't know. The sacred mysteries of the DNA.
I am glad I saw the picture. I am glad my mother brought it out.

And speaking of pictures- you see that one at the top? That was Jessie's gift to me. She drew that from my blog picture. Now, Jessie is not an artist. So she says. But do you see that? When I unwrapped it, I thought she'd scanned that photo and colored it. I did. But no. She drew it. She wrote on the back of it that she'd stared at my picture for hours. This is what she said:

I can't say I was successful in my attempts, but I sure do know your smile in my heart, and it was fun trying to put it on paper.

Ah shit. Ah shit, ah shit.

She said more, too, but I am too bashful to write it down here.
But look- my child sees me. She knows me. My face is not a mystery to her nor is her daddy's. She drew me and she surrounded me with all the things I love.

Yes. Merry Christmas.
I have been gifted above anything I could ever have imagined.
And the demons have been put to rest for this year, at least, and I am here, in this house, with my love, and all of my children are like- oh hell. I have no words. I can't even try to write what I feel because my eyes begin to sting and it's just too much. Jessie gave me wings in that picture. My children have given me my wings. Whatever flying it is that I can do, it is because of them and because of my husband who has always said to me, "I just wanted to look into the eyes of someone who saw me the way I wanted to be."
Amen.

And thus- I am the luckiest woman in the world.

Mr. Moon is home from the woods. The frogs are still trilling. It is not cold here, it is not hot. I am sitting the porch of my dream house. I had a good Christmas. My children know my face and they love me. I know their souls and I love them.

This has been the best Christmas. There has been love of every kind. And I am going to go to bed on Christmas night without having one wish, all day, that I could be, well, elsewhere. Not one.

I changed my grandson's shitty diaper today. And you can say I'm crazy but that was a joy I can't describe. I have looked into my children's faces. I have looked into my mother's face. I have looked into my husband's face. I have looked into my grandson's face and I have seen reflected the person I want to be.

Ah yah. It's been good. It's been very, very good.

I hope yours has too. I hope there was love because honestly, that's all that matters. And there has to be love for yourself. Do you know that? Do you honestly know that? If there has been one person who looked into your face and loved it for what it is, then you, too, have had a good Christmas.
Because you are worth loving. You have your own light. The light you were born with and sometimes it takes someone else to look at you with love and reflect it back for you to remember.

I have and that has made it the best Christmas of all.

Peace to you all.

Merry Christmas.

Love...Ms. Moon

Sex Please, We're Sixty

That's the title of the next play the Opera House is doing and oh hell, I'm guess I'm going to be in it. I am, as we all know, a big ol' stage whore.

Kathleen is going to direct and what could be better? It's a complete farce (duh) and involves an experimental Viagra-for-women which gives men menopausal symptoms if they inadvertently take it. Which, of course, they do.

The ladies who love the Opera House are going to just fall out of their chairs when Colin and Jack start fanning themselves and complaining of not being understood or appreciated and feeling FAT! Even at the cold read tonight, we were laughing our asses off. Why IS it that men love to imitate women and camp it up good? I have no idea but they do. From drag queens to Milton Berle. Hell, that man was happier in a dress than in pants any day of the week.
But he was weird. Yes. There was something very queer about Uncle Miltie if you ask me. And I'm sure that many of you are scratching your heads going, Milton Berle? Uncle Miltie? What?

Don't worry. You don't need to know.

The play was written by a couple, Michael and Susan Parker and even though I haven't read the entire thing, I'm pretty excited. I am playing, I believe, a romance novel writer who does not have nearly enough romance in her own life. And I am told that a great deal of the costumage involves negligees.

Negligees?

Holy Hannah, pass the Slim Fast.

But I'm excited (can you tell?) and pretty happy about the prospect. I have a lot of lines to memorize and I suppose I can do it. I'll have to up the fish oils supplement. I actually told Mr. Moon last night that I wasn't sure I wanted to do this. I have Owen to take care of these days and it takes a lot of commitment to do a play. He looked at me and said, "Don't give me that. You can do it."

Which is another reason I love the man. He kicks my ass while giving me a soft place to land.

So here I am, eleven days before Christmas and there are no pipers piping and I still haven't done a damn thing to get ready although I brought down Bad Santa from upstairs. Maybe I should go plug him in.

Hold on.

Shit. That picture was so great I had to make it my new header.

So yes, I am feeling better. In general. It's seventy-one degrees and so humid that May had to mop the ceiling of her apartment and dang! what says Christmas in Florida better than having to mop your ceiling?

Nothing I know of, short of a fruitcake and I haven't made one fruitcake this year and don't you make any jokes about fruitcakes because mine are AWESOME.

And Billy and Shayla and Waylon Grady are coming over tomorrow and perhaps Lily and Owen as well. And I haven't seen Waylon for weeks and I miss him and his mama and daddy too. And we all know that a day without Owen is a day without meaning.

All right. I have to go decorate the tree now. This should take about fifteen minutes as it is not very big. Bigger than last year's, but still, not very big.

I'm trying, y'all. I'm doing my best. And now that Bad Santa is plugged in, I feel that the holiday is well and truly begun. Really! I do! He is so precious, Bad Santa, and he looks just like I feel about the holiday. Happy. Joyful. Like a serial killer with a weapon in his hand.

Pass the eggnog-flavored Slim Fast. Mama needs to get her Christmas on.

Ho, y'all. Really. Ho.

And just wait until February when I'm onstage in a negligee. Oh yeah, things are looking up.

Killing Several Birds With One Stone

I think perhaps I have had an epiphany and figured out where this Christmas dread comes from. It's a long, pathetic story and I'm not going to go all into it here but I think it has to do with me being a little girl who did pray and who prayed all the time and especially at Christmas for a father to show up and a world that kept telling the little girl that Christmas miracles do happen, especially when it's a child praying for them because Jesus, he was a child and God, he was a father, and what could be more fitting than for a father to show up for his children? What more worthy miracle to perform?

The miracle never happened, the father never showed up.

I hear that once he WAS on his way from Tennessee to Florida, where we lived, but only got as far as Tallahassee where he left the woman he was traveling with and went out on a bender and she, left behind in a strange place and probably insane, too (I present as evidence that she was traveling with my father) and abandoned for days, hung herself in the motel room where he'd left her.

And then my father was arrested for possible murder and jailed for a bit until the powers-that-be let him go and well, I guess by then he wasn't in the mood to come see his children.

And it's probably all for the best that he didn't.

Doesn't it make sense that in one fell swoop, the belief in god, the belief in Christmas, the tolerance for the true meaning of that particular holiday was destroyed? That all those Christmases when what I really wanted wasn't a Barbie or a Chatty Cathy or a new bike but a father, my father, as useless and toxic as he was because he was, after all, my only father and that his continued absence killed something inside of me?

Listen- there are many ways to kill and many things to kill. Souls and spirits and hopes and faith and dreams. And women and children left abandoned.

And I suppose this could explain some of my bitterness, some of my dread.

I wish that now the Christmas miracle would happen. That now, because I know why I feel the way I do, I could heal this old heart, I could let it open up to some of the joy that the world seems to feel Christmas offers.

Forgive the father for never coming. Forgive the mother for never trying to figure out what was going on in my heart. Let go. Let god. Etc.

I will talk to that little child within and see what she says about all of this.
If I can find her.
If she'll talk to me.

I'm not holding my breath.

Deck The Halls With Balls of Folly

Well, Christmas is almost upon us and I have been notably silent with a few exceptions on the subject.

As we all know, I hate Christmas down to my very bones. I have no idea why although I have some suspicions and at this point, it doesn't matter; it's not going to get better and I am not going to be suddenly and miraculously blasted through with the "true meaning of Christmas" like some Hallmark special.

Ain't gonna happen.

I still don't know what I'm going to "do" about Christmas and there are many factors to consider, some out of my hands, so at this point I am ignoring it and hoping it will simply go away. It's easy if you stay out of the mall.

I was discussing this at yoga today with my teacher and the one other student in the class. Both of them are Catholic and they were tolerant of my heresy as I pointed out that Christmas is essentially celebrated when it is because of the ancient Pagan holiday which was no doubt created to get us through the long days of winter and that also, yes, I do think it's very cool that Jesus was born, etc., but in my beliefs, EVERY baby that is born is Christlike or Buddha-like and so what's the big deal with that one particular baby?

I mean really, do we believe his mother was a virgin?
Hmmm. The midwife must have had a few problems with THAT delivery but oh well.

So my teacher, bless her heart, suggested lightheartedly that I COULD become a Christian and then I would have reason to celebrate and I said something like if Jesus wants me, he's going to have to find me, quoting a Lyle Lovett song, but to myself I was thinking that it was just about as possible that I would become a Santeria priestess.

At least that way I'd get to wear really cool clothes and smoke giant cigars and drink mass quantities of rum and slice through chickens and other small farm animals with a machete and dance myself into a trance where I could speak to the dead and channel their voices and I'd get paid for it!

Man. That would be AWESOME!

And I just keep thinking about the poor baby Jesus who has been dragged from the manger to the mall in a short 2000 or so years- as if it wasn't bad enough that he was born with the unbearable weight of being destined to save mankind by being nailed to a cross.

And I think about the poor Christians who have been waiting for his imminent return for these 2000 years and who are passing the time by buying junk no one needs and putting up Christmas trees which are Pagan in origin and continuing to talk about a baby born in a manger while all around the world and even in my neighborhood, babies are being born every day, no one noticing that they, too, are god, they too are born of a miracle, destined for who knows what while the world keeps turning and the days will begin to become longer and the light will return again.

Dealing With Despair By Using Happy Thoughts

When I wake up in the morning there is a period of time when I'm in despair. This is just the way it is. Doesn't matter how beautiful the day, how sweet the life, my brain will be telling me that I'm a worthless, talentless being who has no business taking up space on the planet.
This is not a good thing and is best suffered in solitude. My husband knows by now to leave me alone until my brain does its daily adjustment and I come out of the deep well of sadness and self-loathing that I'm inevitably in upon awakening.
Bad chemicals. That's what I blame. Purely and simply, just bad chemicals and since I know what's going on, I can almost ignore the bad thoughts, although I do check my forehead in the mirror as I wash my face to made sure there's not a big, bright L engraved on it, because I certainly feel as if one had been placed there in my sleep.
I wonder how many other people go through this every day.
Right now quite a few of the bad thoughts and self-loathing have to do with Christmas. As in, I haven't even really started getting ready. My sweet yoga teacher is giving us weekly tips on how to de-stress during this holiday season when we're so busy and doing so much for others. Since I've not yet become busy and am certainly not doing anything for others, I feel incredibly guilty as we breathe and stretch and clear our minds. Of course, the day I can entirely clear my mind of guilt is the day Satan and Hitler are pelting each other with snowballs, but that's another story.
Anyway, I was thinking it would be a nice thing, a positive and possibly therapeutic thing for me if folks who stop by here would leave a little comment about the best Christmas present they ever got.
(Okay. I am totally stealing all the ideas but it's my blog and my idea and I do really want to know.)
I'll start off.
The best Christmas present I ever received was a used typewriter. I suppose this was back in the early sixties and the typewriter was one of those big, black heavy things that could crush a dwarf. I think it was an Underwood and my mother, who gave me this typewriter, had paid to have the machine (and it was most definitely a machine) refurbished and cleaned and it had one of those snazzy two-color tapes in it so that I could type in either red or black, which was pretty high-tech for those days. She also bought me a typing manual and I spent every spare moment I had for the next few months teaching myself to type with it.
fffffff, I would type.
Then hhhhhhh. My little fingers could barely depress those charm-like keys but I was diligent and did each lesson in its turn and you know what? I did eventually learn to type although I'm still a little shaky with the numbers. I guess I got burnt out by the time I reached that part of the book.
I don't know why my mother got me a typewriter and I don't know why I was so enchanted with it, but she did and I was and that was the beginning of something I'm still not over. These days I love my MacBook with all my heart. Maybe even as much as I loved that big, oily, iron writing machine, but the surprise of getting that typewriter was something I'll never forget. It was as if some magical force had urged my mother into buying me something I didn't know I wanted with all my heart.
Now. What's your story?
Give it to me, come on, I want it. I need it. This could be the very thing that brings a bit of Christmas cheer to this grinchy green old heart of mine.
I'm begging you. Tell me what made you happy. And when I wake up in the mornings, I'll think about those things instead of checking my forehead for the Loser Brand and we'll all be better off.
One note- if your story sounds something like But the best Christmas present I ever got was the feeling I had after we gave all our money and food to the homeless man who lived under the bridge, it's not going to make me feel any better.
But if that's your story, tell it if you must.
Thanks! And oh yeah, Merry....
You know.

This Time Of Year

I just spent about an hour trying to write a blog about the way I feel concerning Christmas and this time of year, but basically it all boiled down to me being a bitter asshole who hates the holidays.
Yeah, yeah. I know it. And everybody that knows me knows it. And now you do too.
There are a million good reasons to hate Christmas, not the least of which is that we are constantly reminded that if we don't all go out and buy a bunch of crap we don't need with money we don't have, the American economy will fail, but I think you either like Christmas or you don't and I really don't.
They're already playing Christmas carols in the store and I'm getting about one devastated rain forest's worth of catalogs a day in the mail and all the stores have their decorations up and frankly, I'm wondering, once again, how I'm going to make it through the rest of the year.
Now I do like Thanksgiving just fine. All I'm expected to do is buy a whole lot of groceries, cook up a feast, clean the house and put on a clean apron when folks start arriving. This is fine. I equate food with love and I have a lot to be thankful for, so it works out for me, this Thanksgiving thing.
Christmas, however, is another matter entirely and I just want to say that if you suddenly notice that I haven't posted a blog in over two weeks, it is because I have fulfilled my life-long fantasy of getting on a plane in December and going to some country that doesn't celebrate the Birth of Our Lord with the purchase of salad spinners.
And really, that's all I should say about it right now.
Stay tuned for more options.