I Am This Woman

Today is Monday. I have the day off. It is the last day of December, which is the last month of the year.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. I have the day off. It is the first day of January, which is the first month of the year.

But it’s still just 24 hours, just like today, just like yesterday, and March 23 and August 19 and June 15. It is not a whole new year, but another day in a chain of days that have been labeled conveniently by our calendar, and celebrated with fireworks, balldrops, champagne and kissing. (Hey, I’m all for champagne and kissing!) (more…)

Using the “new” math, which is very much now like the old math, only with a lot less calculation and more relevance and “show work” prompts.

12: months of high-stress job

2: family members who died

19: days off per year

21: days taken off to bury loved ones

23: net pounds lost, plus and minus 5

5: states visited

2: states lived in

6: months lived in both Arizona and Texas

800+: photos snapped

10+: videos shot

1: videos uploaded to YouTube

1: Grand Canyons visited

1: foreign countries visited (Hungary)

1: cameras lost

1: cameras purchased

90: pounds of Kid

2: grades completed or entered (5th and 6th, respectively)

pi: number times radius squared to get area of a circle, which shape PIES come in… coincidence? I think NOT.

5: new DVDs

2: new DVD sets (Dr. Who, Planet Earth)

10: weeks my Netflix account is on HOLD

1: cup of caffeinated coffee, accidently brewed and drunk on Christmas Day, with all attendant side effects and detriments

14: weeks of wanting a Wii

16: weeks of saving allowance

1: happy Wii owner on Christmas morning

1: first salon pedicures (and the addiction begins!)

2: birthday cakes and candles

16: episodes of appointment TV – Lost, of course

10: days since my Christmas holiday began

3: days until my Christmas holiday is over

2: days left of Holidailies

10: favorite posts

15+: new favorite bloggers

1,000: yards of yarn bought over Christmas break

12: colors in the current knitting project

6: current projects on the needles

2: hours left till today’s deadline for Holidailies

5: number of times I’ve told the Kid it’s bedtime

2130: military time for the Kid’s bedtime

2400: timehack of mom’s “lights out” during the holiday

6: books in Chronicles of Narnia

1: number of books in Chronicles of Narnia read to the Kid at bedtime

infinity: number of times left to say “I love you” to the Kid

Snowy Woods, originally uploaded by tigerwillow.

One thing not captured by the camera is the silence, the hush that all the snow creates. For me, there is a delicate balance between the beauty and solitude of snowy woods and the ever-creeping, pain-inflicting cold. If I’m warm enough for now, and within 10 minutes of hot chocolate and a fire, I can marvel at the loveliness.

Or I can enjoy the photo sent by my Hungarian friend.

Stitch Marker, originally uploaded by tigerwillow.

This is a yoga mat holder I am knitting - just the very start of it. What you see here will become the top with an eyelet row for a drawstring. But notice the tiny little jeweled stitch marker. I love these - a little indulgence at the local yarn shop. Every row, around and around and around, I will get to see this tiny bit of beauty.

My new favorite color is green. (No, I don’t mean Greenpeace or Sierra Club-green. Just the plain old color itself.)

Hunter. Kelly. Teal. Grass. Leaf. Wasabi. Fern. Olive. Kiwi. Aqua (is that close enough to green?). Pine. Kelp. Asparagus. Moss. Emerald. Aloe. Bamboo. Spring. All these colors, and even the names, set up a thrill in me.

Maybe it’s all the years of living in the desert with its red canyons, pink khaki sand, mica-speckled brown rocks, the merest sage fringe, green plants that are willing to dump leaves at any time due to insufficient water, and the intense sky of many blues. Yes, the sunsets are amazing, breathtaking. To the point where maybe I just couldn’t breathe out there anymore.

Green is the color of hope for me. Of nature, of trees, of things to come, of life, of living. Returning to Dallas for a hospice farewell in early March when things were still sleeping, and again in late March when the buds had emerged did something to me. Moving here in June – when all the trees were drinking in the heavy rains, the sunshine, when the great big chlorophyll party was in full swing – reminded me of how much I like plants, dirt, moisture. After I trimmed my magnolia tree, it shot up 10 feet from joy. I expect big blossoms next year.

In Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver’s biology teacher protagonist tells her students that plants do everything animals do: they grow, they reproduce, they eat, they excrete waste, they move, they die. I’ve never forgotten that.

In the desert, everything is hard, sharp, clear, well-lit and in focus. Here, the edges are softer, the greens myriad, the edges a bit more indeterminate, and life doesn’t hurt quite as much as it did out there. I’ll go back someday, probably to live if only for part of the year. It’s in my bones.

But the green life and black dirt of the forest, prairie and back yard are in my hair, my fingernails, my skin.  I bathe in the color – I knit with bottle green yarn, I wear new green sweaters, I cherish the little fake Christmas evergreen in my living room. Even now, in the brown, rust and drab of early winter outside, I dream of green and look for spring with a tender new awareness.

In these few days left of the old year, the trash is swept to the curb, the bargain-hunting, returns and gift cards fly around the mall, the ski weekends/holidays are packed for, family is taken to the airport or waved goodbye to on the driveway, and household projects are inspired by a few days off.

Traditionally, I spend this week either travelling and puttering around Austin or in someone else’s kitchen. But that isn’t a significant act for me, more a habitual one. This year, we elected to stay home and inhabit our space. Just live in it. Not grieve, not defer, not avoid. Just LIVE in it and in our skins in the family we have created. I’m content after a fashion, but not ready to get on with the hustle and bustle. I want more quietude and reflection. More candles.

Since I am drawn to anything involving candles, I am thinking about Kwanzaa. I am also mindful of cultural misappropriation, so I don’t make a big deal out of this (besides posting a blog entry about it!). But I find a lot of joy in this celebration of African-American virtue and ritual, which are of course human virtues. I believe this celebration and meditation strengthens all of the U.S. Anything that makes stronger families for everyone, anything that encourages justice and peace - any of this makes us a healthier and wiser and more unified people.

Yesterday, Unity, or Umoja, is the meditation, and today it is Kugichagulia or self-determination. Simply, these two together mean we are an interconnected web of people, and if we make ourselves the best we can be, that strengthens and enriches everyone around us. Making ourselves better helps others. We too must help others but no one is served by long-suffering martyrdom, or whining willful ignorance.

Even as the news from Pakistan comes to us with dread and sorrow, light a candle or three or seven this week, ponder these virtues and be proud of our progress as a nation, as a planet, to bring racial issues into the light where we can resolve them. One friend of mine said, fretting over yet another hate crime, “I can’t believe we’re still dealing with this!” and then in a quick realization, she brightened and said, “I’m so glad we’re still dealing with this!”

As long as we keep dealing with it, as long as we approach our differences and troubles with love and justice in mind, we can in fact fulfill the prophecy of the wise one who hoped that we will soon live in a nation where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

We are so close to that dream. So very close. Light a candle this week, and let’s get closer.

For Boxing Day, I went to IKEA today for some overdue furniture shopping. I have cardboard boxes (it’s a cheap box tie-in, sorry), instead of bookshelves, and I am determined to have all of my book friends out and happy by year’s end.

The shopping was fine and I spent money, yadda yadda yadda… but it was all backdrop for lunch. For the awesome gravilox plate. HEAVEN. A huge heap of lox (rhymes with box!), dilled mustard dressing, field greens and apple cake… somehow in the middle of Texas, it’s European food. Delicious and healthy (maybe for the mental health?)… the rest of the shopping day was a blur, but when I think of that lunch, everything about it is in sharp focus.

Tomorrow I’ll put together furniture-in-a-box and think of that lox, while I also plan dinner. You guessed it: we’re having salmon! (No more bad rhymes, though)

We’re home and winding it down for the day. Christmas 2007 is almost on the books (if we kept records). And again, for the 30th-something year, I did not get a pony.

Replete with friendship and good red wine, stomach a little too full of food, the trash can full of trash despite best efforts to go green, and full of the sense that one day is all too short for this dance with hope and joy. We might want it all year round … (well, not the kitsch, not the music, OH GODDESS PLEASE NO MORE HOLLY JOLLY CHRISTMAS!, not the gift exchange).

As fun as that may sound, what we need more is the ebb and flow, the rise and fall of satisfaction. The balance between feasting and fasting, between hanging out with Auntie Amy and thinking “I really miss Auntie Amy.” Rather than racing to the finish line, and then struggling to remain cheerful the.whole.day.long despite the depleted reserves… wouldn’t it be better to keep inching forward?

As pretty as it sounds, I succumb from the holiday letdown, which is real, occurring for me right around 9:30 on Christmas night. The realization that it all is over for the year, and what remains of this rarified tender specialness which I love, will soon be swept away in the push toward New Year, party hardy, clean sweep, out with the old, clearance, everything must go.

Very soon, I will begin the as-yet-unread new novel; I will break the seal on the new DVD and I will cast on the new yarn. The newness cannot remain and that is what this hour might bring into sharp focus, if I left all the lights to shine on it.

No, tonight, I will let the Christmas tree and luminarias blaze just one more night, keeping everything in a bath of mini-lights. I would stay here – full, satisfied, replete, without regrets, content with the here and now, a little dreamy from the Jolly Effect.

But it won’t stay that way… no one can live in the mean all the time, no one can rest at either end of the pendulum swing, indicator either at Jolly or Lump of Coal. Balance means being somewhere along the continuum in a fluid motion. At any given point in time, one is up, down, betwixt and between, and will not be exactly there at the next point in time. I know this feeling has to pass, but if I trust my own internal pendulum, then I also know it will swing back this way eventually. (And maybe much sooner than 365 days from now.)

Christmas 2007 will be about stopping just short of utter disgust with how much I ate; staying just long enough to leave some things to talk about on the next visit; nodding to but not dwelling on the guilt or regret; leaving something fun undone for next year’s holiday – this is the very unsexy but satisfying art of moderation. Not a bad present to give myself this year… But still not a pony.

Christmas Eve. The day has gone by in a blur of sleeping late, nibbling on tomorrow’s goodies, wrapping presents for the neighbors and finishing laundry. The Kid has been depressed - the wait is proving to be too much for him and he wants it all NOW. I told him not to rush the day because that would rush tomorrow too, but he’s not buying it.

What is sticking with me today, though, is something I read on a church sign yesterday. It was attributed as “an Applachian Maxim.” I wondered if the people of Appalachia know what a maxim is (and my mother’s people are hill people, so I’m talking about my peeps here!). They may not know the word but they do know hardship, joy, loss, struggle and simplicity, and the wisdom comes from that. I admire and love that part of me. Mountain people – we are flinty, dour, deeply silly and scrappy.

Back to the maxim: “If you need a helping hand, look at the end of your arm.”

When I first read that, I thought, “how stupid. What a slap in the face for people in need!”

But then, something happened to show me the truth of this. Here I am grieving the loss of two family members this year, and my mother a few years ago… the passing of an era. I am trying to get through the holidays a little too fast too. Wishing them over, hoping that no new fresh hurts happen.

But yesterday, in front of me with tears in her eyes, a strong stiff upper lip and a real bravery was a widow with two young children - someone I met at a weekend church workshop. (Somehow that weekend, I missed the fact she is a widow). But upon learning of her now year-long status as single parent, something in me moved toward her, quite naturally.

I am a single parent, a experienced one. I know scrappy. I know loneliness. I know grief. I know kids and Christmas, and I know her! This I can deal with. I don’t want to mull too much on my stuff, but for her, I have something to offer. For her, what I’ve been through means something. So I held out my hand. We have a phone call planned and maybe more, as the spirit moves both of us. There are some Christmas lights to enjoy, some simple quiet ways to pass the day without calling on the memories and the losses too much.

By looking at the end of my hand for the little tiny miracle I hope for each year, I found a new friend, and I found new reserves of hope within my flinty, scrappy dour Scots heart.

What, you mean you don’t “texturize” your yarn pre-start or midway?

I went to a friend’s house last night, taking my brand spanky new bag of bottle green yarn - three buns of Rowan KidSilk to make the Alterknits Multilayered Shawl ( a tube of knitting through which you pull a fine piece of silk chiffon!). It would be what I bought with the company gift card “bonus.” I stuffed the current project in there too - a bamboo and soy yarn basket weave scarf – thinking that I might be one of the guests in the corner doing some knitting while the party revolved around me.

Fast forward to time to leave the party where I had been a kitchen helper rather than a corner-sitting guest. Where is the bag? Oh dear, I must have left it at home, silly me. Or maybe, just one more look around the house for it? No. Hmm, must be at home 40 miles away. But I got home and nada. Zip. Nichts. (more…)