I Am This Woman

Memorial Day Weekend, originally uploaded by tigerwillow.

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Some days, you have to work. Some days, you need to play with Sculpey. And sometimes you just have to ride the rollercoaster.

Lap Dog, originally uploaded by tigerwillow.

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My 40 lb. lap dog, Miss Lucy. She is not allowed on the couch unless in a lap, so it works out for her. Tonight, I held her and scratched her chest until she fell asleep. Then she started snoring and did so for about 15 minutes. She missed most of House.

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I lost my mama in 2003. So for her, I will try to remember the good times, even though there was thousands of bad times to try and forget. As I sit here today, I think I would withstand some bad times just to have her back for a few hours, to chat with, to giggle over stupid things with. I miss her voice and her encyclopedic knowledge of film. I would probably have to ask her about “Now, Voyager” (which I saw again yesterday, which makes me laugh and cry because it is probably the highest form of camp art EVER).

The missing her never ends. It just gets easier to live with, and even becomes comfortable after a while. My gift to her today is to remember her with love and fondness, something that was more complicated when she was alive. Something that I know was/is just as difficult for my brothers to do.

My dear child is 12, and knows full well it’s Mother’s Day… and is enjoying cartoons and getting himself breakfast.

We are ok with what our day holds, if we don’t listen to the world. In our little world, a loving gift for Mother’s Day is a hug, a joke, a plan to go see a movie together. But the world out there is screaming at us that flowers, cards, breakfast in bed, chocolates, resentment, duty, coercion and guilt are part of the day (spend money! make her blow her diet! she’ll get mad if you don’t!).

I hope I never ever become a mother who has to nag remind her son, or whine to be recognized. I can understand how it happens. But since I get a year-round appreciation, today is really just a pretty spring day which we will enjoy together. That right there is a pretty nice gift.

Happy Mother’s Day to the moms, anyone with a mom and especially those without!

I’m putting away the tree and ornaments this evening. I’m tucking the on-sale special containers back in the garage, stuffed with the ribbons, bags, paper, books, doodads and little orts that come out once a year, and scream “Christmas.” In December, they warm my heart and are so lovely - shiny, red, green, gold, sparkly, kitschy.

In January, their festive air dulls and reads more as clutter. After three weeks, I’m ready to move on. I’ve got a little seed planting project, the dining room needs things hung on the wall, and there’s another wall to paint. I want to move the piano over there, and the TV back over there… get these boxes out to the curb, call someone to come pick up the old couch… (more…)

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.

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.

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…)

After reading this Best of Holidailies recently, I’ve been thinking about how gift-giving happens in our family, with my Santa-believing, starry-eyed-over-Christmas kid.

Back in the olden days, when the Kid was a baby, it was absolutely true that you could give him a box and he was happy. (more…)

My dear friend in Hungary sent me some awesome winter photos, taken this week. It’s wonderful to know that somewhere there really is a winter wonderland. I love the idea of a white Christmas, but really am glad I don’t need to dress in two pairs of socks, long underwear, shirt, sweater, vest, etc. (more…)

Today, I wrapped presents. I did eight or nine presents in 26 minutes. I think that was my best time ever, and I attribute it to the kitchen island being cleared away for wrapping, and the deadline of school pick-up to motivate me to wrap rather than stash all the unwrapped things yet again.

My first job was wrapping presents for a department store. I filled in for someone whose full-time seasonal job it was. She needed an afternoon off for some reason. I was the lowly temporary inventory clerk/daughter of the Personal Shopper, who was game to help. It was a wonderful afternoon.

People would come, hand over their sweaters, socks, belts, stemware, and pick a number from the 15 or 18 choices on the wall. The wrapstand had as many rolls of thick, shiny classy paper, in the latest colors and traditional red, gold and green. A cutter was built in so one could roll off the right amount of paper and then give it a satisfying RIP. The coordinating ribbons and the assortment of gift boxes were below in labeled bins. Once carefully tissue-papered and tucked into the right gift box, a present was a perfectly symmetrical object that could get wrapped with precisely creased and triangulated paper. Double-stick tape was hidden in seams. We also had tissue paper with the store logo, foil embossed stickers and other stick-on flourishes that gave it a department store finish.

Et voila! The finished present was good enough to eat or put under a designer tree. Rarely did anything come to Gift Wrap that couldn’t be boxed, wrapped and ribboned. Those dizzy women who swoon at the sight of a jewelry store box, or a Nordstrom’s sticker… that was our audience. We were going for the status and brand-conscious woman (both giver and receiver) with our shiny paper. It was a creative process using precision and pre-fab design, but still it was a triumph to stack up the boxes for customers who waited (im)patiently for their merchandise.

I haven’t ribboned, bowed or labeled any of the packages I did today. I got stopped and now wonder how did I give things from “Santa” all these years, while using the same paper as those packages from “Mom”? How is that not a total tip-off for the Kid? Maybe it’s just more of the Santa mystery. This year, I’ll be a little more cautious. Santa is going to make liberal use of the stocking hung by the chimney with care.