A Christmas Conversation

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The neighbor girl, age 8, came past today as I was mowing the lawn and since I hadn’t seen her for a couple of weeks I stopped the tractor for a chat.  I asked her how she was and it led to a conversation that went something like this…

“So how have you been lately?”

“Great, my school had a “one”derful Christmas thing and my mom gave me $20 to spend. I got all my shopping done for my whole family. Everything was one dollar.” She named off her five family members that she had bought for and confessed that she had spent most of the remaining money on herself.

“What do you think this whole Christmas thing is about?” I asked.

After a bit of thinking she explained that it was the birthday of Jesus.

“So isn’t it kind of weird that we give presents to everybody else on Jesus’ birthday?”

“Well, not really,” she said. “ It’s Jesus’ birthday but lots of people just don’t care and they want presents because it’s fun to get them. I really believe in Santa.”

“Oh yeah? You mean he’s a real person? What does he do?”

“He gives presents to kids when their parents can’t get them anything, so they can have fun too.”

“And he wears the red suit and the cap and all?”

“Yes, and he comes down the chimney.  I saw the reindeer too once.”

“What do you think about all the other people who dress up like him and say they’re Santa?”

“They’re fake.”

“So, he must be pretty skinny if he fits down peoples’ chimneys?”

“No, he eat cookies at everybody’s house.”

“Oh, so he’s fat. Isn’t that a problem?”

She wasn’t used to being grilled on her Santa knowledge and by this time she was getting at a loss for words and frustrated with me.  “Santa is magic, that’s how he gets in.”  This was followed by an expose about her dad who had played a trick on her a couple years ago, saying he was teleported into their house, when really he had snuck around through the back door.  “Now he tells me!” she says, rolling her eyes and explaining that Santa is different, magic.

“And does Santa get stuff for you?”

“Yes, three or four things and he puts them under the tree.  My dad said he quit getting presents when he was four, and I said, why would you quit getting presents?! But his family didn’t keep Christmas after that and they didn’t have a tree.”

“What? If you don’t have a tree he doesn’t leave any presents?”

“Well, he has to have a tree. I have a friend who has little Christmas trees  in three different rooms and Santa left presents under every tree.  My mom tells him what she’s getting me so he knows to get different stuff. “

“How does she tell him?”

“She has his number. She calls him.”

“Well, I have to get back to mowing the lawn, and you probably have something to do too.”

“Yeah, see ya.”

And so ended our conversation.  I was so fascinated at the intricacy of the fabrication she had constructed that I didn’t even attempt to address the reality of Santa.  Her parents had put some time and trouble into reinforcing  the story and although I had started a relationship with her, I didn’t feel it was my place to break the news.  Perhaps I should have given her more to think about, and maybe I will the next time I see her.  How does one begin to tell the real, deeper story?

I couldn’t help but think, as I rode around on the mower, how much effort we put into various distractions on the Christmas theme – time to decorate, time to bake, shop, party. It has to leave the birthday boy feeling a little left out, if it’s really his birthday.  Something to think about.,,

photo credit: laursifer via photopin cc

    • Cleaners and Neaters

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    For me, one of the nicest things about travel is that eventually I get to come home. Home, after two weeks away, is almost like someplace I’ve never been. It is a familiar, but still strange sort of place.

    I get to use a full size tube of tooth paste.

    My friends and family say they missed me.

    There is an abundance of meaningful work to do.

    I don’t have to wear dirty clothes unless I want to.

    And oddly enough, instead of responding to unusual circumstances that present themselves only on rare occasions, I have to think about and be who I need to be for the long haul, the majority of day to day living. More about that later.

    As I reacquaint myself with the house where I live with the husband, I am suddenly able to figure something out that I have wondered about for years.  We are different, the husband and I, and that’s good and serves a purpose. Here is my newest definition of a particular difference.

    Some people are neat and tidy but not necessarily cleaners.

    Other people makes lots of messes when they work but they are cleaners when it’s done.

    Neaters and cleaners, that’s it.  I can think of so many examples of how this works out – like our paperwork and files.  Everything is stacked or filed (kept) meticulously, but usually it is only one of us who cleans and throws out the outdated and unnecessary.  Bathroom stuff is on its shelf or drawer, but only one of us wipes out the drawer and cleans the shelf. The dishwasher is loaded and run, but only one of us clears and cleans the counters and puts stuff away.  

    Now unless you begin to think that the cleaner is in some way superior to the neater, let me say that it’s not true.  I am the cleaner (in case you haven’t figured it out) and I am capable of what I call “creative mess” at any moment.  I am following a trail and can’t be bothered with neatness along the way. Besides, I know I’m going to have to clean it up eventually, so I get to choose when. There is evidence of my creative side all over the house but the husband doesn’t often mind (or notice) as long as his stuff is in the pile where he put it (neatly). We were meant to coexist.

    Those of us who love our homes will probably admit that the cleaning and organizing that we do is part of the “love”.  The satisfaction of making a difference, even if it’s only to clean a counter or rearrange a corner of the living room, is like getting to catch up with an old friend.  Yep, that’s what I’m doing today and it’s good to be home… I’m just sayin’.

    Airport perks

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    I am sitting in the Lindbergh terminal in Minneapolis, Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes (all of them frozen over at present). In some ways airports are similar to each other but there is usually something unique about each one. 

    I have never noticed this about MSP before so maybe it is only the case at this newest gate, but they have iPads everywhere.  There aren’t the usual rows of plastic chairs with tables here and there. It’s like a computer bar everywhere – low booths, high bar chairs with counters and all with iPads on stands ready for use. Some are free but I also see places to swipe credit cards.  There is a restaurant and bar across the isle and all the ordering is done on iPads. The waiter is only there to ask if people know how to use the gadget. Some travelers are using their own computers, like me, but many are taking advantage of the tablets and watching movies or checking their stocks (probably, I don’t know…)

    I’m just saying – the world is changing, isn’t it?

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    Related People

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    My Grandfather (well, one of them)
    My Grandfather (well, one of them)

    I’ve spent quite a bit of time today with my mom looking at family letters, journals, pictures and memorabilia. I am very confused and totally impressed with anyone who spends more than half an hour studying genealogy. Think of it this way – most of us know who our parents are. That’s two people. A lot of us know or have known one or both of our sets of grandparents. It’s not too hard yet – that’s just six people all together. A few of us knew great-grandparents, or heard about them from people who knew them. We’ve just added eight more people to the mix, fourteen to keep track of. Still with me? Now maybe you get married and have children. Those poor kids have double that number to figure out because you’ve just joined them to another line of your spouse’s ancestry. And that number doubles every time you go back another generation. We haven’t said anything about aunts, uncles or cousins yet either.

    And ancestors can really confuse you if they happened to have more than one marriage. Also in the past, people didn’t have a lot of imagination in naming their kids, or they were too busy, or something. They just kept picking the same names that their father or uncle or sister or brother had. So every generation had repeats with a number behind the name. (If you care about genealogy, pick a unique name for your child, please.)

    I’ve about decided that I’m not going to get it all straight. I’m just going to remember some of the neat stories. For instance, one of my ancestors (George Boone III, poor guy) came over from England and enjoyed dabbling in real estate. He was the original owner of the tract of land in Maryland that became Washington, D.C. and in fact, Georgetown is named after him. There is even a plaque in the city that says so. Pretty cool, huh? Yes, there was also a George IV,

    Another of my ancestors named Squire Boone (and I have to hand it to his parents for thinking of a name I certainly wouldn’t have thought of) had two sons, Edward and Daniel. He lived in Kentucky and yes they did have coonskin caps. Edward was my ancestor, but he was killed by Indians and his brother Daniel helped raise his children. I haven’t figured out how many “greats” I have to attach to it, but Daniel Boone was some kind of an uncle of mine.

    There’s lots more and the really great thing is that so many of my ancestors were the bloggers of their day. They wrote journals, they were newspaper reporters and writers of one sort or another. Many were school teachers or ministers which gave them a familiarity with writing and an appreciation of family histories. One of “my people” sat in a tent one night during the Civil War and put down his thoughts in a poem and we have it today.

    My great aunt Esther was one of the historians for our family on my mother’s side. In spite of the fact that she wrote a lot of her notes on napkins, and lost pages of letters all the time, she did have a large collection of family history that she passed on to my mom. That’s the material we are sorting through. My mom has compiled a two volume history from most of the writings but what do we do with those precious originals? I want to thank my ancestors for writing about their ordinary lives, which, turns out for some of them, were pretty extraordinary. If this makes you want to start a journal, I’m sayin’ just do it!

    Do you have an interesting story in your family history? Tell it to me, please.

    Hair

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    Hair adorns the top of our heads, most of us. And even if it doesn’t, it probably has played a pretty dominant role in our lives as one of those things we spend a lot of time on, but still take for granted.  We get it cut, curled, pulled, washed, and we put products on it.  We care about how our hats look on it, and have preferences as to whether it should hang in our eyes or not.  We have stories we tell about Rapunzel (“let down your hair!”), Samson and Delilah, and Absalom who had such ridiculously out of control hair that it got caught in a tree he rode under and literally was the death of him. We have people who support themselves entirely taking care of our hair for us.  

    We make statements with our hair as, for instance, when our dreads hang out the back under our football helmets, or when our hair turns pink, purple, green or blue. We all refer to common sayings and know what we mean by “bad hair day” or “hair raising experience”, “get out of my hair”, “a hairy situation” or “turn it down just a hair”.

    Our hair keeps us warm.

    We cry when we get sick and our hair falls out.

    Personally, hair has figured largely in my past.  In addition to not smiling in most of my grade school pictures, I can look at them and tell whether I was in my pin curl stage, my sleeping in rollers stage or my dry the hair over the furnace duct stage. I have longish, white/gray hair now and I can find a barrette, or an elastic hair band in nearly any purse or pocket of mine. I confess, almost any time I look in a mirror, it has something to do with my hair.

    I lived with two daughters who have always had nice hair, although one of them was scarred emotionally by a perm I once gave her.  Okay, so maybe I gave a couple bad haircuts to the other one too.  And my husband has had the same barber for the last forty years – me.

    I’m thinking about hair this week more than usual because we have had a three generational hair week up here in Wisconsin.  Not mentioning any names, but some of us just don’t have time during our normal lives to take care of hair. A vacation turns out to be a good time for some fixes. 

    On one of the first days here, sitting around with my daughter and mother, I offered to take them both out for the procedure – if we could find someone trustworthy to handle our locks.  Mom told me about a relative in town at Salon Soleil who had done a good job for someone so I looked the person up.  I felt confident she was skilled when I found out she had no openings. My daughter and I went on her waiting list in case there was a cancellation, and thanks to the blizzard this week there were two of them.  (Do you wonder how some committed professionals make it 25 miles to their job in a snowstorm and count it as “just another day” at work? I do.) We caught up on family news in addition to having a pleasant time getting a head massage and being made lovelier.   

    My mom had a regular stylist and today we spent a couple hours in her home salon getting her permed and styled. She had chosen a good name for her business, A New Creation.  I like the way all three of us look with our recent changes. It kind of does something for your confidence when you look taken care of and current. I think it was a good move and money well spent. And I’m just sayin’ it was a fun thing to do with my mom and my daughter. 

    Serious Snow

    Shirleyjdietz3 Comments

    20131205_154355I hate to go on and on about weather events but this time spent in Wisconsin has been such a wonderful reminder of winter that it is worthy of remarks, lots of them.

    First, I have to say how noticeable it is that it’s dark at 4:30 pm. And it’s still quite dark at 7:30 in the morning – the automatic yard lights are still on.

    It snowed for two days. Travel advisories were issued. We decided not to have my daughter drive the three and a half hours to the airport on slippery, wet roads. We had to make other flight arrangements. There is a great deal of anxiety in trying to figure out what the weather is going to be like and how it will affect the plans you’ve made. It is much easier just to give up and enjoy being snowed in.

    At one point during the second day it began to rain.  Ice formed on the roads and sidewalks that had been cleared. Tree branches that had been heavy with snow got even heavier with ice. Toward the end of the snowfall the temperature began to drop and the wind began to blow. Snow drifted over the icy surfaces, and more of it fell.  The snowplows were out as well as the salt trucks. After dinner, my brother plowed the roads and driveways in our subdivision. The children went out to shovel the walks. The snowmobile was brought out of storage and they all took turns packing trails for skiing on the neighborhood green-space (white-space?). It was dark and cold, but strangely exciting as well.20131204_22495320131204_225002

    There was the strangest light in the sky – not from the moon, but from every light in town that was reflected back and forth between the cloud cover and the white landscape. The appearance was kind of “other worldly”.

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    This morning it was about 8 degrees F. and the snow had stopped falling. However, the wind was still blowing it off the roofs and drifting it on the roads so it seemed as harsh as before.  Common sights around town – icicles hanging off the eaves, cars and trucks with white snow caps and  ice covered windows, slush and salt on the roads. And cold, cold, cold…  Away from town, all was white. Snow is whiter than you can imagine when it’s clean and fresh.

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    Do you know how carefully you have to walk when outside in this kind of weather? Seriously, every step has to be tested because a fall can be more than just awkward. It can be dangerous. To go out, you have to consider what kind of boots to wear,and how many layers of coats/jackets to put on. You have to keep track of your gloves, a scarf and a hat or you will freeze.  And every time you go back in a building all these things have to be taken off and stored. Wet things have to dry. It is time consuming and tends to inhibit going outside. You watch a lot of TV, particularly the weather channel.

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    All this amounts to a culture of sorts.  People who get used to this are proud of their ability to last through the winter, and they would probably admit that there is something about winter that they like. I like it too (but I only have to like it for two weeks. It lasts for… oh, six months? Yeah.)  I’m just sayin… glad to be here. Brrr…

    Winter comes.

    Shirleyjdietz4 Comments
    the cold season
    the cold season

    Hayward, Wisconsin is a place where it snows. The flakes were flying as we drove into town last Thursday for Thanksgiving.  The white blanket covered the ground and the fallen logs where we walked through the woods the next day.  Every gust of wind through the branches of the pines sent snow raining down all around us. At first, the cold was frightening but as I stayed out in it and worked up a sweat, I got used to it.  Now, four days past Thanksgiving, it is snowing again and this time it’s a storm big enough to deserve a name. Cleon.

    Our trip into town proved the roads were icy with wet slush.  The sky is one solid, gray cloud that descends down to meet the horizon, cutting the visibility to about a quarter mile. Variations on muted gray, black and white with a little brown thrown in are the only colors nature has today. Things would seem dull if it weren’t for the colored lights and Christmas decorations up and down the streets. Hayward is a small town, a very small town, but it is the only real town in quite a large area of forests and lakes. And it is large enough to have a Walmart, which was a very busy place today.

    I grew up here, in the country outside of Hayward.  I left and came back after I was married.  My children were born while I lived here and although I’ve been away again for more than twenty years it is still very homelike to me. My parents and my brother and his family still live in a development on the edge of town, on land that once belonged to my grandfather. We visited Hayward last June when it was all shades of green, brilliant blue skies, fields full of flowers, flowing rivers, and more than it’s share of the world’s mosquitoes. Now it is different.  It is white, very quiet, dark a good deal of the time, and there are no mosquitoes at all.

    It is really quite magical to be able to stay in one place and have it change all around you. You would think you had been transported. I’m just sayin’ I am glad to be here for this first big snow of the year.

    white on the road
    white on the road
    white in the woods
    white in the woods

    Here we go again…

    Shirleyjdietz1 Comment

    ???????????????Here we go again…

    I am excited.  It is only hours before a season of travel begins, and instead of getting ready I’m sitting here writing about how I’m not ready.  Thoughts about traveling are fighting to get out of my head.

    I am going to my first, original home to be with family and friends, celebrating Thanksgiving.  I love everyone I am going to be with. Even before that, I love talking to strangers in the airport and on the plane.  I love being free to watch what is going on around me and observe people.  There is such freedom in not having a job to do other than keeping bombs from being planted in my luggage. Almost every routine of my daily life is changed to something new.

    Flight attendants bring me the beverage of my choice – this happens never at home.

    I get to sit in/drive a nearly new car.

    I can eat fast food without feeling guilty because it’s about the only choice.

    And at my destination I have that unique position of half guest, half helper.  It allows me to work alongside others and see what is going on in their lives.  It means I can stay up late visiting if there’s an opportunity, or get up early and have that first cup of coffee with someone special.  It means I can probably take a nap if I’m tired, or take a couple hours off to write or read.  There’s time to think about living while I’m doing it.

    And even while the excitement builds, there’s a conflict. I feel it every time.  I am a split personality when it comes to travel.  There is so much to like about being away, and yet I am as much a home body as anyone could be.  I love my home, the husband, the cats, the yard, the old car, the commitments, the friends, even the job (sort of) (don’t spread that around).  To be happy and involved in one place, you have to lose touch with where you’re not.  And even when I know I’m coming back, there is a bit of sadness in stepping away from the familiar.

    Will the husband be able to find food in the refrigerator?

    Will my strawberry plants die if we get a freeze?

    Will my cat forgive me for being gone?

    Will I come back to a mountainous pile of junk mail? Laundry?

    Will I be the same person that I was?  Probably not.

    I’m just sayin’, here we go again…

    Grandma in her Garden

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    My Mom loves to garden.  I call her Grandma sometimes because I have talked to my children about her for years and years. She is their grandma, my mom, Gwendolyn Boone Smith.  Gwendolyn who never had a middle name and didn’t need one because her first name was long enough for two. Grandma keeps saying […]

    Unusually Long Silences

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    20131118_054935[1]
    sunny gift from a guest
    Unusually long silences in which readers get bored and lose interest are a dreaded reality for me in my blogging life.  I think I speak for many people when I say that sometimes the things we generally like to be doing (writing) isn’t what we want to be doing most (entertaining out of town guests) or have to be doing (work).  But it is crucial that we avoid guilt over things not done if we are being true to our priorities.

    What I’ve been doing:

    – a pre Thanksgiving event for the husband and other friends and relatives that I won’t get to see on the actual Thanksgiving Day.  This took me days of prep, planning, cooking and cleaning. Twenty two of us had a great time and a good meal.

    thanksgiving thoughts from guests
    thanksgiving thoughts from guests

    – reconnecting with a long time friend and her family, visiting from afar. We kayaked, walked the beach, swam in the ocean, braved the mall, and ate several meals together. Oh, and Mexican Train up to number 7.

    dining out with Cheryl
    dining out with Cheryl

    – worked for my employer, who is having trouble with staffing right now.  I am a so called resigned, retired nurse who works about as much as I did before I resigned. Go figure.

    – spent  much enjoyed time doing music for my church (for my God).  Volunteered a little more than usual since others were out.

    -spent hours and dollars on my computer, resurrecting it from death (or near death). Now if I can just figure out where all the missing files are, we’ll be fine and functioning.

    – put out my fundraising letter for medical supplies for the Cambodian orphans.  I don’t want to go empty handed. God will supply what is needed, but I have to ask.

    – overseeing major house washing.  Who knew it could take a week to pressure wash a house? It looks great again, except in the places where the paint needs to be replaced – but we knew that would happen.  All the accessory trees got trimmed too.

    In the big picture, I think I made good choices,

    putting God first,

    people second

    and things last.

    I have to say, being a consistent writer is not easy when you have another life of any kind …