Marking Time

It is New Year’s Eve day and 2006 is coming to an end. It can be a reflective time. Looking past at the year and recognizing meaningful times and how those times affect the rest of one’s life. That’s nice.

It can also be a time to look forward and set goals. Make a game plan for the coming year. Set points of achievement. Plan to replace bad habits with good habits. Out with the old and in with the new. That’s nice, too.

However, I am neither reflective nor a goal-setter. What this day means for me is that I need new calendars.

I have several calendars in my house. I have large monthly wall calendar in the kitchen by the phone so that I can make appointments and write them down. I also have a weekly calendar at my office desk for the same reason. There is a problem involved in this when I use one calendar when making an appointment and the other calendar when I look to see if I am free at a certain time. But I try to keep the two calendars in sync.

My kitchen calendar has pictures for each month and they need to be somewhat aesthetic in nature. Picking out a calendar means that I have chosen what to look at for an entire year. Therefore, picking out a calendar can be daunting. Do I want puppies? No. Kittens? No. Waterfalls? No. I wanted something colorful but not garish. I wanted something pretty without being overwhelming. I wanted peaceful, but pretty. I found one that is pictures of beach chairs set by the shore. Beautiful without garish.

But since I use the calendar for more than a picture holder, it also has to have dates large enough for an old coot like me to read and have enough space with each date for me to write in information as needed.

My weekly calendar has been a problem for most of the year. It didn’t fit nicely in the space I wanted to keep it in, so I had to rearrange my entire desk to make room. There were pretty pictures, but I rarely saw them because the book was half hidden. It also started with Sunday rather than each week starting with Monday and that got to be a problem when I wrote information in the wrong space. This year I have a smaller, no pictures, fits where I want it week by week starting with Monday calendar. There is enough room to write in information as needed, if I can remember to co-ordinate it with my other calendars.

I also go through most of this process for a small wall calendar in my office. I don’t care so much about the space for writing, but I need to know what day/date it is rather frequently while sitting at my computer. It is easier to look up than to mouse over the time and get a date. This year I will have pictures of restful porches.

Chairs on both calendars. I must hope to sit through the year.

Then I have a day-to-day calendar with some informational message or some such thing for each day. Since I love trivia, I usually purchase that type of page for each date calendar. But I tend to forget to tear off a page now and then and so I need the wall calendar to see how far behind I’ve gotten.

My sister sent me a smaller page-a-day calendar all about sisters. It is the size of a normal Post-it note pad and each day has a quote about sisters. I love quotes as well. I will think of my sister each and every day – well, at least those days that I tear a sheet off – for an entire year. It’s not that I don’t remember I have sisters each and every day, but this will be a gentle and constant reminder of how much I am loved, and even better, how much I can love in return.

Now isn’t that a nice way to plan for a year?

Proving Time Magazine Wrong

I went to the grocery store early this morning. I had to. I was out of milk and I wasn’t done drinking coffee. I have to have milk in my coffee. I used to have to have cream in my coffee, but I’m both older and fatter and have now switched to milk. I cannot stand to drink coffee black. I am addicted to coffee and I’m okay with that.

There wasn’t much more than milk that I truly needed at the grocery store, but while I was there, and since milk is in the back, I had to walk through the place. I could use some more veggies for my large salad bowl, from which I lunch during the week. So I purchased some broccoli and cauliflower pieces. Pomegranates are in season and are wonderfully tasty. I purchased celery and onions for when I make stuffing/dressing/that-concoction-that-goes-inside-turkeys later in the week. I thought it too early to purchase the bread. I know stale is good, but moldy is not so good.

Early in the morning, meat that didn’t sell the day before is marked down. It is a way to eat cheaply and I’m nothing if I’m not cheap. Everyone is on a limited income, even Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have limits. They are very high limits, but their money has an end point. I, too, am on a limited budget. It is a much higher limit than say my kids’ incomes or even our own income years ago. But it is still limited.

However, in all honesty, I could afford to pay for the higher-priced, fresher items. I come home and put everything in the freezer, thereby negating the whole “fresh” thing. But I don’t need to purchase the yellow-price-tag-marked-down-sticker stuff. It is morally okay if I do? Should I leave those items there for someone who is less well off financially? Does it mean if I buy these marked down items that someone else goes hungry? Does everyone have to have meat at every meal? Am I being piggy?

Am I obsessing about something that makes no difference? I have worried about this more and more. I am debt free in America which means that I’m way at the top of the affluent line. I could be in debt easily. I could purchase a bigger, more expensive home. I could buy a fancy sports car instead of driving my six year old mid-sized sedan. I could spend lots of money and be in debt. But I don’t. I like not having debt. It took me a long time to get there.

But since I’m “affluent” to the degree that I can afford many more luxuries than I could thirty years ago, does that mean I have a responsibility to allow other people first grab at the cheap seats? If I don’t buy the marked down items, will some “poor” person come after me and pick it up? Will a different affluent person come along behind me and pick it up? Do I allow the stuff to sit there in the hopes that someone else more needy gets a chance at it or was that needy person supposed to be there in the early morning because that is when they mark down items and if you want to buy that stuff that is when you need to be there?

Who really cares about any of this? Is this just an intellectual exercise to prove that I have too much time on my hands?

But it is a concern. Silly as it may be. What is the right or correct method of behaving? Is it okay to be cheap even when you don’t have to be cheap? Is there any reason I should leave the stuff behind? Should I feel guilty when I don’t? Am I just trying to make my life more exciting and this is the best I can do?

I wish I had an answer. But at least I know that as I ponder these inanities, I am important in my blog.

What Makes Christmas?

This is not a theological treatise. I understand the necessity of a birthday for God incarnate. I understand the need to overwrite the Bacchanalian feasting at the winter solstice. I’m good with all that.

But what traditions make it feel like Christmas? That’s the question I’m pondering here.

Is it the snow? That’s not possible. It is Christmas in tropical climates that never see snow. Even in Ohio there wasn’t always snow. It wasn’t always even cold enough for there to be snow. So I will deduce that it is not snow.

Is it the tree? I can’t remember a Christmas without a tree. When I was a child we had a real tree. My aunt had a tree that was “flocked” or coated with this Styrofoam-like substance that was supposed to look like snow. My grandmother had an aluminum tree with the light that rotated through four different colors pointed at it. Very modern then and very retro now. Way cool. But the trees go up and come down at varying times. For us, the tree went up on my sister’s birthday and came down on mine. Unless we were still traveling.

Is it the cookies? I love Christmas baking. In fact, no matter what, when, or where – I always bake at least some cookies. This year I’ve made seven varieties and ten different batches of cookies. That seems like a lot, but it is nothing compared to years ago when my sister and I baked for a week and made 3000 cookies, a dozen nut rolls, fruitcake, candy, and sometimes popcorn balls. We had to have a plan on the order to cook them and strategies for shopping for ingredients. We were masters at the whole baking thing. But even years that I’ve only made two or three kinds, it felt like Christmas.

Is it the cards? I write a yearly Christmas letter making a definite effort to not be too “braggy” about the past year. But since we have moved every ten years, there are people who I don’t see on a regular basis, but I’m still interested in their lives and hope they care enough to read a page about mine. I love the whole process of running to the mailbox and seeing what news is there waiting. I know that my children are grown, but it astounds me that the kids that were growing up around me have, in fact, grown up. I hear of graduations and marriages. Babies and even death and divorces. Life isn’t all a bed of roses.

Is it Santa Claus? A few years were really rough there. Our family was at that in between stage. Everyone was too old for Santa, but not old enough to make the next batch of Santa fans. Now we have Santa fans again. The wonder in sparkling eyes. The whole hearted belief in someone who would spend the night to bring toys to girls and boys simply because the kids were wonderful. What a concept. If you could make up something that would be pure goodness, what would it be? A jolly old man who, with no strings attached, will bring you gifts just because you are a worthwhile person would maybe be that concept.

That, or maybe the Baby Jesus. But this isn’t going to be a theological treatise.

Gray Hyacinths

She walked along the beach relishing the chill in the air. The temperature made most of the beach walkers remain tucked safely away in their snug houses. She was wrapped in a warm coat, a remnant from her life up north. The salt air smelled so fresh, so different from the dead air back home. Perhaps calling that place "home" was a misnomer, she had moved here. Here where it was usually warmer, far away from the stark and frigid icy winds of the north. Here, where there was maybe a chance of life. Next to the ocean, the ocean was where life began. Maybe life could begin again for her.

Lines from poems fleetingly ran through her mind. Her lips would silently move as she recited some of her more favorite lines. She loved to read poetry and had memorized lots of poems. Reading poetry was easy, understanding it was less so, but still it was possible. Writing poetry was past her capabilities. So she memorized other people's words.

She stopped to pick up a piece of driftwood. It was so smooth, like satin. It was wood and yet it held a lingering scent of saltwater. The gray color matched the color of the ocean and the clouded sky that was reflected back. It also matched her mood. Gray, washed out, dead. How long had it been since she felt vibrant? Forget vibrant, how long since she had even felt alive at all? She wasn't exactly depressed; she was numb. She was not this or not that. She was nothing more than anything. She was tired. Yes, that is what she was. Tired. Very tired. Two o'clock in the afternoon and it felt like she could barely drag herself through the day, let alone the evening. She slapped the driftwood against her hand. Nothing. She didn't even feel reality anymore. She was consumed by nothingness. Just tired. Always tired.

She continued walking along the beach holding onto the driftwood like it was some sort of life raft. The thought struck her as totally ironic. She had no life to float. There was nothing to cling to, except the driftwood. She would cry except there were no tears left. There was really nothing to cry about. There was only nothing, not worth crying over. Nothingness, grayness, and driftwood. Was there a poem that had all these things? There should be, but she didn't know any. She remembered a line about buying hyacinths to feed the soul. Was her soul hungry? She couldn't tell. Her soul was gray. Her life was gray. Is the color gray hungry? Hyacinths were not gray. They were pink or purple. They smelled wonderful. They were so brave standing tall, with perfume to spare.

She threw the driftwood back into the ocean. She threw like a girl – it didn't go very far. She headed back the way she had come. Following footsteps in the sand. One set of footsteps in the sand. Lord, why when times were hardest is there only one set of footprints? Because, my child, that is when I carried you. More lines that someone else wrote. She's somebody's mother, boys you know/ For all she's aged, and poor, and slow. More lines from other pens. Committed to memory back before the gray set in.

She finally came to her car. She got in and drove to a greenhouse. She purchased four pots of hyacinths, two were pink, and two were purple. None were gray. They looked so nice on her porch. They smelled good, too.

The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said

I know so many snatches of poetry. I know many quotes, sometimes even being able to attribute them to the proper person. I know factoids aka, Mom’s Fast Facts. I sometimes can recite whole poems or long pages of books.

Then I’m struck with wanting that perfect word. You know … that one. The one that is …. right over there, the one I can’t think of right now. I hate when that happens to me.

I’m going along merrily recounting a story and run smack into a wall that I was totally unaware of. Boom. I can’t come up with the word. I’m used to that with names. I am horrible with names. I watched my parents struggle with names that began with the same letter, and so I named my own sons with completely different names. And then I call them the dog’s name.

That I know is simply confusion, talking too fast, common misassignment. But when I’m searching for the word and can’t find it at all … god knows what that is. Old age? But I’ve been doing it for a very long time. I just want that elusive something that is just outside my grasp. I know it’s there, but it should be here. I just can’t quite get hold of it.

But luckily, or unluckily, I have a vast vocabulary and when it happens I usually go for the runner-up in the word contest. I simply do with the second best word. Sometimes within seconds, I can finally capture the wayward word. When I’m writing, I can go back and put in the BEST word instead of using that substandard one. When I’m speaking, well, tough luck listener, you are stuck with a less than scintillating narrative.

I would love to see how a mind works when it is frantically searching for that just exactly perfect word that is so close and yet so far. There are brain imaging techniques that watch which part of the brain is working how hard when given a list of words. Men’s brains access different areas and in different forces than the same words inside a woman’s brain. Not all words, of course. But the word “infant” lights up different portions of the brain according to gender. Stuff like that.

What I want to see is the firestorm that is waging inside my head when I’m trying to come with a word like “consternate” and can only find “confuse.” I don’t even want to see what happens if I call my son LC. I know that I am at best consternated and confused when I’m looking for that perfect word. Sometimes, after finally getting the perfect word, I find that it wasn’t really perfect after all, but still misses the point by a slight shade.

I am very fortunate to be working with English. It is a language completely full of words. The OED has something like one-quarter million words listed. And then there are the technical and jargon words, not to mention slang. English borrows, perhaps steals, words from other languages with alacrity. Possibly we even steal them en masse.

Since there are so many words at my disposal, one would think that I could just go along on my merry way and make the best of the great thing. Instead, I’m concerned, no, maybe I’m just anxious, I’m not up to troubled, but I do care about using the right one.

What Am I Supposed To Do?

The world is a mess. Wars, pestilence, starvation, the four horses of Apocalypse are riding free. Things are in a terrible state and the handbasket is full.

Apparently the Taliban is running amok. There’s a newsflash. But … and this is the kicker, it’s Bush’s fault. What, you might ask. Yes. Bush. It is not the Taliban’s fault for being a terrorist organization. It is not the fault of Islam itself, the religion of peace. It is not the fault of the caliphs and imams who remain silent while jihad is waged against the world at large and women in particular.

Nope, none of that. It is Bush’s fault. I’m not sure how the logic works, but that’s what I’m told.

You see, in Afghanistan the Taliban is killing teachers who have the unmitigated gall to teach – get this – girls. They literally eviscerated a teacher and then tied his four limbs to motorcycles and pulled that man to pieces. Because he was teaching girls. Bush should … I believe the doves are calling for him to invade Afghanistan or something like that.

In the last two years I’ve heard for a call for the Pope to apologize for the Crusades started by Pope Urban II a long time ago when the Muslims closed off Jerusalem to the Catholics hoping to make a pilgrimage to the Holy City. For hundreds of years the Muslim controlled area was open to Catholics. But … not anymore, so Urban got pissy and called for war. Obviously, this is the Pope Benedict XVI’s fault.

He is also to apologize for not saving the Jews during the Second World War. It was the Pope’s fault that Nazi Germany executed millions of Jews and gypsies. I’m not sure whose fault it is that Nazi Germany also executed millions of Catholics, but they don’t really count. The whole thing is the Pope’s fault. This Pope’s fault. He is the leader of the church and as a leader …

But what about Muslim leaders? Why are they not being held accountable for the perversion of their faith by the lunatic fringe? The only reason I can come up with is that the leadership is not against the use of religion for jihad against the non-Muslim world. It seems that the religion of peace is being encouraged by the leaders to engage in jihad so that the impoverished men can attain the 27 virgins (are these nuns who are waiting for them?) when they get to heaven.

Why is the Muslim leadership not condemning the treatment of these Afghani girls who simply want to learn? Could it be that the Muslim leadership while looking out over the mosque cannot see to the back of the building where the women are relegated. Are the men the only thing they see? Are the burqa or head scarves so great that the women under them cannot be seen? Are the women truly secondary and not worth the trouble it would take to save them?

Regardless of what world leaders can or should do, there is nothing I can do. Short of lament the treatment of women across the globe who are being terrorized for the sake of a religion. It is horrible. The Taliban should stop that. I’m sure my saying so will make a huge difference.