Christmas Comparisons

      

    If I were to be honest, I would have to tell you that I stand in awe of how different the Christmases of my youth and teen years are from the family Christmases my own family has today.
When I was a child, we lived in the Northeast, in a rural area, and it was always a white Christmas. Many years it wasn't just a white Christmas, but a Christmas where even a four wheel drive Jeep couldn't make it down the driveway. Sometimes, ice storms would turn the property to grasses and trees seemingly encased in glass. By Christmas, my mother would have been working for several months. First, she would have found a baby sitter so that she could travel fifty miles either alone or with friends to New York City to buy gifts. Sometimes, she would travel to Morristown, in New Jersey to buy things, or sometimes to a store in Morris County called "Two Guys".
             My mother was British, and she worked hard to provide the type of Christmas that she might have had in England, had she been there.  We always had a genuine tree that was as tall as our homes twelve foot ceilings. It was always decorated from head to toe. It also had Christmas crackers on it, sent from England, that when opened with a loud "pop", had a small toy inside. Christmas dinner was always at our home, and featured a huge turkey, stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, several desserts.  There were nuts, olives, hors d'oeuvres, and alcoholic drinks for the adults. Our Christmases were spent with my mother's closest friend and her husband, who were also expatriates here in the US. Their children, who were friends of mine, had been born here. We also wore our finest clothing, and looked the very best that we would all year.  At some time during the day, my mother called her relatives in England, and my father carefully timed each call, because in those days, overseas calls cost a fortune.  As much as my mother enjoyed the calls, there was desperation in her voice as she spoke to them, knowing that she might not see them again, or that they may not live until her next visit home, which usually occurred about every four years, in lieu of beach vacations or vacations my friends might have had here to destinations within the US.

           Today, our Christmases are very different. My children grew up in the American South in even a more rural area than the one in which I grew up. We almost never have snow at Christmas here. In fact, in 1989, I didn't need to wear a coat for that entire Winter.  We usually get a couple of snows each year, in January through March. Most of the time we ignore them, as they melt all by themselves. I don't buy the abundance of gifts my mother did. My kids have what they need through the year, and don't really need much.  In the past I have bought something they asked for, either from a catalog or online.  Sometimes, I buy a gift certificate for a shop they love.  We don't dress up quite the way we did when I was a child. We have horses, sheep, alpacas, a large number of dogs, chickens, guineas, and other animals and they too will need attention, exercise, and feeding even on Christmas Day. We all wear slacks or jeans and perhaps a festive shirt.  My mother was an exceptional hostess and cook.  I am really not.  My husband is content to get a large turkey in the oven, and to make the stuffing that was passed down in his family. Because we have one child who is a Type I diabetic from childhood, the excesses of Christmas, gently left our table, one by one over the years.  We have turkey, broccoli, potatoes, carrots, peas, stuffing, and gravy, and often a salad. We serve one dessert which has a sugar free alternative, side by side.  Since all of our English relatives, and both my parents have died, along with our youngest son,  there is no one to call.  The kids gather for Christmas, and we have the meal cleared up and the dishes done within a couple of hours. I don't mind cleaning up, and it goes quickly.  Sometimes we gather and sing, and then our children who are grown and have homes, depart.
          For many years when the kids were small, I worked as a registered nurse. I had to work on Christmas Day and so we celebrated the day after, which I had off. The children were never any the wiser. Even today, we occasionally move Christmas by a day or so, if someone needs to be accommodated.

           If I were to be honest, both types of Christmases are magical, and both are bittersweet,   My mother worked very hard to give everyone a Christmas to remember, and she lived in fear of the day that her children would be grown and her loved ones in England would be gone.  She feared the very Christmases I have now.   My children are grown, and there are two little grandchildren now.  These are not times to dread, but times to celebrate, as I am so proud of the people my children have become.  We no longer have relatives outside our immediate family, but I know that they reside in Heaven and that we will see them again.  We also have wonderful friends who are like family.   Even among the changes in Christmas, there is still joy to be found.  Merry Christmas everyone.

On Leaving it All

                A bit more than twenty years ago, my children, my husband and I moved out to a profoundly rural area.  When we arrived, there were no restaurants, no pizza, no Chinese food, no internet, and often no police.  We traded suburban life with all of its woes and temporary advantages to one with almost limitless space, where our kids could raise livestock, chase their chickens, truly explore hobbies, hike, and grow up with fewer distractions.

              Our experiment worked.  Our homeschooled kids were academically quite successful, and went on to college, and universities and were successful in the careers they chose. One of our children passed away, the result of a cardiac arrhythmic syndrome which had not been identified, and took his life one morning, this time of year, about eleven years ago.

               In a sense as a tribute to the son who passed, we continued to live here. We needed to provide an excellent home to the animals our son had known.  As if keeping a promise to him, we kept the homestead fairly similar to how it had been during his time here.

               I can't help but notice that in the past few months, four families who were decidedly cornerstones to this area, have placed their homes or farms for sale.  I tell myself that this is natural. Not everyone wishes to age in place. Some return to towns and cities in old age for ease of getting to the doctor or the pharmacy, at least.  And yet, I am saddened to see these families leave. Some of them have been in the area longer than we have. Their departure will make our family the old timers in the area. This means we cannot avoid the realization that we all age, and that eventually, we will either depart from this area, or die here.

              If I were to be honest, I would say that although I dislike the idea of dying in this place, I like the idea of leaving it all by choice even less.  



 

A Moment for Tears

I was doing some internet research early this week for a book project on which I am working, and I accidentally came across an obituary with a familiar name. It took me a moment to think of why I remembered the name, and exactly who the person had been. She had been a classmate of mine in high school. Although I don’t think we were ever really friends, we shared a seat in almost all the most challenging classes in our school, when they were still divided into classrooms of high performers, average students, and those benefiting from some remediation. I suppose in the lingo of today, she would have been within my academic cohort.

I graduated from high school one year early to attend college in an era where this was considered sacrilege, but I had my father’s approval. Although I continued contact with about four classmates over the years from my high school class, I didn’t really keep in touch with the others, and I didn’t return to the area. I did hear when several of our class died in separate car crashes and one in a fire, and I grieved them.

I graduated from two colleges and started a career as a registered nurse. The closest I came to hearing from anyone at the high school was during the time I had the school psychologist as a patient. He was a dear man who saw the school quite differently than I had. As my twenties progressed, I married, became the mother of two babies in rapid succession, and moved out of state as I balanced career, parenthood, and a new house.

Over the years, the several careers I have enjoyed had to mesh with the lives of the five children I eventually had. During a more bullish economy, we sold our homes and moved about every five years, being careful to put more money down on each home. I rarely gave thought to high school, although I did stay in touch with close friends from there, and from college. As time progressed, more and more of my friends from high school and college were spread over the country. Many of my college friends became college professors. One became a physician after having been a registered nurse. Some became entrepreneurs. I learned that from my high school class five had become engineers, two had become physicians, one had become a nurse practitioner. One had become an artist. Four became teachers. Eventually, my own high school class blurred a little bit with the students a year older or a year younger who were there at the same time.

This week, when I saw my classmate’s obituary, I remembered that she was a lovely girl. She was bright, always happy, and was very attractive and had thick blonde hair. She was never negative about anything we had to do there. She always tried her best, and she was good at sports, academics, and anything social. I remembered that she was really good in tennis, and that she had the distinction of being an academic standout as well as a varsity cheerleader. I remembered that one of her brothers was in school with us, and that they were always glad to see one another. I remember once thinking while watching her laugh as we played soccer, that blondes must really have more fun.She had flourished in high school where I had scrambled to get away.

While I had been raising children, developing careers, and enjoying friends in another state, my classmate had attended three universities and graduated as an artist. She returned to our home

state, married and had two children. She became a part of the challenging and highly political art world which will chew you up and spit you out faster than any high school will.

Today, my classmate is gone from Earth. She left two children who are doing well. She was divorced before she died, and the obituary gives no clue as to how she passed. I can hardly imagine the young smiling woman I knew divorcing anyone. As I recall, we weren’t really friends and yet I knew her middle name when I saw her obituary. I remembered where she lived, how she looked, her brother and what he planned to study in college. She had been resilient, in a place where I hadn’t been. Perhaps I had not yet been worthy of being her friend. I grieve her life cut short. I grieve the time she will not be spending with her young adult children. She will miss living long enough to see her grandchildren here on Earth.

I think she left something important to me that she doesn’t even know about. She left me the example of always smiling, of doing your level best wherever you are. She always bloomed where she was planted, where I might have whined about the soil. I think she might also have taught me that the people you might see every day, and who might not seem important in your life, might actually be important to you later. I took a moment away from the book I was writing to cry for her. I think you probably lived a pretty good life if a classmate from many years ago thinks of you kindly, and cries at the thought of your passing.

    

On Climate Change Shaming

               

          If I were to be honest, I would tell you that I am sick to death of hearing about climate change. I was raised to conserve everything, pollute as little as possible, to avoid packaging, and to coexist with the animals and the planet, and so when others, particularly from other nations who know nothing about me or how I live, tell me I must change, it's all I can do not to laugh at the wasteful misguided souls who lecture me.

                 I live on a large acreage farm surrounded by woods. I grow a great deal of our own food, our own eggs and our own chickens. We coexist with the animals here which include turkeys, bears, fox, raccoons, poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, coyotes, squirrels, and opossum. We leave the farm about once weekly and lump all our trips into one to conserve resources, and because we don't wish to be away too long from our rescue horses, sheep, alpacas, dogs, cats, and all manner of poultry. We are essentially organic here. There is one intervention we allow, and that's rabies immunizations for all the animals who are mammals, because rabies in such rural places in the US is endemic.  I own other farms, and they are managed organically as well.

               I haven't boarded a plane in about seven years. I drive proficiently, but as little as possible. I work hard to impact the planet as little as possible, basically because a lot of the American Indian values made sense to me, and because one of my parents hailed from post war Europe, and the other went to college there for an extended period. They weren't known to waste much either.

                 The fact is that if you build a home below sea level, as in New Orleans or in Bangladesh, that cataclysmic flooding will occur.   If your government steals the aid freely given by other nations and misappropriates a small fraction of the remainder, then starvation will result.  There will be periodic glacial melting, and then reforming of Antarctic glaciers. There will be some degree of climate change as the Earth ages and moves on. There will be cataclysmic disasters. Why? Because there have been before.

                  More than seventy percent of the Earth consists of oceans. Does it really make sense to you that actions of people who reside on less than 30% of the planet are changing the environment ?  I lean more toward the idea that the planet will gradually change. It will heat and it will cool whether we stop driving cars or manufacturing anything at all.   Before you tell me that I am hopelessly out of touch, let me tell you that I hold a degree in Environmental Studies, and I am not yet convinced that anything we do to change the gradual progressions of our planet can do anything at all.

              So I will continue with my low impact activities here on Earth. You continue with your obsession with electronics, addiction to Starbucks, letting social media think for you, and shaming those who don't look, speak or think exactly as you do.  Chances are, we will both live until we both die, and we will do so, on the planet's time.