Category: Writing

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the best Christmas present ever?

Image via Flickr user Muffet under a Creative Commons License.

I swear I’m not a Grinch.

Yeah, this is another one of those posts where I have to begin with a disclaimer assuring my readers that I really, really don’t hate Christmas. Here are some things I’m looking forward to over the next month: baking cookies with my mom and little sister, spending time with my littlest sister, drinking Russian Tea, staring at Christmas trees in dark rooms, taking a trip to downtown Hot Springs AR in order to see Christmas lights and a giant gingerbread house, the local prosthetic shop that has the best Christmas window displays ever, reading “The Gift of the Magi” and “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” nativity sets, advent wreaths, making gingerbread houses that involve hot glue guns, playing board games with family, seeing our niece, meeting a brand new baby cousin, watching “Elf,” Christmas Eve church service, seeing some snow in Colorado, watching my dad tear up while watching “It’s a Wonderful Life,” having semi-shouted conversations with my hard-of-hearing grandmother, hugging necks, and kissing cheeks.  There is a lot to love about Christmas.

You may notice that I didn’t mention gifts anywhere in that list.  Because when I start to think about all the things that make Christmas special to me, most of them are free.  They are not about things. They are about love.  And yet, every single year, starting around Halloween, loved ones start demanding wish lists, the expectation to buy Things begins to mount, and I begin to get overwhelmed and stressed and wonder why we’re really doing all this.  My dad loves to say that Jesus is the Reason for the Season (I swear he’s not one of those types to get worked up about the “War on Christmas,” he just really likes to remind us, Tiny Tim style, what it’s all about), and yet, as I venture out into stores, I don’t see Jesus anywhere, and not just because the greeters say “Happy Holidays,” because really, only jerks have a problem with that.

Just getting out to holiday shop is stressful, the opposite of peace and joy and goodwill to all people.  Drivers act like jerks, everyone’s in a hurry, stores are crowded and clerks are testy.  Money is tight, no one knows what they want, we don’t know what to buy, and yet we feel pressured to buy buy buy, give give give.

And it’s not that I don’t love giving a thoughtful gift. I do. I’ve been known to agonize over birthday gifts, and I really do enjoy giving them, mostly because with birthdays I only have to focus on one present and can make it something really special and thoughtful and expressive of love and care.  But Christmas really just becomes overwhelming– no one has the time to buy unique and special thoughtful gifts for every single person on their list, at least, no one I know does. And so even people like me, otherwise completely committed to buying local and fair trade, end up hitting outlet malls and completely forsaking our values in order to get gifts for everyone we’re expected to buy for.

And so I’m left wondering why we do it.  Just getting to spend time with family and loved ones is a gift, a huge one.  We don’t need any THING beyond that.  Why can’t we just celebrate that we have time together, that we have so many blessings, that we are not in need? If we weren’t pressured to buy buy buy, give give give, we could give to charity and then just enjoy each other’s company.

I’ve tried for two years now to convince the rest of my family of my vision of a gift-free Christmas. It hasn’t worked.  So I’ve made a decision.  Next Halloween I’m going to make an announcement.  I’m going to say: Dear family members, I love you so very much.   I love Christmas, and I love celebrating Jesus’ birth with you.  Because of my deep love for Christmas and all that it means, we will not be participating in gifts for anyone who is not a child.  We hope to focus on spending time together, making memories, and donating time and money to charity.  We hope that you will respect this decision, and encourage you to join us in our pursuit of a pared-down but more deeply meaningful holiday, though we will respect and love your choice if you don’t. We love you and we want to focus on our love for each other and our love for Christ this year.

I’m getting excited just thinking about it. Perhaps a gift-free Christmas could be the second-best Christmas present ever.

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date night?

Does taking a walk count as a "date night," or does it count only if you're holding hands?

If there’s one thing that confuses me about the whole discourse of modern marrieds, it’s “date night.”  Particularly in churches, it seems couples are encouraged to have a regular date night, to continue dating their spouse.  And the more I think about it, the more confused I get.

Like, what counts as a date? If we regularly go out to eat, does that count as a date every time? Or only if we plan it in advance? Or only if it’s the kind of place with real table cloths? What about cooking a meal together? Does that count as a date?  Do you have to go to a movie, or would renting a movie count as a date? I would have considered renting a movie a date back when Jon and I were dating, but is it no longer a date if we live together?  Or taking a walk– we liked to take walks when we were dating, so is it a date when we walk the dogs together? Is it only a date if we’re holding hands while we walk?

Come to think of it, pondering what a married date night looks like makes me think of nothing so much as a brochure my friends and I received and mocked in college: 101 Ways to Make Love Without Doing It. If those things count as dates, Jon and I have had 31 dates (at least, this doesn’t include repeats of the same activity) in the past month.  Really, though, I’m not clear on what delineates a “date night” from “sharing life together” and couldn’t tell ya the last “date” we had. Because really, we’re married. We’re not dating anymore. Thank God.

Though I must say, sipping spiked Russian Tea while snuggling on the couch wearing PJs and listening to music in the glow of the Christmas tree, which we did last night, is a darn good date, though I’m not sure it would count towards the mysterious but apparently all important “date night.”

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homeward bound

Image via Flickr user Cliff1066 under Creative Commons.

Jon just logged into the big computer system that decided our fate (aka matched him with a fellowship program in Pediatric Emergency Medicine) and found out we’re moving to my home, Little Rock, Arkansas in about six months! I’m relieved to finally know, giddy to be going back closer to friends and family, and full of possibilities for the next six months.  Now to soak up all the things I have been meaning to do in Charleston before our time here is up!

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getting the thankfulness started

i'd be really REALLY thankful if we got more hammock time...

It was not so many Thanksgivings ago that I told my (biological for those who know both of the women who have mothered me) mother that I never wanted to see her again, and then basically didn’t for several years.  I was in junior high at the time. Not to get into the whole long story, but we had hurt and been hurt by each other, had misunderstood each other, and basically ceased to have a relationship after years of hurt and misunderstanding.  And it seemed that as years went by, hurt and misunderstanding piled upon hurt and misunderstanding, and even talking on the phone became difficult.  At the same time I felt guilty and somehow defective for not being able to have a functional relationship with my own mother, but the guilt just made the hurt and misunderstanding even harder to deal with.  Others who attempted to help heal this broken relationship just added to the burden of guilt and pain, making me feel even more defective.

Tonight my mother is coming to visit me for Thanksgiving.  It will be the first Thanksgiving we have spent together since that horrible Thanksgiving years ago.  I’m actually really looking forward to it.

What changed between then and now?

Jon.

This Thanksgiving, I have to say, I am so thankful for him.  It is thanks to Jon that I have a relationship with my mother today, one in which we can email and talk on the phone and visit and just know and be with each other in a way I couldn’t have imagined not so many years ago.  Rather than making me feel guilty for my broken relationship with my mother, Jon patiently and gently pointed out that while I didn’t have to reconcile, didn’t have to force forgiveness I didn’t feel, I did have to let go of anger and bitterness and hurt, because those things were weighing me down and making me a bitter and unhappy person.  And because I never felt anything but accepted and loved by him, I felt free to let go of those feelings that were holding me back and keeping me from really being myself.  And I also felt comfortable enough to see a counselor and work through my own issues.  And eventually, I felt free enough to forgive. And forgiveness led to reconciliation, and reconciliation to renewed relationship.

How many people can honestly say their partner makes them a better person, helps them have better relationships with others, and shows them what grace and freedom really look like? I can. And this Thanksgiving, I’m so thankful for him.

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it’s outta my hands

This is sort of how I imagine the computer that does the match. Image via Flickr user Lori and the Bell Jar.

At some point in toddlerhood, it eventually hits all of us, the “I can do it by myself!”  And from that point on, to be human is to want to be in charge of ourselves.  You’re not the boss of me! I choose my choice! I’m in charge!

Lately, though, I find myself feeling like a toddler, trying to DO IT BY MYSELF, and this thing called life keeps reminding me that I’m not always the boss of me, I don’t always get to choose my choice.  Boy oh boy does the medical education system that owns our lives right now make that clear.  You see, in three weeks, Jon will get an email that will suddenly reveal what we’ll be doing with our lives for the next three years. And it’s more than driving me nuts. Continue reading “it’s outta my hands”

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CSA Charleston: Post Programming Note

The weekly CSA post, the last one of the season, will be a few days later than usual.  I realized I could take my time using up the veggies, as there was no new box coming to give me a deadline. Also, my freezer really can’t hold much more food. So, we’re trying to eat most of the veggies, and I’ll have a post about the last box and about the CSA experience as a whole when we finish.  I guess this gives me some time to really “digest” the whole experience before sharing my final thoughts of the season.

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THESE are spirit fingers

Here’s some Friday fun for everyone.  I found this hilarious video via my friend, Political Party Girl:

The instructor has clearly been borrowing Jessie Spano’s uppers.

True story, though, y’all.  In college, where I was required to take one P.E. class per year, I took “Aerobic Dance,” because I heard it was hilarious. And oh my sweet spandex, it was. We didn’t really have an instructor so much as a lady who worked a VCR, and we’d basically sweat it to the oldies on the stage of the auditorium while she sat in the audience and watched us. Most of the videos we did were from the same era as this video. My favorite featured an instructor who seemed like one of Jem’s lost Holograms, and wore ridiculous thong leotards covered in stars over neon tights.  If I had college to do over again, I’d make my friends buy crazy spandex outfits with me to wear to Aerobic Dance class.  I’m sure American Apparel woulda done us up right.

Some day you should ask me to see some of the moves I learned. My friends in the class and I used bust out some of the moves at parties after a few drinks.

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on breakdowns and “being vigilant”

Image via Flickr user Jeff Karpala.

In the past 11 days, I have received 3 campus safety alerts about women being assaulted on the streets of the campus where I work.  This news article from the local paper mentions two of them.  Women, walking down the street, attacked from behind.

Now, maybe I’m a little jumpier than some people because I have been a victim before, but it was with this news in my mind that I had to walk alone, in the dark, after my class last night.  Jon had taken the car to work yesterday morning, because it was pouring rain.  The hospital is three quarters of a mile from my office, and I walk there at least once a week after work to volunteer, so we figured it would be no big deal for me to get the car after class last night.  I hadn’t anticipated how much darker it is at 7 pm than 5.

Things running through my mind as I walked that .7 mi: walk fast, look around you, make sure your cell phone is in an outer pocket in case you need it, bag closed so as not to tempt robbers, don’t stop, stay out of the shadows, maybe you should hold your keys in case you need to use them as a weapon, why oh why don’t you have some pepper spray.

I was so relieved to reach the hospital and the brightly lit garage. Thankfully Jon had parked very close to the elevator. I got into the car, heart still pounding, and locked the doors. I am supposed to get free parking because I’m a hospital volunteer, but my badge is expired. The volunteer office told me not to worry about it, because no one ever really looks at our badges anyway.  Unfortunately, the parking attendant was on some sort of a power trip, and was concerned I might be a med student, using an out of date badge in order to park for free.  She decided to charge me $20, and she didn’t care that I showed her my work ID, to prove I was not a med student. I started crying.  She told me to stop, sarcastically asked if I needed a hug. I tearfully tried to come up with an explanation, told her it had been a long day.  I felt stupid for crying over $20, it’s not like it was a speeding ticket.

Later I realized why I got so upset over the $20 parking fee.  Because I thought I had reached the safe zone, only to be treated badly, and this triggered all my anxiety and anger and fear to just come rolling out in tears.  It took me a while after I got home to calm down.

And what, according to that news article, am I supposed to be doing with the news of these attacks? “We’re telling everyone to be aware of their surroundings and to be vigilant.”

It’s enough to make me want to cry all over again.

Not only does this comment suggest that somehow, those two women who were attacked were victimized because they were somehow not “vigilant,” it completely ignores the reality of being female in public. When am I not effing vigilant? Society has done a great job of teaching me that just by being a woman, I’m at risk, there are places I can’t go, times I shouldn’t be out, things I shouldn’t wear, zones where I am not safe, reasons for me to be constantly looking over my shoulder.  I’m vigilant all the time, and it gets to be exhausting. I can’t afford not to be vigilant, but even when I am, and something happens to me, you can bet your sweet bippy that someone’s going to say I should have been vigilant.

Public safety says they’ve expanded their patrols and offer on campus escorts, but the escort wouldn’t do me much good when I’m walking to somewhere off campus.  My boss, who teaches the night I have class and the night I volunteer, told me that from now on if I need to get to the hospital, he will drive me.  I really appreciate the offer, and will probably take him up on it, but at the same time, I’m so frustrated to need a man with me in order to be safe.

So I’m going to buy some pepper spray.  And I’m going to ask campus safety if, in light of these attacks, they could maybe offer a self defense course.  And if they can’t, I’ll probably take one elsewhere.  And yeah, I’ll be vigilant, just like always. Damn lot of good that will do me though.

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a font of joy

When I was in junior high, a miraculous invention changed my life.  No, I’m not talking about instant messaging, though that came out around that time and also changed my life, in large part by making me a super fast typist, though I’d rather forget that my junior high band nerd self chose “ilovemysax” as my first unfortunate screen name.  No, I’m talking about SPARKLY GEL PENS!  I’m pretty sure Japan, land of all things adorable, which also gave us the required Tamagotchis (which were later banned from school), invented sparkly gel pens, and they found their way into my little junior high world sometime after that.  Pretty soon they were practically required for junior high coolness, and we took our notes in class using neon colors, sometimes alternating every bullet point with a different color.  Never mind that the fluorescent oranges and pinks were rather hard to read, we were SO COOL with our sparkly pens.  (If you doubt that a pen is enough to be cool in junior high, you haven’t been in junior high.)  I vividly remember sitting around a four-seater table with my 3 best friends in social studies class, our shared collection of gel pens stacked in a pile in the middle of the table for our shared use and note-beautification.

But it wasn’t just class notes we beautified with our snazzy gel-inked, translucent roller-ball pens.  There’s another crucial aspect of junior high life for which gel pens were crucial.  And that is the art of the note to your friends.  I became sort of a master at the highly embellished note, crafted somewhat surreptitiously during class, detailing OH SO MUCH serious junior high drama, referring to crushes with super secret code names, with my friends’ names at the top in highly embellished fonts I free-handed using print-outs I made of entire alphabets with Microsoft Word fonts from my home computer.  I even invented some of my own fonts.  And of course, I folded all the notes into intricate origami shapes for delivery, either slipped into lockers or passed hand to hand in the hallways.  Pretty soon every friend who was on a sports team or competitive squad of some sort got a good-luck note, complete with doodles and illustrations, their names usually in my SUPER COOL self-designed zebra-printed all-caps font, on competition days.  My notes actually became coveted items, and people would get their feelings hurt if game day came and I didn’t give them a good luck note.

Though we eventually moved on to high school, and gel pens and note-writing sort of dropped by the wayside, perhaps because we had actual schoolwork to be focusing on with our AP courseloads. Still those early note writing days led to a love of self-taught semi-calligraphy, and if you’re ever lucky enough to receive a birthday card from me, odds are your name will be written on the front with some sort of fancy font, most likely using a silver or gold gel pen, which are still popular pen choices, even if their novelty no longer makes them a school-supply must have.  I think they’re now most popular with scrapbookers, which, you should see the stuff I did for my wedding album.

You may be wondering what is up with this ode to fonts and gel pens, or perhaps what the deal is with the fancy drop caps I’m using in every paragraph of this post.  And here is where I have to confess that the drop caps are the entire point.  I stumbled across typographer Jessica Hiche’s Daily Drop Cap blog and was instantly transported back to my junior high font-inventing, note-embellishing days.  If only someone had told my junior high self that growing up to be a font-designer was a possibility, my life may have taken a different course! Who knew that all that in-class time wasting could turn out to be a marketable skill?

C heck out Hiche’s Daily Drop Caps for yourself, if you’re a font-nerd like me. I’m just going to be drooling over her typography work, and maybe breaking out those gel pens for some fun times. Anyone need a note?

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is technology killing love and trust?

Image via Air America via degreedate.com.

David Brooks is sort of the Andy Rooney of the New York Times, always baffled by modern ways of life and love, and wishing we could return to the good old days, maybe even in Lake Woebegone, where the men don’t have iPhones, the women don’t have Facebook, and all of the relationships are hookup-free until marriage.  Brooks’ latest column is about how cell phones and texting have killed romance.

Brooks’ column is littered with proof of how he just. doesn’t. get. it. (He notes that the daters he quotes make up nicknames for their partners, not catching that “Stage Five Clinger” is a “Wedding Crashers” reference.  He also seems to think Bruce Springsteen is an appropriate cultural reference.) I sort of imagine that Brooks does his phoning on a Jitterbug.  He seems to almost want to return to the days of arranged marriages:

Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era — courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.

Now we have a dating free market, and free market conservative though he is, Brooks DOES NOT WANT!!!  Why? Because “texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination.” Continue reading “is technology killing love and trust?”