Christmas Spirit and Activities on Campus

My first Christmas alone after my husband died came on the heels of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that took the lives of twenty children and six adults. It put my grief in perspective. After all, I had forty-two years with Don and the parents in Newtown, Connecticut only got a few years with their innocent little angels. Their bottomless grief was a stark reminder that there are always people in the world who are hurting more than we do. I asked the universe back then “Where have you Gone, Christmas?” Now I'm asking similar questions when the world is so full of hate and war and discord. A world where our dysfunctional Congress has done nothing since Newtown to curb school shootings that are as common now as fleas on an alley cat. But I’m trying my best to push the atrocities of war and political inaction aside and find my Christmas spirit. How do I do that? Do I embrace Solomon’s line about there being a time for peace and a time for war, essentially saying “it’s not my problem, let God handle it?”

“To everything there is a season….a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” In times of grief I’ve always found that Bible verse to be comforting and it’s commonly quoted in sympathy cards. I just wish Solomon’s list of contrasting seasons didn’t end with, “there is a time for war and a time for peace.” I much prefer the Humanist Bible’s take on war and peace which says in Proverbs Chapter 143: “There was never a good war or a bad peace," a quote 'borrowed' from Benjamin Franklin and meant to remind us all that wars come with a terrible cost, no matter the altruistic justifications we use to support them. With that off my chest, I've given my Christmas ghosts their due. Tomorrow I'll turn the page and find my holiday spirit.

There is so much Christmas related stuff going on here at the Continuum Care Complex where I live that you can feel the energy has changed but most of it is stuff I’m not interested in taking part in. First, there is a bus trip today a town on Lake Michigan for holiday shopping followed by lunch. Another day of shopping takes place next week to a pop-up Christmas market here in town. Another night they've booked a trolley ride through a baseball park set up with millions of Christmas lights. Then there is the annual “Decorate the Lobby” party where last year there were two dozen chiefs and very few Indians doing the work. I walked over to that event last year with the intent to get involved but kept right on walking when I saw what was going on. Creative decisions by committee is not my cup of anything. Well, maybe a shot of whiskey could make me see the humor in five people trying to figure out where to hang one Christmas ornament on a tree. When I started in the floral industry I had an old boss who was fond of saying, “Time is money” so I learned to make creative decisions that didn’t light his fire by soliciting the opinions of others. I was a trained floral designer and I had to own it. He was a crusty old guy that most people didn't like but we got along great and he taught me a lot like, "If you don't drink coffee you don't get a coffee break."

In the food department here at the CCC I was happy to see a cookie decorating event on our calendar again and I signed up for that and the gingerbread house contest. We get our house kits this week and I’m excited about that. They’ll have a bake sale here closer to Christmas like they did before Thanksgiving. The kitchen bakes all kinds of goodies we can buy to take to family parties. They are good but pricey. But what isn’t these days. They’ll also have a Christmas buffet and our resident driven Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties.

I’m not one of these people who plays Christmas music in the house. My only music related tradition comes in the form of two music boxes. One my dad brought home from a deer hunting trip when I was four-five years old. It’s the kind that hangs round a child’s neck and it has a crank on the side to play Jiggle Bells. It still worked up until last year. The other music box has a wooden Santa's sleigh on top that goes around when the music plays Silent Night. I’ve had that one since the ‘60s. But on this campus there are tons of music related things to go to. Two bus rides off campus to hear concerts at local churches. A choral group is coming here and we’ve already had a two man show of Christmas music, and a Christmas Caroles sing-along is coming up before the ink is even dry on this essay. (If I were writing this out long-hand instead of on a computer. I need an updated, before-the-ink-is-dry phrase. Any suggestions?) And did I mention all the exercise classes that involve music---and there are four of them---have switched over to Christmas music? The exercise addicted people on campus are going to be sick of it before 2024 gets ushered in. I’m sick of it and I just walk past the exercise room on my way to other things.

And last but not least for many people on campus, since the beginning of November through the end of the year the Movie series, The Chosen One plays twice a week with a study discussion taking place afterward. (They did the same thing last year as well.) Those discussions occasionally spill out onto the lunch table so I know the series is, to quote the internet: “based on the true stories of the gospels of Jesus Christ. Some locations and timelines have been combined or condensed. Backstories and some characters or dialogue have been added.” All the people who are following this series rave about it and for a minute and a half when it first started this year I thought about watching it with the others. My favorite pastor on campus, Ms Angel from my creative writing group, was to lead the discussions and she knows I’m a serious doubting Thomas when it comes to religion. But two weeks ago she and another pastor got downsized without any warning that it was coming. Now, this campus and our sister campus share one pastor. I don’t know how they could do that to her right before Christmas. She was devastated…but trying her best to see this as not an ending of a hard earned goal but as the beginning of a new chapter. And isn't that what most/many of us do when we must move on? ©

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

Leaving Time...or is it Time to Leave?

Have you read Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult? I probably shouldn’t be discussing the book in public on the chance that someone reading this has it sitting in their to-read stack. But I can’t help it. I just finished it last night and book club is a week away and I want to sort out my reactions to it. I read a few reviews this morning to see how they handled the plot twist in the last forth of the book and none of them gave away the fact that---spoiler alert!---the characters you think are alive are actually ghosts and the character/s you think are dead are not. For most of the book you think you’re reading an interesting mystery of sorts about a 13 year old girl who wants to find out why her mother ran off ten years ago and she gets a down-and-out private detective and a has-been TV psychic to help her.

The story line of the book takes place mostly at an elephant sanctuary and the mother was a researcher studying the grieving habits of elephants. I love elephants. I mean I REALLY love them! I have an elephant bell sitting four feet away from me as I type. I follow the Elephant Listening Project on Facebook. I donate to elephant causes so I was racing through this book like it was on fire. All the main characters were extremely interesting…until the big reveal and then I felt let down, disappointed. Cheated. I wanted a happy ending, not one that opens up a bigger can of worms to sort out. Jodi Picoult is a good writer and her research about the elephants was spot on and, sure, the mystery got solved by the end of the book. BUT I don’t believe in ghosts. At least 95% of me doesn’t believe in ghosts. Jodi via way of the psychic character had some interesting things to say about our after-lives for lack of a better way to describe the supposed spirits milling around our space after leaving our time.

After closing the book last night I said out loud, “Okay, Don, if you’re a ghost you’d better come by and haunt me tonight.” And he did! It wasn’t a pleasant dream that made me wake up smiling and trying to hold on to that haziness as long as possible. Nope. I woke up in a panic. I’d been running from an elephant chasing me and Don was on a motorcycle behind the elephant driving him to me. I remember my dreams often enough that I have the dream dictionary bookmarked on my computer and this is what I found: “Dreaming of an elephant coming towards you at an unstoppable speed means that you are going to face a situation that you cannot control. You have to let things be and wish that it will all work out in the end.” I’m guessing the “situation I can’t control” is the fact that I’m going to die one day and I’m really not in the mood to go any time soon. And I don’t even want to guess why I dreamed that Don was herding the elephant in my direction. 

Change of topic: The next morning I loaded up the back of my Chevy Trax with things left over from my recent redecorating project. I had so much stuff the back bumper was dragging on the ground. A slight exaggeration, but it was a big load that included eight sets of sheets for twin beds. I had sets in red, black, and gray---prints, solids, flannel and jersey. I didn’t even know I had so many sets stuck on the top shelf of my closet. I also took a whole trash bag full of towels sets in the same colors and two boxes full of stuff I knew if I didn’t get them out of the house right away, I’d be tempted to keep them in the garage until they grew roots. I set aside all the framed photographs I had in my bedroom with plans to hang them on the pegboard wall in the garage where my husband’s collection of gas station memorabilia was displayed. Why not? These are my people. I’ll see them more often in the garage than I will if I un-frame them and put the photos in albums.

After dropping off my loot at Goodwill I headed north five miles to the tourist town where my husband grew up and my Mad Hatters Society sisters meet the first Wednesday of every month. But I was a half hour early so I back-tracked a couple of blocks to make an early visit at the cemetery---I usually don't go until May. I had dug the sod out around Don’s tombstone last fall and I was surprised to see the ‘ditch’ filled up with pine cones and pine needles still attached to small branches. Holy crap, that pine sap is sticky! I’d forgotten about that. It was a common childhood curse at the cottage where we kids played cowboys and Indians in the woods behind the lake. Back then, mom used gasoline to get pine pitch off our skin and out of our hair. I wasn’t about to try to get some gas out of my Chevy Trax so I tried the only liquid I had in the car besides water---Windex. To my shock, it took the pine sap off my fingers.

When I left the cemetery I told my husband---just in case he does happen to be a ghost and was hanging around---that I’m not speaking to him until he apologizes for trying to get me trampled by an elephant which, by the way, is how someone in the Leaving Time book died. But for a while, you're really not sure which character it was who got her head crushed under the elephant's foot. ©

Spying on Myself and Finding Ghosts

March 16^th. How did that happen? Life goes by too quickly and sometimes I think that happens because I tend to over schedule myself but I know if I didn’t the Lord of Boredom steps up to harass me. And he has a wicked sense of humor. Monday I took Levi to the Foo-Foo Doggie Beauty Spa, then I picked up some lunch, stopped at the pet store and on to the grocery before swinging back around to collect the dog. Tuesday and Wednesday I emptied out my bedroom and bathroom of everything I could carry to get ready for the painters to come beautify my rooms. (You should have seen all the stuff I purged out of my media cabinet and my medicine cabinet!) Wednesday I went to a lecture on Music Theory and how it affects the brain. Thursday was book club day and I’m composing this post before the painters are due on Friday. Is this lineup enough to qualify as over-scheduling my life? It wouldn’t have been back in my heydays when if I didn’t have a half-dozen things to do each day I was on vacation.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I’ve been playing with my little spy tape recorder. Years ago when I was using it a lot, I had a bad habit of not labeling the tapes I made. And since I wanted to recorder myself sleeping to see if I snore with and without the Snore Stopper device I wrote about last week, I decided I should listen to a few tapes to see if there was anything worth keeping before I recorded over one of them. The first two I listened to were conversations with my dad---he died in 1999. Worth keeping. The third tape I pop in was a shocker. It was my husband’s last out-going message from his telephone answering machine. The forth tape had me cracking up laughing along with myself laughing on the tape. I was attending a lecture given by the humor columnist from our local newspaper but there’s no denying the other voices on the tape were mine and my husband’s from 25+ years ago. A few minutes into the lecture the speaker had asked the audience members to each state our names and why we came to the lecture. Here’s what I heard…

“My name is Jean and I’m here because I don’t get a lot of humor.”

The speaker: “Are there any comedians or comedy shows you do get and like?”

I like Barry Miller,” I answered, “but I don’t get Woody Allen. I really don’t!” Then the speaker explained the differences in the two kinds of humor employed in my examples. 

Next up was my husband. “I’m Don and I’ve got to agree with her. She doesn’t get all humor and I think she’s funny when she’s not getting humor.” I’m laughing in the background as he went on…and on. “Barry Miller is a classic and Night Court. I predict in the future there will be tapes of those shows we can watch over and over again and still see the humor in them. Robin Williams is another. When he gets on a roll---say on the Johnny Carson Show---he can have us laughing until our stomachs ache. Another thing I find funny are your columns.” Don was being a kiss-up, but I could tell he was nervous speaking in public because he always talked faster when he was. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside to hear the two of us having a good time laughing and interacting with the group. But I’m glad he wasn’t around to see what happened to Robin Williams. Don dealt with a few periods of deep depression in his life---which few people knew about---and Robin’s suicide would have hit him hard.

The first night I set the voice activated recorder to find out if I snore I was in bed from midnight to eight in the morning but my Fitbit claimed I only got three hours of sleep, the rest of the time I was restless. Now I know why. I’m not snoring but I sure am having a lot of conversations in a language that would take an intergalactic interpreter to translate. Pure gibberish punctuated with laughter and some whimpering and apparently I must look at the clock because at one point I said, “Three o’clock” as clear as a bell. Interestingly enough it was after 3:00 when Fitbit said I actually slept deep enough not to be labeled ‘restless.’ The second night I set the recorder I was wearing the Snore Stopper “baskets” up my nose and my Fitbit said I slept 6 hours and 53 minutes with only 49 minutes being labeled ‘restless.’ But the funny part was the words I was saying were easier to understand and there were less of them. 

Talking in your sleep is generally harmless, according to my online search and the only treatment needed is having your bed partner wear ear plugs, but have you ever tried making a dog wear them? I’d probably forget to take them back out in the morning and spend all day wondering why he’s ignoring me. It’s the Lord of Boredom who makes me do experiences like this, but all kidding aside, how much does a sleep study cost these days? A $1,000+? And I’ll bet I wouldn’t have learned a whole lot more. ©