Two homes. One heart.

What being home (in Beaufort) means to me

Having two "homes" can be very conflicting, especially when they are so different and you can't put all the things you like about one into the other. My mom's home - an old Maine farmhouse - is not my idea of a comfortable house. It is home, because that is where she is. But the house itself causes neverending daily annoyances that threaten my patience when I am there. It is always difficult to wave goodbye to the Ermalator as I leave the driveway of 1121 Webber Pond Road, but as soon as my back is turned, I am looking forward to being back in my space, even if that means being apart from those I love.Being home to me is being able to walk across a floor in my bare feet and it doesn't feel like I'm walking across the driveway in barefeet. Home means hot water comes instantly from the tap, which by the way, has pressure. A remarkable luxury. At home, taking a shower doesn't involved walking down two flights of stairs, through a garage, across a dirt basement to empty the water filter so I have enough water pressure to actually rinse off the soap, and then going back up two flights again to get in the shower, all the while hoping mom doesn't forget and flush the toilet while I'm in there, draining all the cold water and more importantly, since the water doesn't get that hot anyway, reducing the shower stream to a dribble. Home means I can get out of bed and not have to put on three layers and two pairs of socks before even going to the bathroom. Home means not having to brush my teeth in the same sink my mom cleans her dentures in.Home means no cluster flies creeping out of the upstairs windows every damn hour of every damn day. The sound of flies buzzing sends me into a PTSD-like frenzy to kill.Home means comfortable furniture, like a sofa.  Watching something on TV other than Judge Judy, Dr. Oz and the Young and the Restless.Home has flourishing outdoor plants living on the doorstep in December. A yard with no snow or mud or ice. Home is enjoying my morning coffee sitting on the back step in my bathrobe.Listening to songbirds. Seeing palm trees and spanish moss. Blue sky.There is no fleece at this home, or flannel sheets, or electric mattress warmers.Home means no dust, cat hair or wood smoke to clog my sinuses and make me sneeze. But what this home doesn't have is the hearts of friends and family I have known for upwards of 47 years. And so I will have to be content with my clean, cozy, warm environment -- did I mention clean? And warm?--until I am headed back to my other home - the real one where I can wrap myself in the warmth and comfort and meaningful connections and bonds of true and ever lasting friendships.Until the spring, my friends!! 

Feeling Christmas

The Angel from 1945

Feeling Christmas

My mother’s house is decorated top to bottom with every ornament, every Santa, every wreath and elf and angel she owns. But it doesn't "feel" like Christmas, she says. 

There are reindeer of every size and shape, from the 1920s to modern day, from Avon bottles to plastic Rudolph’s. I have watched her for a week frantically put lights and themed decorations on 6 Christmas trees ranging in height from 3 feet to 6 feet, and at least 9 tabletop ones. She has worn herself ragged putting plastic poinsettias in old bottles as vases for each step on the 12 stairs to the second floor; hanging ornaments on trees, along doorways, or displayed in bowls. Once you step into her home, there is no doubt she is singularly focused on Christmas.
Yet after the last ornament was in place, and the last proverbial stocking was hung, surrounded by empty ornament boxes, bags of bows and wrapping paper, the house glistening from floor to rafters with red, green, gold and silver at every turn, she says, "It doesn’t feel like Christmas."
And therein lies the problem. As we age, Christmas can look the same, we can use the same ornaments, the same trees, the same recipes, but it often doesn’t feel the same as we once remembered.

Her statement made me wonder: could I put in words what Christmas feels like?  It feels like family, it feels like snow crunching beneath your feet as you approach the door of those you love, laden with presents and food and special holiday grog. Eggnog. Chocolate Fudge. Homemade Christmas shaped sugar cookies with pastel colored icing and those hard silver balls called dragees we all ate despite the lead warnings. Christmas feels like fellowship and laughter and the sound of people stomping their feet on the doormat before coming through the door with snowy boots. Christmas feels like cinnamon and cloves and oranges and coffee and bacon. Christmas is timing the various parts of the holiday meal just right so that everything gets to the table warm and ready for the large crowd of smiling faces at the table, which is set with dishes used only on this one day.

All these things are in the past for my mom. At 91, her active participation in the overall family Christmas is minimal. She no longer hosts the family dinner, she no longer spends hours in the kitchen creating her favorite snowball cookies, frangipanis, or banana bread. There's no popping in town for last minute stocking stuffers, or the forgotten lime Jello for her holiday molded salad, or for anything at all, for that matter. She no longer concerns herself with wrapping—or even buying-- presents and arranging them under the tree with only the big packages in the back, and the rest arranged forward by size and color around the base. And then rearranged every time new presents are haphazardly added, disrupting the well planned symmetry of a perfect tree.
This is what happens when you outlive your generation’s family traditions, when people die, when family dynamics change, when you've outlived your ability to play Santa, to care about watching It's a Wonderful Life one more time, to enjoy the chaos of the season--to multi task and juggle all the expectations. Without those things, do you lose the feeling of Christmas? Does it end up feeling like just another day, the meaning lost along with the traditions, the loved ones, and the ability to keep up with an ever-changing distraught and torn world randomly caught on disturbing videos that go viral.

How does someone who experienced the results of the Depression, saw the evolution from radio to color TV, experienced the emotional and economic effects of several wars, marveled at the advance of medicine and technology beyond their w ildest imaginings, how does someone like that manage the meaning of Christmas today? My mom raised a family in much simpler times, when homemade flannel pajamas, a board game, and a doll was about as elaborate as the gifting needed to be. She had a loving husband, a large rambling farmhouse, her garden, her daughters and the family dog. She ruled it all from her position as wife, homemaker and mother. She made all the decisions on decorating, gift giving and wrapping, the Christmas dinner menu, when and where we would be on Christmas Eve.

Today, that same woman makes none of those decisions, but she can decide where to put that Santa that came from Fishman’s back in 1952. So, she decorates.

She decorates because she can, and while she pulls out decorations from 20, 30—oh, who are we kidding – 50 years ago, she gets a memory back of a certain Christmas past and perhaps a fleeting moment of how Christmas used to feel.

And how many of us feel the same? That the holiday season is no longer completely in our control and therefore, the feeling of Christmas has escaped us. So we put up 6 Christmas trees and every Santa we ever owned.  We patch the holes in our hearts --at least for the day-- and focus on the one thing we can control. As my mom says, it may not feel like Christmas, but I can certainly make it look like Christmas.

These days for me, Christmas is almost having a heart attack watching my 91-year-old mom climb a stepladder to put the only angel she’s ever used on top of the tree, and letting her do it. And later watching her fall asleep in her chair, chin rising and falling on her chest, after a hard day of non stop decorating. That's what Christmas has come to mean to me. And when I look at my mom, still alive and not only thriving but also still striving for goals, like trying to feel Christmas, I think that must be what Christmas means. Some days it’s not pretty, some days it’s downright scary, but it is an incredible journey and I am grateful she has given me the chance for the ride. Keep on decorating, Mom. Christmas is right here.

#500 word challenge Day 3: Procrastination as an art form

My worst trait as a writer I think is procrastination. That and always using the “While blah blah blah, this was happening” sentence structure. That is why I thought this #500 word challenge would be good for me. Something fun that keeps me on task and maybe something that could help break my procrastination habit.

That is why on the third---er fourth day---I am writing my third batch of 500 words.

At least I haven’t given up entirely.

I have read books, attended time management sessions, been coaxed, prodded, intimidated to try and improve my distain for the deadline– one editor told me that I expand the work to fill the deadline time, instead of just sitting down and doing it and having it done early. Another told me that I strive for perfection when it isn’t needed, and I need to just think “whatever gets done is good enough.” And one actually gave me a little paperweight for my desk that reads The ultimate motivation is the deadline. That was years ago and it still sits on my desk as a gentle but not so effective reminder. One book I read said you need to figure out WHY you procrastinate in order to fix the problem. It listed many different types of motivations, and I fit into at least three of them: ironically, my independent spirit (you’re not the boss of me) resents “being told” when to get things done, even when it is for my own good. So I worked on that, telling myself that what I wanted was to make the deadline and experience that good feeling of being on time. Things are much less chaotic when you aren’t working on overlapping deadlines.  Another was the perfection thing – afraid that what you are working on is not going to be perfect, so you never finish it. I do try to keep that in mind when on the day before deadline I think – hey, this would be an awesome thing to have in this article – but wait, I don’t have time. HATE that. That theory has helped me let go of huge chunks of copy and interviews instead of wrangling with it another day or so and trying to make it fit and missing a deadline. Sometimes, anyway. And of course in this world of texting, facebook and twitter, the book talked about shutting down those things and giving yourself x amount of time to just focus on the task. I find that wearing headphones – even when I am alone - and listening to my favorite music helps me with this. It anchors me both physically and emotionally. The wire of the headphones tethers me to my laptop and the music helps me zone out all other distractions except the words and task on my screen. And if you are working on something boring, or with a huge amount of text, I have found that breaking it down into smaller chunks helps – you’re not looking at this large mammoth thing that needs to be done yesterday – instead you just have 2 or 3 pages to complete at a time. Easy Peasy. That actually works well for me. Most of the time.

And then there are days like today, and yesterday, and the day before, when life just gets so big and noisy and disruptive that I have lost all focus and even when I “apply my ass to the seat” as Dorothy Parker says…I still can’t get anything done. And that’s when I remember what the authors of that procrastinaton book said in their preface: they were writing a book about procrastination, and they missed their first deadline by four months! They wrote, we’re not writing a book about procrastination because we don’t procrastinate, we are writing a book because we do! So here were two women who are successful – that book is in like its fourth reprint – but still procrastinators! That means that you can procrastinate and still be successful. Being a procrastinator does not make you a loser, or a bad person, or a lousy employee, or a no-good writer. It just makes you human. So on with the struggle!

#500 word challenge Day 2: Color My World

      There are lots of things that people know about me. I’m not a very private person and even before the advent of Facebook I shared too much information at will. Just without photos. Anyone who has known me for five minutes knows I like vodka martinis, have a gluten allergy, hate the cold, love animals, and hanging at local bars with friends on Sunday afternoons. But there is one thing that I bet not many people know about me. And that is that I like to color. Yeah, color. Not the crayon and Disney character on scratchy pages kind, but the needle sharp colored pencil and advanced color books type put out by Mindware and Brainiac. Complex, intricate designs that repeat themselves in a mosaic or geometric pattern, or hidden figures that emerge as I carefully choose each color and slide the end of the pencil back and forth over the particular segment I am coloring.

I find it so meditative, relaxing and creative. Since I have no drawing talent of my own, I enjoy creating colorful pictures without the struggle of creating the images as well. I like the focus of staying within the lines, pairing colors together or coordinating their juxtaposition, but at the same time, applying the color to the page, either with a light feather swipe to produce a whisper of pastel or a hard bearing, indent creating firm pressure that pinches the tips of your fingers to make harsh bold colors from the same pencil. When I was a kid, I don’t remember enjoying coloring. I remember being impatient about having to stay within the lines – yeah, I got reprimanded – and I was more interested in peeling off the paper of the crayons than creating pretty pictures. My coloring then was kind of crazy swirling tornados of color, with holidays and gaps in between and no consistency in the color from one stroke to the next.

Today, when I color, sometimes I intentionally try something weird or off, take a risk with my coloring that I wouldn’t have done as a kid. Like blue trees or brown flowers, or purple people. Or putting neon orange and green right next to each other – and a fuchsia pink, too. Wow – ugly but daring. And freeing. Because the results of the coloring doesn’t matter. It’s the journey now that I enjoy. A few stolen quiet moments of contemplation that don’t have any right or wrong or disastrous implications or consequences. A break in the day of deadlines, responsibilities, and hard thinking. Just me and my colored pencils, my sharpener and my book. My private time. My peace.

What really matters

What really matters

No matter how much you love her, you do not want to brush your teeth after your 90-year-old mom has put her dentures to rest. No. Seriously. I live with my mom a few months of the year, and she is a wonder, a champ, an idol. She shovels snow, splits wood, climbs ladders, and stairs, and decorates at least 10 trees for Christmas in her nearly 200-year-old farmhouse. She keeps a wood stove going, cans vegetables that she grows in her own garden, mows her own lawn on a riding tractor, splits her own wood and still drives her garbage to the landfill. She survives colon cancer surgery like it was a manicure. She is an independent, strong willed and strong-bodied Yankee, to be admired for her longevity, wisdom, and resilience. But at 90, you don’t pay much attention to what you leave behind in your white porcelain sink, probably because you don’t really see it, and rinsing your dentures and placing them in their plastic chopper bin with a tablet of Polident is rote. Who thinks of that after 30 plus years? Not my mother. Sort of how she no longer finds it necessary to clean the litter box daily, or vacuum the upstairs hallway often, or wipe off the table or counter. So what if she leaves She can still make a mean jar of pickles, grow the best lilacs and irises, and stoic – she is the very best at stoicism.  I love her dearly, but brushing my teeth in the upstairs bathroom after she has put herself to bed—it’s not pretty. It takes a strong stomach, and a willingness to let things go (like chunks of unidentifiable food around the chrome drain).  I’m sure it’s a bit like being 90 – you begin to worry only about the things that matter. Being happy, being sure of yourself, living your life the way you wish. Like loving the woman who gave birth to you, focusing on her strengths, and ignoring the things that don’t matter. After all, that’s what paper towels are for, right? But I might recommend, on certain occasions, closing your eyes to the obvious, and focusing more on the important things.