More Christmas Memories

My friend Patti Digh, whose blog posts have been made into a wonderful book, Life Is A Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful and Live Intentionally, writes lovingly of the deaths of her father and stepfather, the former very sudden (although not unexpected) and the latter only 37 days after his cancer diagnosis. Her stepfather's death became the catalyst for her blog 37 Days and her book. Today, Christmas Day, she reprised her blog post from Dec. 24, 2005, an annual re-telling that she shares with us in celebration of the lives of two wonderful men who had an impact on her life.

I've read these stories of Patti's before, and as before, it struck me again today how we have another thing in common (besides that her birthday is Aug. 16: same as Elvis; and mine is Aug. 17: same as Mae West): her father died of heart disease at the age of 53; my father died of heart disease three months shy of 53. That, however, is where the similarity in our stories about our fathers ends. From Patti's description of her father, he was kind, thoughtful ("the best breakfast cooker in the house," maker of monogrammed pancakes) and had a "pixie sense of humor." As far as I could tell my father had no sense of humor whatsoever.

Dad was a big man, about 6'1" tall with a barrel chest. He had played semi-pro football before he and my mother were married, a marriage for which she was always grateful (she told me so herself) since I was already on the way. My mother gave birth to five children from 1947 to 1954, and I think we were just too much for my father, who was the sole breadwinner until we were in high school. My mother didn't learn to drive until he died, so he also did the grocery shopping while she stayed home with us. His only other household duty, as I recall, was yelling a lot and smacking us regularly.

In her essay Patti ponders what her father might be like now, and wonders if she would adore him less now that she is old enough to see things about him as an adult that she wouldn't like. "Does my adoration depend on his loss?" she asks. For me, it is the opposite: I wonder if I would have loved my father more now.

One of the best memories I have of my father was Christmas 1972. I was 25 years old and had been married for nearly three years. Christmas had always been the best time to be with Dad, even when we were little (despite being yelled at and made to feel like a clumsy oaf when I dropped my best present of 1958--my very own camera--as if I didn't feel bad enough already). I like to think it was the generosity he wanted to show throughout the other 11 months of the year that was condensed into what certainly was for my sister, my three brothers and me the most wonderful time of the year.

About the year I turned 12 my mother started encouraging us to write down what we wanted for Christmas. I made it as easy as I could for Santa to bring just the right stitched-down pleated skirt and matching Villager sweater by helpfully including the page and item numbers from the Sears catalog. The list was a modest one, with perhaps a half-dozen items on it, nothing too expensive, and what do you know! On Christmas morning, everything on my list was waiting for me under the tree! My siblings were equally blessed, except for a few of the things on the bottom of my sister's rather lengthy list (the next year she put her "must-haves" at the top). It took my parents the next 11 months, or perhaps longer, to pay off the Sears bill.

In 1972 I had no list. It was enough just to be in the bosom of my family, having spent the first two Christmases of my married life without sufficient funds for two round-trip tickets from Virginia to Memphis for a not-so-white Christmas with my wacky siblings, my mother and my now-mellowing father. The highlight of the first day was evening cocktails with my parents. Mom and Dad were not drinkers while we were growing up so it was an especially rare occasion and an increasingly happy one as the evening wore on. I don't think I ever saw Dad laugh as much as he did that night. I felt all grown up, an adult at last, a peer of my father instead of the brat who couldn't seem to do anything to please him. He didn't live to enjoy Christmas 1973.

So I am left to ponder what life with father would have been like after that. My mother says my coming out as a lesbian would have been very difficult for him, so perhaps it's best that he didn't make it to 1981. He would have been 88 this past July, but I doubt he would have lasted that long. My mother battled cancer for six years and died in 1999 at a too-young 77.

I was angry with my father for many years for the way he treated me as a child, blaming him for all the qualities in myself that I abhored. But I finally gave that up in 1995 with the help of a great weekend workshop during which I wrote him a letter of forgiveness. These days I only wish he had been around long enough to see his granddaughter, who is now 31, and maybe his great-grandson, who's probably going to be a big man like my dad and my brothers. Dad would have enjoyed giving him a football for Christmas.

Happy Holidays to all from St. Augustine, Florida.

By the Sea, By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea

Well, I finally made it to the beach. I had intended to visit the North Carolina Outer Banks soon after I bought the motorhome, but gas was going for $4.00+ per gallon and campground fees in that area were around $40-$60 per night, so I stayed closer to Asheville while waiting for my daughter's October 25 wedding.

I've been in Florida since Thanksgiving week but had had no more than a glimpse of "big" water (Tampa Bay) when I decided it was time to take advantage of a friend's offer to stay in her condo at Satellite Beach, between Cocoa Beach and Melbourne Beach on the Atlantic coast. I took my friend Annette, in whose back yard I've been staying since the first week in December, and it was a quick two-hour drive from her home north of Orlando to the beach.

"On the Atlantic coast" is an understatement. We arrived in late afternoon as the high tide was just turning. As we sat in our second floor living room and looked out across the small balcony, there was no beach to be seen, just rough sea. Waves lapped at the stairway leading down to the beach, and sand completely covered the bottom step. I've never stayed in a place so close to the water. With the angry December surf and gray skies I felt rather uneasy, or was it the memory of the lifeguard's sign at that public beach--"rough surf, rip tides, man o' war, water temp. 66"--that was making me feel fearful and exhilirated at the same time?

It was a great three days. The surf calmed down a bit, the sun came out, and the bird watching was incredible, the highlight being the glorious sight of an osprey swooping into a wave and climbing back into the sky with a flashing silver fish wriggling in its talons. Of course there were the scooty-legged sandpipers in several varieties, the ubiquitous gulls, and squadrons of pelicans

doing aerial maneuvers up and down the beach. I became a cloud watcher, too. The surfers were out in their wet suits, which I didn't expect to see since the east coast waves are relatively benign, but I guess if you're a surfer who lives on the Atlantic you take what you can get. Me, I never got in the water and I was happy as a clam.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

It's now Saturday, December 13. Time I finished the post I started nearly a week ago.

I've been visiting friends and relatives in Florida since the week of Thanksgiving, and since they attend church, I have been joining them, mainly for something to do and to "be folks," you know? At least, that's how it started out. But I've discovered that my study of Eckhart Tolle's writings has given me a new perspective on the sayings of Jesus, and that being immersed in Christian doctrine of the Presbyterian variety on Sunday morning (no pun intended, since Presbyterians don't immerse, they just sprinkle) has become less...well..."doctrinaire" when filtered through the lens of my new spiritual understanding.

A couple weeks ago I joined my cousin Peggy at her church in Tampa and even sang in her choir. I've been a choral singer nearly all my life until the last few years. It was the first Sunday in Advent, the first of four Sundays leading to Christmas, so even though the tree was not up yet, the Advent wreath of evergreens with purple, pink and white candles was on display, and the Christmas spirit that Walmart has been trying to instill since the day after Halloween finally was validated in the church sanctuary. A child was chosen to light the first purple candle and as I watched and listened to the familiar words, I harkened back to days of yore (about 1958) when I and my fellow girls' junior choir members sat together in church in our blue robes and I believed that Jesus was the son of God.

I don't remember the title of the minister's sermon, but he held my attention when he recalled his experience of being on retreat at a monastery just before Advent a few years ago. He said he had arrived for the retreat with his usual collection of essential communication devices: cell phone, laptop computer and Blackberry, intent on keeping up with his work while becoming spiritually renewed. He described how he and his fellow attendees did everything the monks did every day, including retiring at 8 p.m. and rising at 4 a.m., prayers, meals, church services and long periods of silence. It was during the silences that he answered e-mails and kept up with correspondence.

The minister then recounted his meeting with the director of the monastery, an audience that all attendees were given during their week-long stay. When his host asked how he was enjoying the retreat, he confessed to the monk that he felt he was not "getting it," that even though he was doing everything the monks did, he was not having the kind of spiritual experience he had expected to have.

"Well, duh," I said to myself. "This comes under the heading of, 'I don't believe I'd have told that.'" (I was feeling rather self-satisfied in my new-found knowledge of being in the stillness.) "Anybody should have known that," I thought.

My very next thought was, "See how quick you are to judge?" Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope for me at all, ever. And don't ask how the "no complaining/gossiping/whining" thing is going. "Today is day one" has become my mantra.

But that is not the point of this post. What I really want to convey is how being in church lately has become almost bearable because what I've heard makes more sense to me now than when I heard it back in my choir days (it was the singing that kept me going back), even as an adult. In his books, Eckhart Tolle often interprets the words of Jesus in such a way that I can almost believe again, if not that Jesus was the son of God, at least that he sure had it goin' on. If you believe in what the Bible says, I encourage you to read A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle. You may get an enhanced perspective on what it means to be a follower of Christ.

If you don't believe but you're still searching for "the peace that passes all understanding," (Phillipians 4:7 and A New Earth, page 56) like I am, Eckhart says you can stop searching because you already have it in you to be at peace if only you will stop the thoughts in your head and be still. And the best part is you don't have to sit on a cushion with your back perfectly straight in the pretzel--I mean lotus--position for what seems like hours but is really only 30 minutes (not that I'm complaining)... in order to experience the stillness. All you have to do is ask yourself, "Am I still breathing?" That focuses your attention away from the voice in your head ("What voice?" you ask. "That one," Eckhard replies.) and puts it on your body. Beathing in...breathing out.

Live in this moment. Be at peace. And have a holly jolly Christmas.