Let's Decorate the Christmas Tree

The tree went up yesterday. It is over twenty-five years old and surviving gamely. We thank Sears. Granted, it takes a little longer each year to persuade the branches to look tree-like, but then it’s harder each year to make the parts of my body work. I sympathize.

Skip wove the small coloured lights we like through the branches and garlanded the tree in gold and silver. Around the base he wrapped the tree skirt that we have had for over thirty years, a cheap white skirt with stamped pictures; sometimes it’s about the tradition.

The cardboard box with all the balls and inexpensive decorations sits nearby. Today I will pull out the numerous smaller boxes in which I pack our more unusual and expensive ornaments. During the day, we will wander out from our rooms, put up a few ornaments, and wander back in, Skip to play WoW, or check gmail, or Facebook, me to write, or play adventure games, or check mail and Facebook.

I look forward every year to opening each box to see which ornament I have packed away. Old friends all of them. Once they are hung we fill in the gaps with the generic decorations from our local grocery store. As they are all gold, or frosted red, they create a pretty background for the more unique ornaments.

I prewrite posts in my head, often drifting off to sleep that way. I realised that almost every post this season, I start with: There is something magical about…By the time I write the post I have changed the beginning, but I want to write those words. There is something magical about every aspect of Christmas to me. Part of it is that it only happens once a year: that we see the associated items; make the eggnog and cookies; listen to the carols; remember why the season in the first place; and stop for a moment in our lives to think of others.

Peace, as my friend KC would say.

A Wreath for the Door

Skip pulls out the tree today and with it the ratty cardboard box in which we store our eclectic accumulation of decorations for the house and tree. Our main collection of ornaments went into storage several years ago and we have since picked up the odd thing here or there, more with the intent of looking Christmassy, rather than adding to our collection. There are notable exceptions when we have spotted an ornament in our travels, or mom has given us one.

We have silver, gold, and red garlands to drape and intertwine around the house as well as the tree. One small stuffed Santa Claus. We shall have poinsettias and maybe a candle or two. A small pewter tree from my friend Pam. I shall lay our stockings over the banister. And, I have the resin nativity set I bought for our children over thirty years ago: Joseph, Mary, a donkey, and the baby Jesus in a manger. The baby stays in a drawer until Christmas Eve. Doesn't sound like much, all told, but it suffices for now.

But no wreath; just a door decoration. Another two years and I shall be able to look for a lovely wreath to put up every Christmas. I miss wreaths.

Candles

"Out, out, brief candle." I have taught Macbeth for too long when I look at a Christmas candle and that is my first thought.

I am not a fan of candles, although I love the idea of them and the sound of the word: caan-dull. There is weight to the word and elegance. Candles themselves I have always thought of as dust catchers or really good metaphors.

But, I confess, when I walk into my friend and colleague's classroom and smell the cinnamon from the candle she has been burning, I think maybe it might be pleasant...maybe, someday.

The flame, though, the flame I like. I could have a wick floating on oil, a flame dancing on clear liquid. Those are the house fires I like, too, the ones with glass pebbles and flames flickering blue and orange wavering their way up from the glass surface, reflecting off the facets, miniature flames winking beneath the flickers of fire.

Christmas Bells

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

In 1864, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow added to the wealth of traditional carols. Bells of all sizes and tones carry magic, from the deep-throated bronze bells with their somber, ponderous tolling, to the tinkling silvery bells refreshing as a light rain shower, to the jingle of sleigh bells, perhaps the most magical of all for what they evoke: snow, horse-drawn sleighs, roasted chestnuts, hot chocolate, pine trees, bundling up warmly, and Santa and his reindeer.

The Tree

Our tree goes up this weekend. For a long time here, I haven't felt Christmassy. Not since the kids left. More and more I left the tree to Skip. Part of my climbing out of the pit is a renewed interest in Christmas. Last year I joined in decorating the tree and liked the togetherness of sharing the decorating. We have an extensive and intriguing collection of ornaments and I enjoyed remeeting them. I even found comfort in the routine of repacking them until the next year and now it's here. This Saturday the tree goes up and maybe I can talk Skip into eggnog. Even if I can't yet, there is a packet of hurricane mix on his dresser...the eggnog can wait until school is over and we can give ourselves over to the holiday.

Angels in My Life

On the way home, thinking of my advent calendar and opening the second day, I thought about what image to use for my blog Christmas calendar. I was settling on angels because they begin with "a" when I thought about the real angels in my life.

My husband is the greatest of them all. Without his patience, friendship and love, I would not have had a reason to climb out of the pit. And I would not have grown as much as I have during our many years together.

My children each in his and her way have given me precious gifts. My son gives me friendship, honesty and the time to listen to me. My daughter gives me friendship, strength, and the ability to do things I fear. She too gives me time. My mother who is my friend like no other gives me wisdom, laughter, and time.

My mentor and close friend, Jack Penha gave me the gift of poetry; taught me how to teach; kept me on the right paths when I strayed down tangled ones; and requires nothing of me other than my self.

Then there are former students, like Brandon Weaver, who is the rock in my life, who cherishes me and makes sure I know it, who worries about me and takes time in his full life to check on my wellbeing.

How can I not be thankful this season whefen I realise how much I have in my life.

'Tis the Season

The Christmas season is my favourite. One of the reasons is advent calendars. My mother may be approaching 80, but every summer when I visit, she has a new advent calendar for me for the next Christmas. And I may be in my 50s, but I anticipate the opening of each window with joy.

Part of the fun is waiting to see what she finds for me. Last year it was a traditional calendar similar to the one pictured. This year it is a contemporary setting, of the Washington Cathedral, with traditional symbols in the windows. I even have travel calendars some years, when we spend Christmas in another city. They are 4x6 and come with an envelope to protect them.

For twenty-four days, I shall have something extra to look forward to in my day.

Joyous Colour

One of the things I most enjoy about the Christmas season is having poinsettias throughout the house like jewels in our white and grey world. For three weeks they sit , fiery beacons everywhere our eyes might alight, or we sit awhile. Three downstairs, so we see them coming and going, one up in the T.V. room and one in my nest. Their colour comforts me, giving an inner warmth which I need in this tropical place, where I am too warm externally.

My Nest

Living here, the things that keep me sane are small things. My world of safety and comfort has narrowed to a very few things, but if I cannot access or have one of those things, then my world teeters dangerously on the edge of the ever-present pit.

I need little: my husband; a constant supply of rice and ikan bilis [little fried fish] with peanuts; adventure and hidden object games; access to the internet; and my nest [my own room]. I have been interested to watch as my world narrowed to these things over the past 18 years, and interested how little I need to stay happy. Technically, I never need to leave my house, barely even my nest. And, yes, I have in the past year had flashes of agoraphobia. Like the depression, as I watched it approach, I can see how easy it would be to tip over, how tempting to let go, how dangerous to feel that way.

My weekend routine has become important and I do everything I can not to interrupt it. Interruptions for me involve anything that takes me out of my nest. I am not happy when I have to leave the house. This is what I look forward to with increasing longing as Friday nears to signal the weekend:

I get up on Saturday between 6:30 and 7:30 [I hope that changes when I retire]. I dress in sweats and a t-shirt, grab the morning paper [the Jakarta Post has competition for the first time, but I haven't seen it yet], and move to the hot and cold water dispenser. This is a great invention. We bought one for our San Antonio house. Waiting for me is a white porcelain mug, one of a set of four we bought in Perth. Skip has already put the Equal, the Coffeemate and the Nescafe in. I add boiling water, stir, and head upstairs.

I read the paper in Skip's nest so we have a little morning time together. I read bits of news to him and make an effort to read slowly. My mind is focused on getting into my nest. When I open the door to my room, I feel as if I have reached a safe haven. Safety from what? Not sure, but I feel the relief, as I close the door behind me and head for my computer chair.

I power up my computer. Right now my desktop is dying and I am using my beloved laptop. Not ideal for longterm use, as I bought it for traveling and its smallness does not make for great comfort the way my room is set up. But it works. I turn it on and also the desktop. While I am using the laptop I let the Webshots screensaver run on the larger computer and it gives me an everchanging picture to look at. The pictures make me happy and were chosen for what they evoke: happiness, serenity, awe at the beauty of the scene.

While waiting for the laptop to set itself, I change the calendar date. Skip gave me a perpetual calendar one Christmas, a ceramic Chinese dragon holding four small ceramic cubes with days, dates, and months. The first thing I do everyday [every afternoon when I return from school, every weekend morning], after starting the computer, is to change the dates. It gives me the feeling of moving forward to a time when I no longer have to count days to when we leave.

I settle into my chair and adjust the pillows that keep my back from complaining too much about hunching over a computer for long hours. One of the pillows is a dark green and white needlepoint given to my husband by my mother and the other is a squishy pillow, given to me by my sister-in-law, with Eeyore on the front. Sipping my coffee, I load my game manager for bigfish games, open Mozilla Firefox, enjoy momentarily its skin [aeon clouds], and open four tabs: bigfishgames, gmail, facebook, and my blog.

I check my mail and admire the new gmail theme, I have chosen: beach. Every morning I watch the sunrise; during the day it may be sunny or overcast; in the evening I watch the sun set; and at night sometimes I see a moon. On the beach, at different times of the day I see a flip-flop, a beachball, a dropped icecream cone, suntan lotion, a baby turtle...I look at my facebook and send a plant, coffee, or good kharma to my children and friends, and answer any messages. Sometimes, like this morning, I write a random thread. I might, as I am now, check the progress of a game downloading from bfg.

With the routine well underway, I go downstairs and make myself a bowl of rice and ikan bilis for breakfast, bring it back upstairs and settle in for the day. During the day I play games, punctuated by checking my mail and facebook. I may check Google Reader and spend some time catching up on tech news; I may look at the two blogs I follow; I may visit Amazon to see what games are for sale; or Gameboomers to see what games are coming. Every so often, I leave the room and say hello to Skip, who will be checking his gmail, chatting to Forrest, and playing WoW.

If I can do this all weekend, I can make it through another week.

School gets in the way

My how time flies when I'm held hostage by hundreds of pages of sophomore narratives and junior speeches and junior narratives, and they all need feedback the same week. The week itself has been endless, but when I look at the last time I posted, that time has flown.

And it's not just time that disappears. My poetry flees to some deep, dark recess. I stop thinking about what to write in my next blog. I stop thinking poetry. I remember why I haven't written poetry in so long. And I look forward with even more urgency to the day I can stop teaching, which seems further away with each economic headline.

I have a close friend, my mentor, Jack Penha. He is five years older than I, teaches with ten times my passion - and I teach with great passion - and yet he is able to write. I wish I had his energy, or will. I come home and it's Hidden Object computer games which keep me sane. They are the only thing my brain will summon up the energy for, to stay on, as opposed to my sitting in a chair and staring at the wall - what I did for several months during my depression.

Hence, my not so random segue into my top ten. The top four are puzzle games that have given me hours of pleasure, and still do; the last six are all Hidden Object, of which I own many: thank you bigfishgames.

Chocolatier 2
Chocolatier
World Mosaics
Rainbow Web 2
Magic Encyclopedia
James Patterson's Women's Murder Club: Death in Scarlet
Dr. Lynch: Grave Secrets
Steve the Sheriff
Treasure Masters
Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile

And one more for the Christmas season: Holly: a Christmas Tale.

Next week my top ten adventure games. They are my real love and I shall review them. Right now my brain is too tired even for them.

I feel as if I should sweep the floors and dust. I am expecting a visitor, my first. Hello Steven.

Third Thread

I have lived and taught in Jakarta for eighteen years. In that time I have been startled at how many of my students have a problem with depression. I have come to know the symptoms, as well as how insidious a disease it is. What most fascinated me was that a person in a depressed or, what I call, lucid state is rational in neither. When she is depressed she does not listen to reason or rational thought; and when she feels fine, she does not acknowledge the depressed state.

This is all a long way around to the point, four or so years ago, when I found myself skirting the edge of the pit. Of the two types of depression, chronic and situational [there may be more but for a layperson like myself, that's how it falls], I had worked myself into situational depression. I knew the symptoms well and skirted the edge for long enough to recognise them in myself: crying at random moments, unable to see beyond myself, a grey outlook, exhaustion, and, for mr, no more poetry in my life.

The length of time for situational depression is six to eight months and I was in the pit for about that long when I made a decision. I had not, while working had the time or energy to be rational or think forward, but during the summer vacation, while at my mother's, I came to the conclusion that I had to change, for my sake, for my poor husband who had spent those months seeing me in the pit, unable to do anything for me, and for us.

I made the decision I would be happy. It seems, even now, to have been that simple, but I realise that there had been a confluence of events: One of my students for the last unit of the year studied the science of happiness [the subject is even taught in colleges]; she kept, for her project, a happiness journal. All her responses, which I read, told me, or reminded me of the importance of happiness in our lives. My mother had been going through situational depression because of an operation and an adverse reaction to the painkiller she was given, so I learned about situational depression. Vacation happened and I rested and had the time to gain perspective.

I returned to the new school year with a determination to be happy. I kept my own happiness journal and spent last year putting in it anything that made me laugh or smile: cartoons, photographs, notes, pictures, quotes, mementos. I crafted each page like a mini-scrapbook, for the book was small and portable. It became my lifeline.

This year, within the last few weeks, I realised that poetry had reentered my life and I wrote the first poems, in three years. A couple of weeks ago I became aware that I was noticing the small and wonderful things around me that used to fill me with joy everyday. They again fill me with joy. Things as simple as a clear blue sky. And a few days ago I caught myself singing, something I do when I am happy.

I am happy. I see the pit edge still, but in the distance, and I know what to do should it loom.

Thread two

So, I have been thinking a lot about the nature of blogs and my sudden decision [as a result of a confluence of events] to keep one. I'm not sure for whom I am keeping it. I don't particularly want other people commenting on my thoughts, but I like the idea of the blog as a forum for me. At this time, at this point, at this now in my life I want to write down thoughts occasionally.

The blogs I have begun to read since attending a Web 2.0 conference in Shanghai are all in the nature of essays. At least when I studied essays by the great essayists in literature these were how they were written. I'm not a formal writer and not particularly articulate in prose, but the overriding motivation at the moment is thoughts on paper.

I have begun at the midpoint of my life to realize the hierarchical nature of growing up and aging. From the start we go through stages and I don't think that ever stops. This is my stage now. Like an arcade game, when we are ready to move on, or as we try to move on, we have to go around, or over, or through obstacles to level up. I think I am leveling up.

This came from a Rig Manager

for Global Marine Drilling
in St. Johns, Newfoundland.

a poem a day...

A Patch of Old Snow by: Robert Frost

There's a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain Had brought to rest. It is speckled with grime as if Small print overspread it, The news of a day I've forgotten-- If I ever read it.

first words

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