"Family 2"

Someone asked me recently about my happiest Christmas.  I got an image of my brain as a Rolodex of memory index cards spinning around until it landed on a happy day of childhood at my grandparents' house.  We didn't usually go to their house for Christmas, but that year we did.  There was a lit up tree in the dining room decorated with fragile glass ornaments.  Some of the lights bubbled.  My cousins ran around and yelled as they played.  Aunts chatted in the kitchen.  Uncles chatted in the living room.  Dinner was perfect.  Everyone was happy.  I was happy.

One of the pleasures of going to Grandma's was after the meal was done.  Women whisked the dishes into the kitchen and men took the children to the nearby park where we burned off our excess energy and cookies.  In winter, the pond was frozen over and there was a hot fire going nearby.  People warmed their hands and laughed.  Sometimes we walked to the other end of the park with the big sledding hill where there was another big fire burning.  Up the hill, down the hill... repeat until bruised and exhausted.  Trudge our way back to Grandma's where the dishes were miraculously clean and put away.

We played cards and drank hot tea.  We had sandwiches made from leftovers and ate more cookies.  Grandma filled us all in on the extended family whom I probably never met, or maybe died 3 or 4 generations ago.  The patter of the conversation didn't matter much to me.  I just liked listening to the pleasantness of it with the tinkling of a metal spoon clinking as someone stirred sugar in their tea.  The creaking of Grandpa's oak rocking chair, his soft huh, huh chuckle when something struck him funny.  "Santa Got Run Over by a Reindeer" playing somewhere upstairs.

My wish is for every child to have a perfect holiday, whatever their religion.  I hope they are safe and loved and they feel a sense of belonging amongst the people around them.  I hope older people feel treasured by the younger generations.

Of course, I also know my happy wishes won't come true for everyone.  For some, the mashed potatoes might fly across the room or somebody pounds the table.  Some people are lonely because they don't have anyone around anymore.  For them, I wish a perfect memory of happiness that keeps them warm when things aren't like a perfect day at Grandma's.

It wasn't that my grandparents did anything so remarkable back then.  I got a small gift I don't remember anymore.  The food was great, but it wasn't gourmet fare.  It was probably a turkey, mashed potatoes, and green beans or something -- oh yeah, let's not forget the ever-present applesauce!  Pretty little dishes with pickles and olives and nuts and whatever else scattered around the table.  Talking about unknown relatives isn't exactly thrilling.  Playing cards is pretty cheap entertainment.  It's just that when all these things were combined it was magic.

Or, maybe the point of it was my own perspective?  Happiness isn't something someone can force on you.  We choose it.  Wherever you are, whoever you're with, whatever life gives you, I hope you find joy and happiness this holiday season!

"Street"

My knee is permanently scarred from a close encounter with a tar and chip street.  I also lost my virginity in the bicycle accident as I was riding a boy's bike and the bar slammed my pelvis in a bone crushing way.  Okay, maybe I didn't technically lose my virginity, and I didn't even know what a virgin was at the time, but tell it to my younger self as she clutches herself in the grass and tries not to vomit at the side of the road.

Other than picking tarry rocks out of my knee, I kind of liked the tar and chip road.  The tar bubbled and oozed on hot summer days.  I skipped around and popped bubbles.  I squiggled my bare feet in thick, black splotches.  It's not like there were any cars getting in the way of my fun.  I'm sure Mom loved the black tracks I made across the living room floor when I got home, but I often cleaned my feet first with gasoline.  Yeah, very healthy.  I feel kind of whoozy at the memory of the fumes.

Can you really remember being a child?  Not just a mental picture like a snapshot in a photo album, can you feel the sun on your head?  Smell the pine trees and tar?  Hear the crickets chirping and the breeze blowing?  Taste Grandma's cooking?  See your own small body by looking down?

Creativity seems magical.  Ideas can feel like divine inspirations we draw from outside of ourselves.  Yet, I think most of creativity has real, tangible sources like observation and memory, skills all of us can develop.

I have to think a minute to remember what I had for dinner last night.  Pea soup.  Why bother remembering?  It doesn't matter unless I want to describe it to someone else -- and creating is all about sharing something.  If you want someone else to like your creations, appeal to a person's senses, the more senses the better.  My pea soup has a lot of potatoes in it, carrots, snow peas... This is a shopping list.  My stomach growled when the microwave dinged and I burned my fingers when I lifted the hot, creamy soup amidst the wafting cloud of thyme and tarragon... You see, more senses, more details, more interesting.

It's the same with painting.  Many people draw something floating on a white piece of paper.  Give it a background!  Give it a shadow!  Remember how things look in real life.  Memory isn't magical.  We all have it.  Look around in your brain and see what's in there.  Maybe your childhood street was cement.  Maybe you chalked pictures on it?  Can you taste the smell of chalk dust?

Then, after you've worked so hard to remember things and add details, start eliminating.  If it doesn't add to the story you want to tell, erase it.  In writing, I've decided I don't need the word "that".  It's often a waste of space and I use it a lot.  Delete.  In a painting, maybe I put too many petals on a flower.  Be willing to paint over, write over, everything unhelpful to your project.  When I first wrote board reports, I thought I had to tell board members and bosses everything I thought was important.  They don't care and don't have time to read it.  I changed my ways and got praise for my 1-page, bulleted reports.

The painting above wasn't meant to be anything, and I just photoshopped street lines on it for IF's word for the week.  I created the painting by fooling around with some cheap supplies and thought I'd use it as a background to something else.  I like bits of it though, and now I'm not sure what to do with it.  Maybe I'll use parts of it in something else, which is part of creativity too.  Experiment, play, pop tar bubbles on the street and see where the road takes you.

"Dungeon"

I used to manage a billionaire's estate.  You can see photos and read about it here.  There was a dungeon in the bell tower basement with a real executioner's sword.  There was even a skeleton.  It was plastic, but the billionaire and I laughed about it.  I didn't laugh about the sword.  It gave me the creeps.  The beautifully etched designs on the blade were worn where it had hacked off heads.  Ew.

Once again IF gave the Friday word on Monday so I don't feel very cooperative about writing more about dungeons.  Let's consider it my not so silent protest.

I've been exploring my teenaged brain lately.  What a mess!  Maybe all teenaged brains are, but I'm pretty sure mine was more messed up than most.  I grew up, mostly got my act together, and pushed the teenage years into a hidden corner of my mind.  I hid it so effectively that's it's been a challenge to excavate it.

Of course you might ask, why bother?  So glad you asked.  Because ignoring the past doesn't make it go away.  Its lurking influence effects my life in subversive ways I can't identify because I hid things so thoroughly from myself.  I think that's true for many of us, though I suspect most are content enough not to bother figuring this stuff out.

I talk with a high school friend sometimes.  We walk down memory lane and each of us is surprised by the things the other remembers of our lives back when, especially the bad stuff.  I call her my "Truth Teller" because she calls things as she sees them.  We play a very important role for each other because we can verify each other's lives.

Maybe you're still lucky enough to have all your friends and family.  I haven't been so lucky.  I've lost a lot of people and part of my life seems to disappear with each death.  Part of these people disappears every time someone else dies who knew my people and knew my life the way it used to be.

In a way, writing about my missing people is a way to keep them alive in a different form.  They aren't forgotten.  The impact they had on my life lives on through me and the others whom they touched when they were alive.  I can only hope I've had some positive impact on others and someone will remember me when I'm gone.

Examining my teenaged life isn't about the happy memories though.  It's about hard times and bad decisions.  It's remembering people who had both light and dark sides, or some who only had dark sides.  Hiding from those realities is like locking a part of myself in a dungeon.  I am who I am today because of who I used to be and who I used to know.

It's a quest.  I want to live my life with every element in it, without editing things into what I wish it was.  I want to celebrate other people in their entirety too.  In the end, we don't love perfect people.  Learning from our bad decisions and accepting our flaws make us infinitely more interesting and loveable in the end.

"Sailor"

I've always thought that if I had to serve in the military, I'd choose the Coast Guard.  I could sail around on Lake Erie, pick up drunks who fall out of their boats, and party with Canadians.  I found out they could send you to some other part of the US coastline, and I thought, that's fine.  I could go as far as Chicago or Buffalo.  I abandoned all thoughts of the Coast Guard when I found out they could send you to the Gulf of Mexico or something.  No hablo Espanol, so I doubt I'd enjoy their parties.

There were times when I was a kid that I spent quite a bit of time fantasizing myself to Canada.  As the crow flies, I was only about 5 miles from the lake.  As a fish swims, it's considerably farther down the river, but I could get there eventually.  I sent the Canadians messages in bottles, but the Canadians never called.  I stole the bottles.  The summer people next door had a storage area of such useless junk, and I didn't think they'd miss the bottles.  Maybe the Canadians could sense my theft and their silence is a just karma?

As I pause to consider whether to talk about message bottles or theft, I remember the vividness of a memory that popped into my mind earlier this week.  Jackie, Sis2's friend, stepped on broken glass in the river.  Her foot was sliced very badly, and she did it on the wrong side of the river, downstream of civilization.  My dad picked her up and carried her across the algae-slippery shale riverbed through the rapids, and then all the way home with Jackie weeping blood the entire time.

After they left, I studied the broken glass in the water.  The clear glass blended with the clear water.  Dancing reflections of current camouflaged the shining reflections of the glass.  It was beautiful and dangerous.  I picked it up and threw it into the woods in a place where no one would step on it again.  My parents made a new rule that we had to wear shoes in the river after that, a rule I greatly resented, seldom followed, and probably explains why I lost so many shoes.

Why do I remember this so clearly?  And why did this moment pop into my mind so vividly this week?

I tracked my associated memories for a connection.  Older boys drank beer and threw their bottles across the river, laughing at the shattering sound, never considering a child's sliced foot.  Perhaps their thoughtless, selfish, stupid behavior was stirred in my memory as I see the same kind of behavior in politicians or some people I know?  Maybe I feel guilt at all those messages to Canadians sent in stolen glass bottles?  Maybe there's a danger I can't see through glittering reflections?

Six years ago, I wrote another post about sending negative thoughts down the river in paper boats.  You can see it here.  Creating that post seems as clear in my mind as Jackie's bleeding foot.  I think everything we've experienced is still in our heads somewhere, and sometimes I wonder why.