Four Calling Birds

Let it never be said that I do not like Christmas music. Six solid weeks of seasonal songs cannot harden my heart toward the holiday hits. In fact, I possess quite an extensive collection of carols myself, and I'm not afraid to use it.

Today I amused myself by sorting my holiday playlist by title. It turns out my number one Christmas song (at least in respect to versions owned) is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. I have 14 different recordings of that particular tune. Is it any surprise then, that I judge all new holiday albums by that song? Rod Stewart? Sorry. She and Him? Yes.

Of course, this morning I promptly played all 14 in alphabetical order by artist and made Heidi choose her favorite. Andy Williams was up first, and he was her strong preference from the start. Linda Ronstadt and Diana Krall were contenders, but for Heidi, Andy hung on to the last, even beating out her childhood favorites, Steve and Edie.

My favorite though was Judy Garland, no contest. Her version was also the shortest, and I'm with her-- there is absolutely no need to draw that song out. Once you hit ...if the fates allow, you have sung it all. Coincidentally, my number two was also the second shortest; John Denver and the Muppets do a terrific rendition of that old chestnut.

Surprisingly? My number one Christmas artists weren't in the running at all. When we were growing up, our go to Christmas album was Christmas with Conniff, which for me will always be the quintessential sound of the season. Somehow, Have Yourself did not make it onto the album.

It must have been bumped for Christmas Bride... as it should have been.

Three French Hens

Growing up there were three of us kids in our family-- me, my brother, and my sister. Over the years, we received many kind gifts from friends and family at the holidays. I'm sure there were lots of other nice things, too, but in my memory, it seems like we always got Christmas ornaments.

I didn't mind the ornaments, though; it was kind of neat to hang them on our beloved tree, and then always nice to remember the person who gave them to us year by year. What I did mind was that each of us always got the same thing-- I got an angel, my brother got a Santa, and my little sister got a miscellaneous holiday something, either a star, or a drum, or a jack-in-the-box, or a reindeer, or a teddy bear.

For some reason all those angels bothered me. In my mind they were far less fun and exciting than Santa and all his cute accessories. Yet still they came-- ceramic, yarn, tin, and glass-- a host of angels adorned our tree, most of them mine.

Years later,  after all our family Christmas decorations were lost in a generous gesture by my father and we were adults, I began to assemble my own collection of ornaments. Childhood bruises may be invisible, but they last-- today the only angel on my tree is at the top.

When I think about it, I wonder, though. What's my problem? Seriously, who could possibly object to angels?

These days when I hang the ornaments on my own Christmas tree, each one of them sparks in me appreciation of the things I love. Among them there is a skillet, a fountain pen, a school house, garlic, snowshoes, several dogs, a basketball, a Navajo polar bear kachina, and a suit case labeled with destinations all over the world. Are these not all angels in some form? Do they not represent a bit of the divinity that inhabits our every day lives?

I'm going to go with yes.

P.S. I also have a ton of Santas. I LOVE the Santas. I guess sibling rivalry may just be formative after all. Who knew?

Two Turtle Doves

In our family we open our presents on Christmas day. When we were growing up, the rule was always that we had to wait for Mom and Dad to get up before going downstairs to the tree. I can still remember craning my whole body as far as it would go without leaving the landing to catch a peek at what lay below.

One year we all woke up around 4 am and somehow convinced my parents to let us get started. By 5 it was all over, and as I sat in front of the Light Bright, I felt as hollow as the holes I was punching in the black paper with those bright plastic pegs. For the first time in my life, I was disappointed by Christmas.

I also realized that for me, Christmas is all about the anticipation. That's one reason why it can be so galling these days to try to wedge the holidays into an already over-crowded schedule. It seems like the season comes and goes too quickly; there's no cha

Heidi's family opens their gifts at midnight on Christmas Eve. The only way that works for me is being able to look forward to more celebration when we get to my family later in the day. Of course, it's a long way from Buffalo to Virginia, and farther still to Atlanta-- we're lucky to make it there by mid-afternoon, if the weather cooperates.

Several years ago we spent Christmas in a snow storm at the airport in Buffalo, watching them plow the runways and de-ice the planes. We finally caught one of the first and last flights of the day, and made it home a little before midnight. Everyone was here waiting for us; there was a fire in the fireplace and Chinese takeout to eat, and Christmas stretched long into the next morning.

That was a good one.

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

As hectic as the holidays can be with the merry chores of shopping and baking and decorating, I always kind of like it all, but I especially enjoy wrapping presents. We usually clear the dining room for a day or two to set up the paper bin and ribbon boxes, and then as long as there’s plenty of tape and sharp scissors, I can wrap for hours. Of course a little Ray Conniff never hurts.

It was my grandmother who taught me the art of gift wrapping when I was nine. She came up to our house in New Jersey from her home in Maryland a week or so before Christmas to spend some time with our family before heading back home for the holiday. One afternoon after school I sat at the kitchen table eating cookies and watching her cut and fold and tape her way through a stack of boxes.

“That looks pretty, Grandma,” I said. “Who is it for?”

“This one is for Billy Shep,” she told me.

“What about that one?” I asked a few minutes later.

“This one is for your mother, and the next one’s for your daddy,” she answered.

“You’re really good at that,” I told her.

Would you like to learn how to do this?” she asked. I nodded and she reached for a small package in the pile.

“This one is for your sister. It’s a little box because she’s a little girl. Let me show you what to do.”

She pulled a length of bright paper from a roll beside her and set the box on it. Then she took the shiny silver shears and rather than snipping as we had been taught in school, she made a tiny cut and then pushed them forward. It sounded like a zipper as the paper separated neatly from the roll. She sliced off another section from the end of the sheet. “We can use that for something else later,” she told me as she set it aside. “Come on over here and I’ll show you how to do this.”

I stood next to her. “First let’s get our tape ready,” she said and handed me the green plaid dispenser. “Cut off four pieces about this long.” The red polished nails of her thumb and forefinger were about an inch and a half apart. As I tore the tape, she placed each piece carefully on the edge of the table.

“Next pull these two ends together so they meet in the middle of the box.” I did as I was told, and she handed me a piece of tape. “See how nice that’s going to look?” she said once it was secure. “The next part is tricky, though, so I’ll show you one side and then you can do the other.”

I know now that there are two ways to wrap the end of a package. Most people push the sides in and crease them to form a top and a bottom flap which they fold over and tape together at the end of the parcel. My grandmother’s method was different, and to this day I find it more elegant. With the box on its back, she pushed the paper that hung over the end straight down and then folded the sides over and pulled up from the underneath to secure the single flap neatly to the bottom.

When my end was done, too, she flipped the present over, pulled a bow from a bag and stuck it down with a ring of tape made from the final piece at edge of the table. “That’s very nice,” she declared and hugged me. “I bet you wrap a lot more gifts in your life,” she said, “but I’m glad I was here for the first one.”

The Most Wonderful Time of the Years

I really like Billy Collin's poem On Turning Ten. Funny and poignant, it also lampoons the angst so many of us feel about growing older.

For such a short poem, it has a lot of great lines, but one that struck me only after re-reading several times is I can lie on my bed and remember every digit. Once when I couldn't sleep I did lay on my bed and try to recollect one thing from each year of my life. I think I fell asleep in my twenties.

With the holidays coming and Christmas music piped in pretty much everywhere I go, my thoughts naturally turn to scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago (and those not so long ago, too).

So, as kind of a mash up of Collin's poem, that carol of counting, and Dickens' famous tale, I present to you, On Turning Fifty: Twelve Days of Christmas Past.

Tune in tomorrow for day one.

Just as I Expected

Today I gave my students this writing prompt:  

Write about something that didn't go the way you expected.

It was less than a minute before I heard my least favorite question as a teacher of writing. "What if this never happened to you?"

"Really?" I asked the culprit. "Everything in your life has always gone as you thought it would? Every. Single. Thing?"

He nodded optimistically, hopeful that this response might get him off the hook for the assignment.

"Well," I said, "What did you think would happen when you asked that question just now?"

His expression changed. Now he was looking a little worried. He shrugged.

I raised my eyebrows. "Is this conversation what you expected?"

"Not really," he said.

I clapped and gave him a cheery smile. "Well there you go-- instant writing topic!"

Believe it or not, he wrote about something completely different, and it was pretty darn good.

Stressed is Desserts Spelled Backwards

Last Friday, in an attempt to build morale at our school, the administration offered a nice assortment of desserts at the end of our required professional development meeting. It was a kind gesture made in good faith, but I'm not sure if it made a difference to very many. Platitudes don't really pacify us; they just seem patronizing.

Looking at the table loaded with sweets, one of my colleagues shrugged. "Just another thing to put on my plate," she said.