A Patchwork of Christmas Memories

This morning when I opened my eyes, before I rose from bed, lifted our tiny dog onto the floor and padded my way to the coffeemaker... a bevy of Christmas memories fell from my mind like slick playing cards tossed across a table. I made the coffee, grabbed a Christmas cookie, and made a list of my top Christmas memories...

1. I do not remember the Christmas day I received a red tractor, but I do remember the tractor and riding it up and down our driveway in Canfield, Ohio (likely the following summer). I guess somewhere between Christmas and the following June, I reached the age where memories were consciously imprinted in my mind! I loved that tractor and decades later saw one just like it in an antique store in Florida...with the price tag of $325.

2. The Christmas I received a toy swimming pool that was chewed on by our Boxer, Ringy, stands out as "first bad Christmas memory." But look at this wonderful dollhouse!

3. Other memorable childhood Christmas presents: a black lacquered music box complete with dancing ballerina. Something in it broke, but was fixed by my cousin's husband. I thought he was great, until years later when I learned the reason for their divorce: he had beaten my cousin and she'd lost her unborn baby. I always think of that when I remember that music box: not everything is as beautiful as it might seem. Dancing was a big part of my childhood, and later, when I read "I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can" I learned that ballet was not always as beautiful as it seems either. I guess you could say, this is all part of the transition from childhood to adulthood; understanding the layers that weave through what we see.

Here is a photo of me with the '60s favorite (and '70s, '80s, and '90s) Barbie and Ken. It was at this time of my life that dance predominated.

Another favorite childhood gift also involved a music box. It was earlier than the jewelry box, because I was a young girl, probably 8 or 9, and my father bought me a chime that attached to my bedroom door. Every time the door was opened, music would play. I loved that gift!

4. In my early teens I spent a Christmas in a horribly ancient wing of South Side Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio. (Note: I mistakenly ID the hospital in my post, but have corrected it.) The hospital was packed and though I was there to have a tumor removed from my neck, I had to be placed in a room near the psychiatric patients and one of them yelled "Jannie, Jannie" all day long, which really freaked this 14 year old out. I remember looking out the 19th century window and feeling like a waif (I was waif-like then) imprisoned in some high tower just longing for Christmas. My sister, Joan, rescued me, however, when she and a friend showed up with a small Christmas tree for my room. (This was a private room, and very small.) I still remember her coming in the door with that tree. Yeah!

I did get to go home for a few hours on Christmas Day, but, tubes in the side of my neck, there are no photos of me that Christmas, and traipsing back to the hospital did not make for a happy teen. This was before children's floors in hospitals had cheerful murals, video games, and nurses with interesting smocks. No Robin Williams with a red nose on the floor, just a guy yelling "Jannie" all day long...

5. My father always took me with him to pick out my mother's present. He gave her a Goebel Christmas plate each year and usually something else as well. So, this required a trip to the jewelry store, and this made an impression on me as a young girl. I remember the Christmas I was 17. We shopped in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and I remember standing on the street corner with my father and big huge snowflakes were falling. Everything seemed like a Christmas scene from a pretty card, and I loved these annual shopping trips with my dad. (All of those blue plates of my mother's now hang above the cupboards in our kitchen here in Athens.)

Memories of shopping with Dad were paired with searching for the perfect Christmas tree and in 1977, we were in a new home with a 16-foot cathedral ceiling. Dad and I went out to a tree farm and I located the perfect tree. It was about 7 feet tall and my dad did not say: "It's too big. It's too expensive. It won't fit in the trunk of the car." Nope. He said, "Yes. Let's get it." And as I watched the tree salesmen wrestle it into the trunk of my father's car, using lots of rope and the top and trunk extending from each side, I gave thanks for a father who knew the power of "yes."

6. A few years later, I was in my second year of college and was given my first ever box of flowers from a boy...a big box of white carnations was delivered to my parents house at Christmas and I thought it was just wonderful! Favorite presents at this time: a hand mixer and a Texas Instruments calculator. Throw in a few books and I must say nothing much has changed in the decades since, just the snazziness of the appliances.

7. Then, the next year, the death of my first cousin, Ruth Ann, who died after giving birth to her second child. A very sad Christmas. As were the next few years with the loss of my grandmother (whose birthday was in Dec.) and the murder of my first cousin Donnie, who was a wonderful, artistic, young man in his twenties who just happened to get off a bus and walk past a business in Cleveland that was in the process of being robbed. The robbers came out of the store and shot the witness five times in the head. My sweet childhood friend's body, covered with a sheet, was shown on the news that night, another statistic of urban violence.

8. In college I dated a young man who was Roman Catholic. He gave me a beautiful gold cross necklace for Christmas. His family was quite upset because it was not a crucifix. This was my first experience with the divisiveness of religion...at Christmas...

9. My first Christmas as a mother, I traveled from Florida to Ohio with baby Bryce. It was my father's first time seeing his first grandchild and, as my parents had lost an infant son, a time of comfort for them too.

10. Two years later, back to Ohio for Christmas with another son in tow, for Jesse was born and now 6 months old. I remember traveling on the plane with a 6 month old and a 2 year old. The seats seemed bigger back then... This would have been just before real concerns were surfacing about Bryce's development, so this was what I think of as a rather "innocent" time as a mother. I hadn't faced the big issues yet, though my body must have known something was up. I arrived at my parents' house with an illness that would last almost a year, and coincide with a crisis in my marriage and the labeling of my eldest son as "handicapped." My body, perhaps, knew what I did not...

When the boys were a little older, we traveled to Ohio again at Christmas time, and they were old enough now to really enjoy the snow. My parents bought them matching blue outfits and my sister took them for rides on her snowmobile. This was their first memorable experience with snow.

11. There were several Christmas firsts:


1980s: The first time I saw the Christmas Boat Parade in Sarasota, Florida, and learned you don't need snow to have a Merry Christmas.

1990: The first holiday after my divorce, when shared custody was in place and I woke up Christmas morning to an empty house, since I would not see my boys until noon that day. I remember this very clearly. But the holidays in succeeding years settled in with new traditions and the boys enjoyed having Christmas at three places, Dad's, Mom's, and Grandma's.

1998 and 1999: Through difficult circumstances, Bryce was not able to be with us at home these two Christmases. I was happy in 1999 to be back in Ohio near my sister, Joan, but these were bittersweet holidays. I wish I'd known that better holidays were just around the bend....


The Christmas of 2001, when my youngest son, Jesse, returned home for the holidays after having graduated high school and moved to CT. Bryce was also with us. We had a beautiful tree and it was a fun holiday, giving thanks for our good luck on 9/11, when Bryce, Joan, and I were in NYC.


2007: Mark's and my first Christmas as a married couple. Bryce and Jesse joined us, as did Mark's dad and my sister, Joan. What a great day, as we celebrated so many blessings, especially the blessing of being together. Mark gave me a beautiful gold watch, which I treasure. It was also the only time Mark's dad has been able to visit our home, so it was a very special time in our memory.

2008: Our first Christmas in our home in Athens, Ohio. Finally settled in a place that feels like "home"... with both boys visiting and Joan living nearby (here she is Christmas 2008, with our friend David Pike) it was a wonderful holiday.

12. My mother makes Swedish Tea Wreaths every year at Christmas (we are not Swedish, but that didn't seem to matter...). These are given to neighbors and enjoyed by our family on Christmas morning. When I moved to Ohio, I asked Mom for the recipe and began the tradition of making these same deliciously sweet morning breads for my little family.

I've left out other Christmas memories, happy and bittersweet, because of the limitations of a blog post (it's not a book, as I have to remind myself!). I guess the point of all of this is the comfort that comes when one is ... ahem ... middle-aged and has many years to remember, and sees how events and circumstances weave together, how all those different moments, the good the bad the wonderful, make up a real life, a rich life, a blessed life.

When I was a girl it was my happy job to decorate the tree. I loved doing it and afterward, when it would be evening, and the lights would all be lit (the big old style bulbs that got hot!), I would lie on my back in front of the tree, feet toes-up under the lower boughs, arms behind my head, staring at the beautiful lights and ornaments, taking in the smell of pine. I believed just about anything was possible in the face of such easily created beauty. I still do.

(You can see photos of my favorite ornaments at this Facebook album.)

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Janice Phelps Williams, 12/2010

"Bird Man"

A few years ago, one autumn day my son, Bryce, and I were walking by a gallery and in the window hung a sculpture that caught his eye. It was half-man, half-bird and had beautiful feathers and a long golden beak. Bryce immediately fell in love with it, but the price tag was more than his budget could afford.

I thought I could create something similar that might please him, so as the holiday approached I gathered Fimo polymer clay, gold paint, some beautiful feathers, and wire for the armature.

We couldn't have it hang, given the restrictions of Bryce's living situation, so our bird-man does not appear to be in flight as the one we saw in the gallery. Also, ours is holding a golden flower (spraypainted silk daisy).

I used a wire doll stand to help him stand and then thought of how to protect him from the rough-and-tumble life of living in close quarters as my son does.

So, before he returned to his home, we took a clear plastic container, set it on its end and glued the doll stand base to the inside (on one of the ends), creating a protective display for Bird-Man. It has stood, thus, in perfect shape in Bryce's room for the last three years. Unlike most things, which he has a tendency to improve upon and embellish with glitter, marker, and collage, Bird-Man has not been altered at all, so I guess he does like it just fine!

Homemade gifts are the best, don't you think? Each year I try to make at least one homemade gift for a loved one. I'll never forget the happy look on Bryce's face when he opened his present. And the joy of being able to give him something he really wanted.

Happy Homemade Holiday!
Janice

Holiday Grief. Holiday Humor.

In 2000, I self-published a little gift book ("more than a card, not quite a book") titled "What Saved Me: A Dozen Ways to Embrace Life" under my pen name, Claire Starr. One of the dozen "ways" I wrote about was humor, and I share that with you now.

Next year, Lucky Press will bring out a revised, second edition, of "What Saved Me." This time, I will use my real name!

“Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I’ve had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.” –Katharine Hepburn

“Humor is the basis of dignity, and when it goes you are lost.” –David Gebernter

.......When I was a teenager, I loved shopping for school clothes in August with my mother, a busy woman who worked a full-time, demanding job when the majority of middle-class mothers were at home. I remember trying on new shoes and dancing around the shoe store light-heartedly. My mother, as she did so many times over the years, would shake her head and say, “You are a funny girl.”

.......My parents identified my eldest sister, Joan, as smart, my next-oldest sister, Joyce, as loyal; I was known as funny. Mother once told me that I was the one who made my father laugh, and, considering the fact that he suffered from depression for much of his adult life, I guess this was an accomplishment. I certainly see this sense of humor in both of my sons, although each expresses it in his own way. I’ve found humor to be very healing for all of us.

.......When battling depression right after my divorce, I would borrow, from the library, books and videos that made me laugh, certain that it was similar to providing my body with a much-needed dose of vitamins. I bought The Big Book of Humor and watched movies like What About Bob?, Groundhog Day, and Turner and Hooch.

.......One of the funniest things that happened to me took place a few years after my divorce, when money was tight. Joan, who worked at a job in "Corporate America" had always been generous with her clothes. At the start of a new winter season, she (in Ohio) would send me (in Florida) a nice box of hand-me-downs. As she had great taste, I was happy to get them.

.......In late November, I learned a box had been sent. My sister had mailed it from the UPS station within her local department store. The clothes had slipped my mind until she asked me about the box a few weeks later. I had never received it. Calls were made to UPS; they were unable to find it in their tracking system. Later, I was told the box might be in Nebraska; they would try to find it or would send a check if it didn’t turn up. Another week went by — no box. Christmas Day arrived. Then, a few days later, the box was found.

.......The clothes had been neatly packed by my Virgo sister inside of a box that had previously held cookware, Faberware. After being checked in at the UPS counter, the box made its way into the department store’s inventory system and eventually to the cookware shelf, where it sat patiently until the Christmas holidays. A few days before Christmas, a perfectly innocent young husband, with the best intentions, purchased a box of Faberware cookware for his wife for Christmas …

.......All I have to do is picture this woman’s face when she opened the box and found my sister’s shoes, sweaters, bright-colored socks, and slightly worn nightdress inside, and a smile will inevitably appear.

.......For many folks, December is not just about Hanukkah, Christmas, gifts, shopping, baking. It is about sadness, sorrow, loss, and grief. In our family, a first-cousin was murdered around this time of year, another first-cousin died in childbirth and we received her Christmas cards when she was in a coma. My deceased grandmother and father's birthdays are this month. My husband's mother and brother are both gone as well. Both my mother and Mark's father have December birthdays. They are 90 and 91, respectively, and thankfully still with us, yet each year is precious

.......I think of the infant son, born to my parents when I was three, whom I missed so much as a young girl, thinking how much fun it would have been to have a little brother. When I grew-up and had children, then went through divorce, I wondered what holidays would be like "after."

.......If we are in the midst of sadness, the temptation to smile might seem a slap in the face to whatever it is, or whomever it is, we are grieving. At some point the shock and disbelief of our circumstances become less acute. We are forever changed by events, but find a way to integrate reality into our daily life, so that we can go on. In this middle space, the demilitarized zone between incapacitation and acceptance (or the closest we will get to it), will be moments when we perch on the edge of some enjoyable experience and have to make the decision to fly forward, to feel something good, or to stay. We can decide to smile, to laugh, but then we remember what has happened ...

.......We may, consciously or unconsciously, feel guilty for finding a reason to smile when we once thought we never would again, or when someone close to us has lost that opportunity forever. But if we allow ourselves to embrace life, those we love are honored, and the part of them inside of us has a chance to live on … one form of eternal life. Of course the ability to enjoy life after a death or a shock takes time, and we must allow ourselves and others time to heal, without requiring them to “put on a happy face.” Harriet Rochlin is quoted as saying, “Laughter can be more satisfying than honor; more precious than money; more heart-cleansing than prayer.” I think she was right.

.......In Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Me, Charles Schulz wrote, “You cannot create humor out of happiness … Drama and humor come from trouble and sadness, and mankind’s astounding ability to survive life’s unhappiness. It is a virtual miracle that we have existed over these millions of years against such deplorable odds, when everything is against us.”

.......The human ability to cope and to heal is a miraculous thing. I encourage you to allow humor to enter your heart and mind and help the process of healing.

“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.” –Walt Whitman

© 2000 Janice Phelps Williams

www.janicephelps.com

12/2010

On Luck, Resolutions, and the New Year

When the sky turns light gray and the grass is covered with a dusting of snow, my mind and heart join together in prolonged reflection. It has been that way for me since 1990, my first holiday season after a divorce; when I realized the deep divide between "before" and "after." A division that was all-consuming after 13 years of marriage, but now from the perspective of two more decades, was not the only Big Thing In My Life. Time does that, thank God.

In fact, from 1990 through 1998, there was no snow in November to prompt reflection, for I lived in Florida. The blinding whiteness there is found on Siesta, Lido, and Longboat Keys and in the crushed shells in so many driveways. Yet, come "wintertime" and the annual lighted boat parade with jolly Santa carousing by in a speed boat upon the blue waters of the Intracoastal Waterway, I would feel all mushy about my life, the befores and afters, the "what next?" and "what if?"

I would set a few goals and, guess what, they would come true! Slowly, surely, but each goal would come true sometime during the next year. I set goals slightly bigger. They came true as well. Yes, a lot of things came that I didn't ask for and did not want in the least. People and circumstances and troubles that slithered into life like varmits seeking a warm place when the weather turns cold. And, like everyone who moves several states away to start a new life finds, these creatures followed me from Florida to Ohio, where they alerted their bad-news relatives that I was an easy mark.

So, as dreams were realized and luck and good fortune, I fashioned out of disappointment a giant virtual fly swatter to knock away those happiness-suckers, those nay-sayers, those we're-gonna-knock-you-on-your-ass-and-kick-you-in-the-teeth life events that, face it, most everyone has by the time they are well into their grown up years. Some people have them right from the start, but I was blessed that way.

When November rolled around and I looked back at goals that were met and looked forward at goals to be set, my heart would fill with a sense of gratitude that needed no Macy's Parade prompting or Advent calendar reminding. I got it. I got it from my head to my toes, how life comes at us. How we pull it in toward us. How we do nothing and it jumps on us. How it doesn't need to know anything about us to kick us -- or to bless us.

Some folks do not believe in luck. They are the "up by their bootstraps" sort of folks who own their due for all that they've done; for how hard they've worked for all that they have. But if I were to do that, I would be saying that others who live far away in less-stable places, or right in this very county of Athens, Ohio, for instance, are where they are right now completely because of their own bad choices or laziness, and I know in my heart that is not true and is not fair. And thinking that way does nothing for my soul.

Yes, we steer the boat that is our life, but the floatsam that drifts toward us -- we cannot control it completely. There is an element of luck to life, bad luck and good. That's why there's the lemon>lemonade saying, and why kids who sold lemonade from the end of their driveways in the '70s and clipped coupons in the '00s are thankful and hardworking but also would like to have a break once in a while from having to strive so hard.

And that is the good news about each successive year that I reach November and plan ahead: The striving has taken on a different tone as I've reached my fifties. It's less about things and more about "I am likely to get another year on this earth, what do I want to do with it?"

People joke about New Year's Resolutions. I love them so much I start in December. It takes the focus off the commericalism, the credit card debt-to-come, the work involved in enjoying a holiday . . . Resolution is not the greatest word for it, I think (and I have ordered a new thesaurus to help me find a better word soon...). Hope is not quite the right word either. Some word is needed that expresses a proper mix of "can do" with "gratitude" and "hope" and "pluck" and "optimism" and "forging on in spite of the tough times that might come our way as well."

Put the Christmas gift list down. Make a cup of your favorite warm drink. Sit in silence. Think about the coming year. What do you want? What do you really want? Don't pick "win the lottery." Pick something that is more toward the end of probable than impossible. Pick something that matters, but something you can measure. Write it down. Stick it on your mirror. Believe it. Consciously and unconsciously move toward it. Tell others you want it, or keep it a secret, but do not forget to want it. Do not be afraid to want it. Go for it.

And next December, please share with us how your goal was met.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Janice Phelps Williams
www.luckypress.com and www.janicephelps.com

Slow Dancing by David Michalek

On this Thanksgiving morning, I'd like to share with you a beautiful video. Please follow the links to learn more about this artist, David Michalek.

I spent ages 6 through 11 immersed in dance, like many little girls. I wasn't particularly good at it, but it felt magical. To me, this video is a grown-up, perfected image of that feeling and every other moment of physical strength and ability I've ever had in life... and it was so wonderful to discover it this morning.

Slow Dancing by David Michalek: Nejla Y. Yatkin from Moving Portrait on Vimeo.

"William Carlos Williams said that poets write for a single reason—to give witness to splendor. This is also why, I think, dancers dance. Susan Sontag once pointed out that “no art lends itself so aptly as dance does to metaphors borrowed from the spiritual life (grace, elevation)…” But I also believe that certain harder and rougher metaphors borrowed from the life here below (gravity, striving, failing, falling) are equally important to what dance is and whom dancers are. To paraphrase Simone Weil, grace is also the law of the descending movement—some people fall to the heights." David Michalek at "Slow Dancing" on Ancora Imparo.

My NaNoWriMo Novel Is Coming Together!

Dear Writing Friends and Readers,

I'm experiencing something I'm sure you can relate to. I've been "butt in the chair" each morning, words pouring out of my fingertips as I engage in National Novel Writing Month's 30-day challenge. When I was asked to name a title, I wrote "The Memory Tree" even though I had no idea what that was or how it would fit into my story. I just liked it and went with it.

Then, lots of writing, up to 16,000 + words yesterday. Yesterday morning, I finalize realized (okay, "they" told me) how the various characters would connect with each other and what the Memory Tree was. It sits on The Ridges, a hill which is the main narrator of the book.

Here's a description of what the Memory Tree is (not the novel, but the tree)...

In the woods here on my ridge there is always one tree older than any other; once a sapling, then a young tree that bends in the tornadoes that whip across Ohio; never breaking, never uprooting, growing wider and taller with each passing year, home to all sorts of wildlife, feathered and four-footed. Then, as its branches thicken and its trunk widens and the roots of its being push deeper, past the soil and wrapping around the rocks that make up this ridge, the tree begins to store memories.

Like a human being retains memories for only a season, trees hold the warm-weather memories in their leaves, to float to the ground in the autumn, wiping the surface of near-time clean. But some leaves are so infused with memories that something -- sound or sight or spirit -- seeps into the branches, the small ones first then into the large ones. When the leaves fall to the ground the spirit of these memories infuses the soil and seeps to the roots. Up from the ground and down from the sky, these memories journey, meeting in the trunk, the center of a tree's wisdom, where rings measure not only years but seasons of memory.

If man could devise a machine to measure a tree's memory, he would learn a history unlike that told in any printed book. The tale of everything wild and natural, mentioning man from the unbiased view of observer. A history such as I can share with you, as all these trees on my shoulders have whispered to me their memories with each gust of wind blowing through their branches.

In the winter, dark lines against the gray sky form a calligraphy of testimony, as the trees themselves reveal the shorthand of their time on earth. Time that spans the generations of men, of government, of weather. Some of the trees on my ridge are two hundred, three hundred, years old. If you sit under these trees long enough, you might sense their memories too. I wonder sometimes if Bugaboo did. Perhaps that's why he felt little guilt about what he did to Lester Dixtin. No guilt whatsoever, not even for a minute. He replaced any thought of the man he'd killed with a focus on the nurse who was like a mother to him, his brother and best friend, and the plants that were his children.

Things I Found Not To Be True

This article was originally posted online, April 2005.

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Way back, decades ago ... how can that be? I was facing a panel of "Real Life Working Artists" also known as my professors, waiting for their verdict on my Senior Project. The project consisted of a one-person art show in the university. Unfortunately, I'd failed my first one. The renderings were accurate enough, but they were too illustrative for my avant garde, non-representational loving mentors who, I realize now, did me a favor. They thought so at the time, because when I returned months later with my second show, I passed hands down, grabbed my BFA and, having honed that starving artists, dark-eyed appearance down pat, promptly started . . . planning a wedding.

"We know you are getting married," they'd said. "Don't you get busy and forget about your art. Don't you forget to paint, or you'll lose your talent," they warned.
I nodded, "Of course, I won't stop painting."

But I did.

I fell into someone else's life, and before I knew it all I wanted to be able to do was keep the house clean enough and raise children unscathed by a difficult marriage.

Slowly though, like tiny plants under the snow in winter, ideas, images, colors, sounds, rumbled around quietly in the depths of my personality. A book idea here . . . a sculptured figure there . . . a life drawing class . . . a painting trip to North Carolina . . . a box of pastels . . . a watercolor of nothing but water. I started to keep notebooks: "Drawings," "Dolls," "Writings." I registered copyrights and started to learn piano.

Weaving in and out of the day-to-day life of a mother, I pulled along a ribbon of creativity and it lightly swished past my face and through the memories of my children. I held onto it after my divorce, and wiped my tears with it more than once.

I didn't forget and I didn't lose my talent. They were wrong. Everything I experienced as a young wife and mother fell into the pockets of my invisible painting smock and waited there, patiently, for me to gain the wisdom to view them anew. When I did, creation turned out to be so much easier than it had been in my twenties. I only had to please myself, and I became free to try anything. I also was free to fail. Free not to be "the best." Free to enjoy the process. Free of the fear that I would never be an Artist.

Today, I was in the grocery store. "Put that down, now!" exclaimed the young mother behind me in line, in that tired mother voice that is so often heard in grocery stores. My first impulse was to be critical. Does she know how angry she sounds? I thought. Then I turned around. She had a baby in the front of the cart and a young boy of about three was trying his best not to touch the brightly colored impulse items hanging at his eye level. My heart softened.

"They are the same age difference as my boys are," I said, smiling. She replied in a much kinder voice as well, and stated her son was usually well behaved.

"It's hard not to touch these things, they are irresistable." I told her that my children were now in their twenties, and how fast it went. I also said I remembered what it was like to be so tired and have so many demands as a mother of young kids.

I paid for my groceries, wished her a good day and moved along. Home. Home to my business where I draw, paint, design, write, edit and make a living doing what I love. And, being a mother. How great is that?

The professors were wrong. The talent doesn't leave. The creativity doesn't leave. There is time in life for each phase of life and there are ways to keep creativity alive during the fallow years. I wish they had told me that instead. I would have had more hope in the future.