Tidings of Comfort and Joy

I'm listening to Pandora's "Classical Christmas" station and making an unusual Christmas gift list this morning - a list of gifts I will not actually buy, since the people I'm scheming for are in heaven and presumably not even Amazon delivery droids can reach them.

Every year since my dad died in 2001, and now for both my mom and my dad, I've indulged in a glimmer of bittersweet fantasy by making an imaginary Christmas gift list for them. My "What I Wish I Could Give my Mom and Dad This Year" list. This year, since I've pushed myself out of my grief comfort zone by putting up a Christmas tree for the first time since Mom died, I decided to step it up a notch and make a blog list. With pictures! Because hey, maybe someone out there still needs some gift ideas! But mostly, because I don't remember any of the things I imagined giving to them any of those years, and I want to remember. Remembering is all we have.

And while I may be blinking at the computer through water-welled eye lids, this little exercise actually does bring me both Comfort and Joy.

Here are some things I would get my mom this year:

1. A beautiful rich purple Kantha blanket from the awesome Hand and Cloth organization.
Mom loves purple, hand-made anything, and I'm sure she would be all about helping women artisans.

Hand and Cloth blankets are hand stitched in Bangladesh by women who are vulnerable to exploitation. By providing them dignified work, Hand and Cloth offers opportunities for them to earn a living and provide for their children. From the Hand and Cloth website: "As each textile is handmade for Hand & Cloth by a woman, our prayer is that each woman would come to know that she too is handmade by God. "

Perfect. Gift.

2. The Josh Groban CD that came out this year. You can't help who you love, and mom LOVED Josh.



3. The "Against All Grain" Cookbook. I have a feeling it would stress her out to try to cook and bake for me now that I have all these stupid food issues. I'd accessorize it with a stash of the most-used alternative flours (Coconut, Almond, Tapioca, etc). Maybe I'd even do it up cutely like in "Stranger than Fiction"... "I brought you flours."



4. A picture of our little family.

I'll even be nice and give her one where Les and I are actually in focus, and not just the blurry background to an Auggie portrait.

And here are some things I'd get my dad.

Dad is a little harder to shop for. He would insist that he doesn't need anything. Ever. Well, too bad for him. 

1. Bear: Spirit of the Wild 

One of those admittedly rare instances where Instagram was a practical help. I follow National Geographic on IG (If you don't - drop everything and do it now. Incredible photos and stories). Anyway, the moment I saw pictures and posts about this book, I thought "Dad would LOVE that!".

2. Between Heaven and Mirth - Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life. 

I read Fr. James Martin, SJ's book "The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything" and I was smitten. He's funny, warm, and Jesus-filled. He's also the "Official Chaplain of the Colbert Nation". I dearly dearly wish I could watch the Colbert Report with my dad. I can almost hear his snort-laugh-cough just thinking about it. Dad loved a good laugh, and despite years of poor health, his irreverent sense of humor rarely wavered. 

* Note: Since this is an imaginary list, I'm going to make it up as though dad's eyes are still strong enough to read a book. Otherwise, yes, I'd be getting this one as an audio book.

3. A recording of my mom singing Christmas hymns.

I wish wish WISH I had this in real life. It would be my most prized possession. But since this is a pretend list, I'll pretend that I have it and I'd make a copy for dad. I remember always looking at his face as mom sang a solo in church - O Holy Night, or a section of The Messiah. The look of pure adoring love and pride is stitched delicately onto my heart. 

4. A donation to World Vision's Clean Water Fund

Hey! I can actually DO this one. I'm on it. 

So that's my imaginary Christmas list. I feel something akin to relief and bliss having typed it up to share. To be honest, I'm always wobbling on that line between "Don't hide your grief all the time" and "Don't be a Debbie Downer". But somehow when the holidays roll around, it feels like there is this little social worm hole that opens up and there are articles and blog posts and facebook statuses that let the cat out of the bag: People are hurting, and grieving, and muddling their way through loss all the time, and at the holidays, sometimes that pain draws sharper and more intense. And let's just come out and say it. Joy and pain mingle bittersweetly. 

But here's the kicker. At Christmas, we remember that God Came Near. And he came to bind up the brokenhearted. And to wipe every tear from their eyes. Sometimes, He sends His people out to do the binding and the wiping, even while we're still feeling a bit broken down ourselves. I'm not actually going to be able to give my parents these presents, but their example of loving their neighbors inspires me to get off my butt and GIVE and LOVE, even when it feels awkward or over-the-top. 

Concocting some Over the Top surprises would have been right up mom and dad's alley. 

And Heaven and Nature Sing

That's a little clip-on bird ornament, in case you're scratching your head.

I'm gonna be honest here. Christmas is not all candy canes and mistletoe for me. It is hard. I miss my mom in every carol, every cookie we don't bake together, every mint M&M that I will never dig greedily from the candy dish on the sofa table when I come into her cider-scented house. In fact, this is the first Christmas in the four without her that I have even bothered to decorate beyond a tiny table-top tree.

But we're staying in Raleigh this Christmas, and I decided I was ready to make our own family traditions. When we returned to NC after Thanksgiving, we packed up the car with the ornaments and stockings and lights and tree stand that we had packed away at Les's parents' house. So I had the loot. There was just one problem: No space for a tree.

Ok, actually, there were 2 problems. No space for a tree, AND I felt conflicted about the eternal "Real vs. Fake" Christmas Tree Debate.  A live tree may be greener overall, but I still cringed a bit at the thought (and expense, and mess, and the hassle of having to bolt our loveseat to the ceiling to make room) of squeezing a tree into our little apartment.

So I'm finally ready to be festive, but couldn't quite go so far as to buy a tree.

What's a girl to do?

Well, a crafty girl marches out into the back yard (We live in NC! We have a yard!) and drags a fallen branch over to her deck, slaps down some scrap cardboard, and spray paints that sucker white. So now I have a Big White Stick! Perfect. The Christmas Stick gets plunked into a tall white ceramic vase with some white tissue paper crammed in to keep it upright and Auggie-proof. Then it gets wrapped with white lights and adorned with all the bird ornaments I had stashed away.

You see, 5 years ago, Mom and I decided to pillage Target on the Day After Christmas. I pushed her around in her wheelchair as she clutched a basket in her lap. I had decided I needed some of my own ornaments, and I had a vision. A theme, if you will. "Let Heaven and Nature Sing!". Only animal and bird ornaments, with red and gold do-dads mixed in. Some order to my Christmas Chaos. So, I loaded her up with a couple dozen clip-on birds, red and gold glass spheres, and faux-berry garlands.  And that Christmas, I convinced my then-roommate to get a ridiculously big tree and I festooned it with birds, berries, and balls. It was glorious.

And so this year, Les and I have The Christmas Stick. I love it. And it inspired me to just rock on with the bird theme.  Birds and Words:

Our mantel birds (who perch there all year) were joined by a tiny poinsettia and a canvas wrapped with burlap and some stick-on letters.

Some hand-felted "snow birds" that I bought on etsy a couple of years ago hang out with a little penguin figurine that Mom gave me in a stocking a zillion years ago. Chillin' with the NOEL letters.

Ok, I know this is crazy, but for some reason I thought that because it never really got cold in North Carolina, there wouldn't be any cardinals here. That made me really sad when we first moved, but guess what? They are everywhere. I love them. They are just harder to see when there is no snow!

Our Christmas mantel. A little crowded, but totally awesome. 

There's even a funny little bird in our Nativity: check out the silly chicken on Joseph's back! I can't imagine a creche without some animals. Les and I bought this one in Portugal right after we got engaged. I love it. It is made out of this sandy clay stuff. And the calf and the donkey look like they are singing.

Joy to the World, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her king
Let every heart prepare Him room
And Heaven and Nature Sing

Let my mom, in heaven, sing
Let all the animals and birds, and trees and stars, all of God's creation, sing His praise

They do a better job of it than we do sometimes, don't they?

Gray Hair Update and December Christmas Shopping Mission

I know, I know, I really need to get Les to take a proper photo of me and my gray hair. I'm remarkably bad at self portraits, especially with the built-in laptop camera. BUT, I really wanted to update the blog, and we don't have internet at our little house yet, and we're currently ganking internet from a lovely, bustling little Starbucks in downtown Raleigh so I decided to just go for it. I don't foresee myself having a lot of blog time at work in the near future.

But there it is; full-out gray. That light color streak you see is really a shock of white-gray hair. And it is not alone. I'm 10 months into the gray experiment and I think it is safe to say I no longer have gray roots. I have gray hair. Not really even salt-and-pepper in a traditional sense. I have wide slabs of gray that lay thick across my head and hide nestled under my part. Those slabs, plus about 1,000 individual gray rogues sprinkled throughout the rest of my head. And I kind of like it. I don't love the way the gray hair is coarse and wiry, but I like the look of it overall. I just wish I didn't feel like it makes me look like I'm creeping up 64 rather than 34.

Anyway. It is what it is, and I generally like what it is.

Shifting gears here, I also wanted to go on record with my Christmas gift plan. This year, with a few very select exceptions, I will challenge myself to buy only Christmas gifts that meet one of the following 3 criteria:

1. Handmade/crafted AND I HAVE MET or CORRESPONDED with the maker - i.e. - Etsy is OK, but random department store "hand crafted" does not
2. Produced within 100 miles of either Chicago or Raleigh and I BOUGHT IT in one of those two locations (bonus, there are some really awesome things made around here, and around Chicago)
3. Somehow directly supports or promotes an organization that I trust and whose social practices I would endorse

I've already found some lovely gems that meet these rules, so I'm encouraged. And I don't have kids (or a hubby) pining after any particular gifts, so I've lucked out in that regard. I confess that last month I did buy Les a couple of things from a Big Store, but they were from a store that stores pretty well on the Good Guide, so I felt OK about it at the time. From now on, I'll be a stickler. Even if it means hours of agony over what to get my in-laws...

I'll let you know what treasures I find!