When Breakfast Is the Best Way to Start a Day

Start with something forgotten: a distant friend's Christmas gift with a name that makes two insider insights at one and the same time -- a reference to my favorite I-always-cry-when-it-happens line from my favorite movie (think Scout/aka Mary Badham saying "Hey, Boo" upon seeing Boo Radley/aka Robert Duvall in Jem's/aka Phillip Alford's bedroom in a great scene from To Kill a Mockingbird) and a reference to a favorite Sewanee friend whose nickname is Boo and whom my friend met when she visited Sewanee; then make sure that that something forgotten is as delicious as this Indonesian "jam," a delicious riff on curd that I could love on anything, even just a spoon.

A Long Christmas

A great pleasure of living in a largely Episcopal community is the long celebration of Christmas, many folks waiting to remove decorations until after Twelfth Night, the traditional time of the wise men's visit to the infant Jesus. I grow older each year but feel younger living here, thanks to the decorated trees and outdoor lights some neighbors leave up just as my mother did. These small gifts make winter's deepest darkness easier to accept.

Personal note: While I don't have a Christmas tree, I leave up my light string all year long.

Let there be

lights!

North Carolina Arboretum

They All Grow Up

Dear J,

What a surprise! 

I picked up my holiday mail from the post office first thing this morning and found your box of gifts. 

The cat magnet is already on the fridge door and two cookies (one from each packet) have been sampled. I am at this moment sipping a sample of this:

How lovely to share interests (in this case, bourbon) as grown-ups, no longer just student and teacher.

Thank you for thinking of me in this holiday season!

Fondly,
Robley

On Leaving

these:

Aunt

by Al Young

She talks too loud, her face

a blur of wrinkles & sunshine

where her hard hair shivers

from laughter like a pine tree

stiff with oil & hotcombing

O & her anger realer than gasoline

slung into fire or lighted mohair

She’s a clothes lover from way back

but her body’s too big to be chic

or on cue so she wear what she want

People just gotta stand back &

take it like they do Easter Sunday when

the rainbow she travels is dry-cleaned

She laughs more than ever in spring

stomping the downtowns, Saturday past

work, looking into JC Penney’s checking

out Sears & bragging about how when she

feel like it she gon lose weight &

give up smoking one of these sorry days

Her eyes are diamonds of pure dark space

& the air flying out of them as you look

close is only the essence of living

to tell, a full-length woman, an aunt

brown & red with stalking the years

The Blues Before Leaving

Christmas Reflection

of missing grandmothers

Before

Christmas Eve 

visit to my niece's new studio

rain and water

first gifts: 

what's most beautiful

is as it is.

Day 4 of a New Camera: Simple Pleasures

At lunch, between cookie baking and Christmas preparing, a friend said, "Your pictures are so good."

The simplest compliment is often the best.

Just as might be the simplest gift for myself: comfy new socks, for example;

or the simplest gift for a loved one: chocolate chip cookies.

It's all good.

Those Who Know Me Well

know I love cats and Smith's Variety. Witness: my first Christmas gift from my nephew, niece-in-law, and two great-nieces.

First, I have to clean my car well.

Second, I have to choose which stickers to use.

And third, I must decide where to put them.

These are first-world problems (with a sense of humor).

I'm All About the 'Hood

Here's what I saw down the street when I got home at just-dark.

Despite what my Virginia-Anglican mother always said -- colored lights are tacky -- I thank my professor-neighbors for bringing light into darkness, joy into the season every year. 

From my porch, I look down, see the glow, and remember the thrill of childhood at Christmas.

That Time of Year

when folks drape a lit hairnet over a giant holly and declare it a Christmas tree. I'll leave it to you to judge.

Me, I'd rather just see the holly, or the beautiful flowers folks give those who don't get out much.

'Tis the season.

It's Always Somethin'

Everybody complains sometime about something. 

I complained today to a friend about the ticketing system the College instituted last year for Lessons and Carols, requiring that a person attend a mandatory social gathering two hours before the event (even though theoretically the ticket entitles entry to the Chapel) and turning the service into something very like a performance (I may not be religious, but I know and respect the difference between believing and make-believing).

One person I encountered today complained about the rain and fog, and yet as a resident, she knows it's just weather as usual, especially at this time of year when Mother Nature can't decide whether to be warm or cold (it's been both today).

Plenty of people complain about medical care and its cost -- especially for some reason about dentistry, always suspecting (mind you, these are people of a certain age, that the dentist invents reasons why teeth should be crowned). When I suggest, based on my own personal experience (three surgeries, two different occasions for orthodonture, numerous crowns, four bridges over a lifetime, and plenty of pain in between [one of my parents once said my teeth cost more than my education]) that just maybe a twenty-year old crown is ready for replacement before decay does permanent damage, others scoff and suggest the dentist's daughter needs a fancy wedding or the dentist's husband deserves a great vacation.

One special focus of complaint in Sewanee is The Pig, a local and locally owned grocery store. People say, quite rightly, that the huge Kroger down the mountain has better produce. Well, yes, of course. It also has a much larger population base of shoppers and proximity to suppliers. People say, quite rightly, that the huge Wal-Marts (one in any of three different directions, all half an hour away) are much cheaper. Well, yes, of course, thanks to the company's poor employment record. People say, quite rightly, that both Kroger and Wal-Mart have more variety. Well, yes, of course, they're both much larger stores with much larger turnover, allowing for more frequent refreshment of goods. What I say in return is this: our Pig is locally owned and operated; the folks who work there live up here; and the management has improved it at least a thousand percent in the last four years -- adding locally made bread, locally grown fruit, gluten-free products, vegetarian alternatives, and even growlers for beer.

I have many reasons to love The Pig. In addition to the bulldog I posted the the other day, there's this.

Happy complaining, y'all! 

No Books Were Harmed in the Making of These Trees

The folks at duPont Library know how to de-stress students at end of term: book tree contest, tasty treats, and therapy dogs.

I sure could have used some librarians like this in graduate school!

Christmas Gifts

When everyone droops with gift-giving, even the dog Betsy, we take to the outdoors.

One walk with my niece and her youngest takes us past my childhood church, now a dancing school. "I wish they had dance here," my niece said. "The studio is so beautiful." "Oh yes," I say, "I can well imagine."



Another walk takes me and the older of the two Birmingham great-nieces to the filling station for AA batteries. We're on a mission: to take a few snaps. We photograph reflections in windows and doors, feet and each other, bricks and stones, and water. At home, I edit one of her photos, and her sister V exclaims, "Did E take that???" "Yes," I answer. "Wow," E says. I hope this is the start of something.

On the last walk, just before we take the turkey to the in-laws' house for Christmas dinner, my nephew and I stroll through Birmingham's Botanical Gardens. We marvel at ferns and names of hundreds of iris (I'd like to see them come up), walk up and down hilly paths, admiring crape myrtle bark aglow in late afternoon light, and stopping at the Conservatory entrance to read the plaques memorializing members of our "second family.

On our way home, we pass my father's childhood home and my two childhood homes, and I think of all those who aren't here now to enjoy Christmas -- my parents, my aunt and uncle, my second family "aunt and uncle," and one first cousin.

Their gifts live on in the season of giving.

Little Kindnesses

I met a former student at The Waffle House earlier tonight for a bit of conversation and her "interesting news" during an hour stolen from her long drive home.

What I didn't expect delighted and moved me. Along the windows, homemade snowflakes had been taped ("Made by the third shift ladies," our waitress explained; "they could have used store-bought ones, but they didn't!"). At the counter, an older man, alone, played a game on his telephone, another waitress and the fry-cook chatting with and asking him questions -- a regular customer clearly, a widower perhaps, enjoying the generous attention from folks whom he knows.

We don't always get what we expect. Tonight, I expected the penetrating smell of grease and inattention of the wait staff, just like I'd had before at the same restaurant.

When I still taught prep school, I began the first tenth-grade class of the year with "Molly and Ned," a game designed to test students' lack of awareness of their preconceptions about language. "What do you think this phrase" -- I'd point to "functional fixedness" already written on the board -- "means." Eventually, students would untangle the phrase into something like a fixed way of thinking about something. "Yes, a way of thinking that sticks you in a rut when you encounter something you don't expect. We're going to play Molly and Ned to uncover your functional fixedness. Your job," I'd say, "is to discover the rules of the game by asking me questions to which I can answer yes or no. Begin." After much frustration and experimentation, students who followed their instincts and who thought creatively -- often those their classmates had written off as "slow" or worse -- would catch on. I'll leave it to you to imagine why the game is called "Molly and Ned."

Tonight, I banged up against my own functional fixedness. I have long thought of The Waffle House as a restaurant of the lowest order -- a place of last resort. But I have been blind to the humanity of the people who work there, and tonight I am grateful to them for their little kindnesses.

I suspect my friend and former student is, too.

Christmas Essentials

Lights 

and 

children.

Letterpress Cards

Just the other day I encountered an editorial by someone criticizing folks for using Christmas cards without religious scenes and messages. The speaker said it was a recent phenomenon and blamed the "secularization" of the culture for this breach of religious faith.

I found the comment an odd one, given that my parents made our Christmas cards, beginning in the early 1940s. Good Episcopalians both, their cards featured the family, even our pets. The oldest card I have shows my brothers in a small boat, fishing. Some time ago, I wrote about another showing my brothers and me dressed as angelic choir members.


Among the cards I've received this year is a beautiful one from a good friend who enclosed tiny notes made by Yee-Haw Industries. Cathy knows that I love design, paper, and letterpress, and she knows that I appreciate her thoughtfully selected remembrance.

Surely hers is a message filled with the spirit of the season.

Christmas Present

My first Christmas card has arrived: E and V with a Happy Holidays wish. Life is grand for five-year-old and three-year-old girls, whose genuine smiles and loving hearts and sisterhood shine in the photograph.
I look at them and see their father and his sister when they were children, and in them I see their Pops, my brother, and in him I see my father.

The Lion King animals celebrate the circle of life, and I suppose I do, too, though it's strange now to be a member of the oldest generation. Not frightening exactly, but discomfiting at the least.

Looking at these faces, I envy the living-in-the-minute experience of these two girls, one of whom wrote that "God is all the people who love me." I'm one of them, and that makes me part of God. E's is truly an awesome Christmas gift.

Christmas Past

Christmas is a complicated time, shadowed by joy and tradition and death and mourning.

In childhood, it was a magical time of Christmas cookies iced at the breakfast room table and of Daddy playing Santa. It was also Christmas Eve service at 11 pm, for which it was difficult to stay awake, and Great Aunt Tante (who ate more slowly than anyone I've ever know) and Geat Uncle Harry (who unwrapped presents without ever tearing the paper) and the Andersons and a lovely party at the Hendons' house next door, at which every person, adult and child, received a special gift.

When I was sixteen, Christmas became forever fixed to my mother's death just three weeks earlier. I remember that day only vaguely, but I do remember this: Lucille Wynne, who worked for my family as a housekeeper for many many years, came to be with us all day. She joined us on the glassed-in front porch when we opened presents and she baked our turkey. She became my surrogate mother who taught me about dignity and racial equality and compassion.

Later still, Christmas was filled with my brother's children: Davies, who pulled down the tree and who wore Eatherley's tutu and twirled in the living room on Sterling Road and who once ate nine helpings of lamb, and Eatherley who charmed all the men and women alike with her glorious, flirtatious smile and gleeful pleasure in her toys (I especially remember her making designs with colored balls on a board that then lit up; I think it was called Lite Brite). I was there when Santa visited their house in the night and there when D&E awoke and we all ate "pinch cake." (Years later, as an adult, my niece said, "It's not Christmas unless you're here when we wake up!" This year, my great niece asked, "Can we make Christmas cookies?")

Four years ago, Christmas brought my father to a nursing home after a legal fight for custody, which my brother won. On Christmas Day, all of the family -- except my oldest brother who was not in Birmingham -- visited Daddy at St. Martin's. Although he had scored zero on a cognition test with a highest score of thirty, we all believed he recognized us -- David, Eatherley (pregnant with C), Jen with E, Brenda, Davies, Owen, me, and Daddy. It was a bittersweet visit. Only a few weeks later, Daddy died in his sleep.

And now, another loss marks Christmas with Brenda's death in late October last year. Forty-one years married to my brother, she was an anchor in our family whose sudden death shocked us all and palled last year's holidays.

This year, my brother has a new wife and a new house underway and there are now four family children for Santa to visit.

I look at this picture and I see the history of a family and an emblem of the season: the promise of new life and the certainty of its end, not necessarily a sad realization but a melancholic one indeed.