Christmas Letters to Alex- just breathe

It’s been a heck of a day. Sometimes you just need to step back, and breathe. That’s tonight.  No pressure. No stress. Just quiet twinkly lights, and Christmas music. 

I’ll adult tomorrow. 

Christmas Letters to Alex- Joy to the World

This letter is a little tricky. It relies on a video, which may or may not still work years down the road. So if the video doesn’t pop up, go do a search for USAF Band holiday flash mob.

Go. I’ll wait. Find it? Good. Pick the first one at the Smithsonian. Watch.

Watch the faces in the crowd. See the confusion turn to delight as the music builds. See the joy. Watch them enjoy the gift of the music.

The best gifts are given freely, with no expectation that there’s anything given back but delight. Do your best to go through life giving with an open heart. Give for the fun of seeing that ear splitting smile. Give because it’s fun. Give because you can.

Give from the heart, share the joy.

–Love, Aunt Clara

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Fall in the South

Texas isn’t technically the South, but it’s close enough in some ways. This part of the country doesn’t get the nice shifts in weather. You don’t pull out the heavy jackets, or worry too much that your plants may freeze overnight. The changes are subtle. You have to look for them.

It’s a gentle drop in temperature. You go from being in the fire, back to frying pan, and then if you’re lucky, it actually drops into reasonable person temperatures. Some folks start using the fire place of an evening, and you get the gentle smell of woodsmoke.

You can spot newcomers. They carve Halloween pumpkins weeks in advance. They are rotten within a few days. The pros use fake pumpkins and stick those outside for Halloween enjoyment.

Leaves barely shift for weeks on end. You hunt for any sign of color shift. You’ve got to be on your toes. You’ll get just a few days of color, then woosh, all the leaves will be gone in a few days.

Pumpkin spice lattes are consumed while wearing a long sleeved shirt and shorts.

Temperatures in the 60s prompt thoughts of heavy sweatshirts, which are discarded as the morning chill burns off and temperatures climb back into the 80s.

Eventually patience is rewarded. You get your changing leaves, and if you’re lucky, you get a few days where you need to wear that sweatshirt all day. Winter looms, and Indian Summer is just a flash over the weekend. Blink and you can miss it.

Those who don’t look for fall, who just expect it to drop in their laps like it does up North miss it. Those who keep a sharp eye out, they get all the wonders of the season. It helps to look for the moments you want, rather than waiting for them to just show up.

Diversity on my mind

Diversity and acceptance is on my mind a good bit these days. In the middle of one of the most contentious elections in recent memory, diversity and inclusiveness is a big component of deciding who to vote for. Listening to the radio today, there was a quote that caught my attention. Diversity isn’t just about including what you believe, it’s about including what others believe. Good and bad.

The power in the American Experiment comes not from pushing groups out, but from working to find ways to blend those opinions into a cohesive agreement. When you read about the actual Constitutional Convention, it’s quickly clear that there were MAJOR disagreements about what the direction for the government should be. While we wouldn’t consider the group diverse today, at the time, you can safely say the opinions were very diverse.  There were delegates who attended the convention who ended up not signing the final document. Heck, the whole state of Rhode Island refused to send delegates. There was no magical 100% agreement. The Bill of Rights was an add on, and the negotiations on slavery lead to a war less than 100 years later.

The Constitution was and is about compromise. It was about understanding that everyone can’t get what they want right this second. Sometimes you have to build things out over time in order to get a functioning society.

We’ve forgotten this lesson today. People insist that their way is right, and damn anyone else. Anything short of perfection is unacceptable. You’re Catholic and anti-abortion? You are obviously a horrible human being, even though you are pushing hard for social welfare changes, universal health care, and are working as a public defender. You’re transgender? You’re an abomination, it doesn’t matter that you volunteer at a soup kitchen, donate 20% of your income to your church, and that you vote conservative on a variety of issues. We get so focused on purity of purpose, we forget that the middle ground is where compromise begins.

You can learn a ton from people who don’t think the way you do. I learn daily from a friend in Missouri who’s struggling to build a small business. I learn a ton about discrimination from friends who are white, who are struggling with how to raise black children they’ve adopted. I learn about parenting from watching friends as they try to balance their morals and ethics with the changing world that allows kids to access things using tech in ways we’ve never seen. I learn from public defenders as they rant about the way the system is stacked against their clients. (As an aside, all the PDs I’m friends with are Republicans. Chew on that a bit).

I’ll never agree fully with some of my friends on the Israel/Palestine issue. I won’t agree with friends who insist that you can’t be part of organized religion and still be a good, non judgmental person. I’ll struggle with how to find balance between religious belief and public interactions. I’ll struggle with how we balance law and order with racial injustice.

And that’s the key. I’ll struggle. I won’t assume that there’s an easy answer. Because I know too many good people on both sides. I won’t say that friend X has more value than friend Y. I’ll be like the Founders and say, we need to find a compromise. It won’t always be a good one. But for true diversity to flourish, all sides need a chance to come to the table and work things out.

I will remember, and forget

On 9/11, the words reverberate across the internet.

“Never forget”.

We splash memes, personal memories, and pictures across social media, and for a moment come together an remember a moment that seems indelible. Who can forget where they were that day? Who doesn’t remember the fear, the horror, the gut clenching nausea? Who doesn’t feel that little tug of nostalgia, that desire to go back to a moment where we simultaneously felt pulled apart, yet pulled together? How could you ever forget that moment?

Stop and think a moment. Look hard at your memories. Drift back and try to feel for the sharp edges. Chances are, those edges aren’t as sharp. Time blunts memories for most of us. You don’t have the same knot in your stomach in year 15 that you had in year 2. The emotion fades from bright colors to muted tones. You remember lost friends, or near misses. The hurt isn’t quite the same. Time moves in one direction- forward. With that progression, year in and year out, you lose small pieces of those memories.

That’s how humans work. Our memories only hold so much detail, for so long. Time gradually erases the details. We can remember the dates, an the broad strokes, but the details fade out. This is how life works. It’s a natural part of moving forward from any event. With time, the memories are relegated to a few. The rest of us are stuck with the words in history books and stories that were passed on.

You will forget the details. As memory goes, only the sharpest, clearest details will stand out in your mind. (Sitting on a bench outside a movie theater in Ottawa, tears dripping down my face. I can see that. I can’t see the movie I walked into as an attempt at distraction.) Your kids won’t remember at all. They weren’t old enough, and will only have your stories.

You will forget. That’s okay. You can let go of those moments. It doesn’t mean you don’t honor the moment, or those who were lost. You find a new way to remember. You remember by working to change the world, and make things better. You remember by sharing stories, and encouraging others to be good people. You remember the past by keeping lessons in mind, but still moving forward.

The world doesn’t stop spinning, and time never truly stands still. You will forget. It doesn’t mean you don’t remember.

 

 

Remembering

Today is National Suicide Awareness Day. It also marks the two year anniversary of the death of my cat Georgia. In one of those horrible cosmic twisty, timey-whimey moments, the two events overlap. My friend Brittany was the one to drive Georgia and I to the vet for that last visit. The following year, Brittany looked into the abyss and couldn’t walk away. The hurt was too much, and she killed herself.

Both losses were devastating in different ways. I miss both of them every day, and both of them have left lasting marks on my life. Two lessons are on my mind today.

1. Don’t be afraid to love, full throttle, with both arms wrapped around that love. It doesn’t matter if it’s animal or human. Love hard, and love without the fear of being hurt. It’s amazingly worth it.
2. Never be afraid to let someone know how much they mean to you. I made sure to tell Brittany how much I valued her friendship and presence in my life regularly. Suicide is complicated, and the reasons why someone decides to end things are varied. Once the decision is made, those around the suicide victim live with the lingering questions, the what ifs. I am eternally glad that my what if’s with Britt don’t include wondering if she knew that I loved her. In that moment, she may have not seen it, but I know I did everything I could to make sure she knew. That’s all I can do and I did my best.

Life isn’t lived in memes, tweets, or soundbites. Its a heck of a lot messier and harder on all of us. Don’t be afraid to get messy along the way.

I swear I lived

“With every broken bone, I swear I lived.” –One Republic

Why blow off two weeks of paying work to go to Europe with my mother? I was asked about this more than once over the last few months. Folks have opinions, and in this day and age we aren’t shy about sharing them. Most folks thought it was silly to take that long of a trip when I didn’t have paid vacation time. In a lot of ways, they were right. I mean it means several weeks of working harder to catch up. It means some sleepless nights. I means stress.

So what? I won’t be on my death bed saying I should have worked harder or skipped out on time with people I care about. I won’t regret patiently extending my arm for Mom to grab as we navigated the cobbles of Venice. I wont regret seeing her face light up as we explored a new church, and looked at works of art that you can normally only see in text books. I won’t regret watching her absolute joy at seeing the exchange student who made a profound impact on her life. I won’t regret those moments.

She has always done her best to live a life with minimal regrets. She’s helped to pass that legacy along to me. She learned the lesson from her friend Rusty.

Rusty Mitchell was a fixture of my life over the years. She was friends with my mother through work at the local newspaper. Rusty was a character. She visited Mexico multiple times in her retirement, and drove a black Ford Mustang. She climbed the steps of Machu Pichu in her 60s. She lived an amazing life. In in her later years, Mom has helped care for Rusty as she slowly declined.

On Tuesday of this week, Rusty Mitchell of Colorado Springs passed away in her sleep. She was 92. Here’s to a life lived.

Believe

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Christmas, deck the halls

I believe

Heading South

Canadian Geese, heading south for the winter. Colorado Springs, Co. August 2014

Stay Awake- First day of Advent

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365, advent, Christmas, life, photography

Every Christmas holiday season I make an attempt to share my love of this time of year via my blog. This year is no exception. Yesterday marked the final kickoff to Christmas, and was also the first day of Advent. Advent is the traditional build up to the birth of Jesus, which most Christian denominations celebrate as December 25th. I spent 1979-80 living in Southern (read CATHOLIC) Germany with my parents and brother. As a result, my formative Christmas memories blend in a lot of the German Advent/Christmas traditions into the secular Christmas I grew up with. 

At Mass yesterday, the Gospel reading talks about Jesus encouraging his disciples to stay awake. I had to laugh because that’s really what I did yesterday. I was up early and out later, which resulted in catching some truly spectacular photos. It’s a good reminder. It’s awfully easy to just ease into comfortable thinking this time of year, literally to fall asleep. You go on autopilot when you shop. You hit the lines for big sales, and don’t really enjoy it. You just move through the season, hoping it is all over soon. But what happens if you wake up? What happens if you go into your day, thinking not about your must do tasks, but thinking about how much fun you might have? What happens when you open yourself up for something good to happen, even if it requires you do a little extra work?

When I went out picture hunting last night, the first half dozen shots were okay. I was pretty sure that the sun was not going to give me anything spectacular. But I decided to hang out a few minutes longer, just in case. I was rewarded with glorious pinks, purples, and a pretty awesome shot. 

If I’d just shrugged my shoulders and moved on, no stunning shot. No big smile on my face. No sense of accomplishment. I had to push a little harder, but man it was so worth it. 

Every day can be special, you just have to stay awake and give it a chance.