Merry...

Sgt. Thomas Tibbs hates Christmas. I'm sorry. He does. That is not my snowman in that photo, but that is definitely Thomas attempting to, once again, slink away while I'm trying to take a photo. This is one of the downsides (really there are so few! Maybe a handful at best! Okay, honestly, the list is long, but who cares?) of deciding that a feral dog is your best buddy. First of all, he's never learned "sit." Telling him that and doing that age-old motion of pulling up on the leash while pushing down on the dog's hindquarters scares him enough to put him in That's-it-I-mistrust-you-again mode. He knows "wait" as a command when I drop the leash, but... yeah, he's only going to hold that wait as long as I'm close enough to step on the leash if he starts walking. That cute snowman is on my next-door-neighbors' front lawn. Their house looks beautiful, so I positioned said feral dog first near the sleigh... but no, he wasn't having it... then by the snowman... again, he was quite insecure about it. So every time I tried to back up into the street and take the iconic "Look! It's Christmas! Here's my cute dog!" photo, he would slowly start idling toward our front porch next door. I don't blame him. I understand. He fears the snowman. He fears all the bright shiny tinkling twinkling moving singing Christmas decorations.

And that's so sad. Because I love them. So, full disclosure here, I've been tormenting my best buddy every night by making him take long walks around my neighborhood so I (selfishly) can look at the lights and tell him (quietly) "Thomas, that's so cute, though! Why you scared o' him?" Poor guy.

The girls, on the other hand (Princess Purrl and Sugar Plum), are in love with Christmas every year. Mostly because of the wrapping. Also because of the ribbons. Definitely because of the fuzzy feathered catnip toys their Big Sister Nic brings them:

This is Purrl's favorite position in the morning, by the way: Bottom to heater. We've been waking to temps in the 30's, so I don't blame her. In this photo, she is jealously guarding this toy so Sug can't get it. Naughty....

On the upside for Thomas, though, I do have to say this has been a great year for him. Since I no longer leave the house to work, we've bonded even more, and we often take long walks out in the country where he feels much more comfortable than walking where there are terrifying things such as people and flags and Christmas decorations and ducks and other dogs and lawn ornaments.

What he likes most, though, is to ride in the extra cab of the truck, looking at everything from the place where he feels safest in the world. So yes, I'm still driving him around every afternoon when we go to fetch the mail. "Thomas, ride?" is all I have to say. He trots down the hall, out to the garage and jumps in the truck--if the door is open. If it's not, he dances, shifting his weight from one front foot to the other while shaking his head in delirious joy. Riiiiiiide!

And now he plays. He has created a game that he adores. I'm not sure how it started, but he will often run for the bedroom when he sees me getting the leash. (Yes, I know; he's the opposite of most dog-buddies.) It makes me laugh, and some weeks ago I told him, "I'm going to get you!" which made him laugh and wag his tail--and run away faster. So now it's a game. I pick up the leash and he gallops down the hall to the bedroom, spins around in a circle and does a dog bow. I follow, then I turn and run back down the hall and he chases me. I stop when I get to the kitchen, turn and say, "I'm going to get you!" and he tears down the hallway again, wagging his tail furiously. It's hilarious. And man, does it ever make me happy to see him happy.

Oh--there is that other game he plays. Possum. You know how most dogs get excited in the morning when their human gets up? It's time to go outside! Yes! Pee time! Hooray! Major sniffs and leg hiking and all that! Not Thomas. He waits for me to come and sit beside his bed and rub his back and scratch his ears and massage his head until he finally rolls over on his back and laughs and says, "I have the best life in the world!" as he wraps his front paws around my arm.

Yes, yes he does. The new year marks the end of his fourth year with me. He was living as a wild dog for at least five before he was rescued. So I tell him often: "You've gotta have at least five good ones, buddy, to make up for the five awful ones." We're working on it.

Sleep in heavenly peace....

      Can it be that I have not posted here since the end of October?  So much has happened since then….  And I have been responding to all of it… on auto-pilot, to some degree.

      My close friends know that I do not do well in large crowds.  People… scare me.  So when I feel the press of humanity, I tend to retreat, shut down, introvert.  The same is true when a plethora of woes fall upon me; the creative aspect of my nature flees to the subconscious level, happily writing novels in there somewhere, while my conscious self deals with putting out fires.

      Fire #1:  Turns out the medical issue I was having was not an illness of the heart, but of the lungs.  Finally, in November, I was diagnosed with (no doubt congenital) bronchiectasis.  For most or all of my life, I have not had healthy lungs.  Several factors in August caused them to go into overdrive trying to get enough oxygen, which made my heart pound.  The symptoms, for the most part, are alleviated now, though the issue with my lungs is “permanent and irreversible,” as my pulmonary doctor so tersely described for me.  In that moment, his diagnosis seemed like a death sentence.  Now, a month down the road, it is something I can live with… because, well, I’ve been living with it all my life.  I just didn’t know.

      Fire #2:  Exactly 24 hours after my diagnosis, I made an offer on a new home.  This was made possible because

      Fire #3:  a very interesting (ß-------polite way of describing rude, selfish, boor) and affluent man made an offer on my cabin.

      So basically since mid-November I have been (1) following doctor’s orders by walking the loop every day—rain, shine, snow, wind, darkness (at times)—and using medication; (2) filling out escrow papers; (3) FAXing escrow papers, loan documents, copies of any and all things to do with my income; (4) reading daily emails from my real estate agent about new demands from my buyer and about how no one else in this process seems to be as efficient or timely in their manner of completing tasks.  ARRRRGGGGHHHH!  Oh, and (5) singing.  When I get really stressed, I sing, mostly as a means of calming myself, but also as an outlet… because if I didn’t sing, I would just sit down and cry out of frustration.  We’ve been trying to explain to my buyer for six weeks that we must get escrow closed before winter because winter means snow and snow on the road means no moving trucks….

      Forecast for today and Thursday?  More snow.

      But enough about me.  It’s Christmas Eve!!!

      May all the joy of the season surround you!  (Can you hear me?  I’m singing “Silent Night.”)

The Things We Hold Dear Part 2

(Christmas Bear)

In September of 1977, my oldest son was born. For a year prior to his birth, we had fought with Doris, our narrow-minded, power-hungry bigot of a caseworker from Children’s Home Society. My husband and I had told her that we would adopt a child of any race. She had responded by asking, “Any race?” We knew what she meant. “I can’t think of any race I would exclude,” my husband tossed back at her. She was not pleased. For a year we looked at available children. We wanted a girl close in age to our daughter, and there were several ready to be adopted. But each time we found one, Doris thwarted our inquiry with some excuse. “She’s too far away” (San Francisco) or “Her caseworker thinks she should be an only child.” Really? We knew what all the stalling was about.


In August, after we’d been approved to adopt for a year, I confronted her on the phone one day and let her know I was prepared to request another caseworker if she didn’t open her mind to interracial adoption. In that conversation, she told me about a woman who was pregnant at that time. The baby’s father was a different race. “I have you folks in mind for that baby,” she said. I honestly thought she’d made it all up—until she called me a month later and told me that child had been born. “He’s the color of coffee beans,” she told me on the phone. “We don’t care what color he is,” I told her defiantly. But wouldn’t you know, his nickname—at first as a joke, but you know how these things go—became Beanie Man.

For Christmas that year, a dear friend, Janet Lockett, made us a Christmas Angel for the top of our tree… a Christmas Angel with brown “skin” and black, curly hair. It was perfect. And for the next three decades, it topped our tree every year. That little angel outlived my marriage and was still at the top of our tree in 1994 for my grandson’s first Christmas.

But after I moved to the mountain in 2007, I didn’t feel the need to put up a tree (since I’m literally surrounded by them). So the little angel stayed in a box in the basement that year… and the next… and the next.

Last year, I was feeling pretty blue, it being the first Christmas without my mom, the second without my brother Dan. On an afternoon of reminiscing about Christmases past (as the Spirit of Christmas Past would have us do from time to time), I decided to go looking for all the decorations that had meaning for me. Up from the basement came all the boxes, and several hours later, the cabin was blinking and twinkling with tiny white lights and candles and various other decorations. Several years before I had moved to the mountain, Dan had given me a special bubble light as a gift after I’d told him that those had been my favorite as a child. I found that light and plugged it in every night in the weeks before Christmas, remembering my crazy brother with great fondness each time. There was no tree for Christmas Angel, so I sat him on a table where I could see him… and remember the Christmases that had been special for my kids (the first one after the divorce, when we were so poor we had nothing… but each other… and my grandson’s first Christmas, when the tree, hastily erected on Christmas Eve, fell on Nana).

This year as I discovered that the mice had gotten into the boxes of Christmas decorations (destroying nearly everything with fabric, including Christmas Bear, pictured above), I held my breath looking for that Christmas Angel. I didn’t know how I would tell my kids if it had to be discarded. I believe my daughter is pretty confident that she will one day take possession of Christmas Angel, and if I had to tell her that Christmas Angel had met his demise at the hands of indiscriminate rodents, I know she would have taken it hard. Me, too.

But there it was, safe and intact. Whew.

It’s not just the Christmas memories that it conjures with its magic; it’s a reminder that, way back then, we made a decision to let our family be defined by love, not by race or color or origin.

Our little family is bigger today (with more colors!), and love is still our common denominator. Our little Christmas Angel will always remind us of that.

The Things We Hold Dear Part I

When Mom and Dad moved to Southern California in 1954, just before I was born, they did so partly because my maternal grandmother, Lila, lived in Los Angeles. In that year, homes were being built in the biggest housing tract undertaking of its time in a suburb oddly named “Lakewood.” (No woods, no lake—just cow pastures and the Santa Ana River.) With lots of open space and a reasonable distance from downtown L.A., it was a great place to raise kids. Mom and Dad bought a brand new three bedroom bungalow—probably about 1,000 square feet—and they settled into the neighborhood just before I was born.


Frequently on the weekends, Grandma would ride in on the train and Dad would pick her up. She and Mom would be in the kitchen for hours on a Sunday, cooking dinner and talking woman talk. For Christmas, the hours were extended. Mom and Grandma would sit at the kitchen table and make cookies and fudge and dates stuffed with walnuts and rolled in sugar. When the treats were ready, they’d be placed on our large dining room table—which was covered by Mom’s holiday table cloth.

When I was a child, there were certain items that were pulled from the rafters of the garage—or out of the back of the linen cabinet—every year in the run-up to Christmas Eve. We had our favorite ornaments and decorations, including the little copper angels that hung from a mobile and spun slowly with the heat from candle flames below. And of course, our nativity.

I never thought much about the table cloth… until a few years ago when I was going through some of Mom’s things, and there it was. The unfolded cloth lying in my hands became a screen upon which a thousand memories materialized… my dad—before we knew he was dying—bringing in the boxes of Christmas decorations from the garage, then putting up the tree… my sister and I making holiday scenes on our windows with glass wax. (My loves, you would have to be over 50 to know what that is!) And, more vivid than any of the others, Mom and Grandma working tirelessly for days to make food and treats and wrap gifts and (clandestinely) fill stockings so that Christmas Eve and Christmas Day would be special. Oh, the memories that table cloth has seen…. I put it away carefully, and last Christmas, with friends coming over, I spread it out on my humble little table, fresh and clean from the dryer and still showing a gravy stain from fifty years ago.

This year, when I went to the basement to retrieve my Christmas decorations (packed carefully and stored in a closed cabinet), I discovered mice had gotten into the boxes. In years past, Sug (and Boo, when he was still with me) has taken care of the mouse problem quite efficiently. But the whole of Mt. Baldy was plagued by rodents this past summer, and my little Sugar Plum just could not keep all of them away.

Opening one of the boxes, I carefully extracted Mom’s table cloth—and immediately saw holes chewed through the cotton material. Oh no. Oh my god, no. Was it ruined? Would I have to discard it? The cream-colored fabric bordered in snowflakes and pine boughs represented a gossamer connection to some of the few sweet memories of my childhood. Why hadn’t I stored it in a more secure place?

Bereft, I carried the cloth still folded to the washer and dropped it in, setting the machine for a long wash on hot. Later, I tossed it in the dryer without looking at it. I wasn’t yet prepared emotionally to uncover the extent of the damage.

This morning, I finally had the courage to pull out the table cloth and examine it. Except for those few small holes I saw initially in one corner of the border, the piece is still in good shape. The table cloth will once again grace my holiday table… and, for the days it is displayed, remind me of those brief years when the fabric of my family was still intact.

In My Father's Eyes

My father, who was first a soldier, then a taxi cab driver, then a cop, then a security guard after he and Mom moved to California in 1954, was a stern man. He worked the swing shift because he had gone back to school, law school, and so would attend classes during the day, then leave for work about the time I got home from Kindergarten every day. I feared him, in his imposing uniform, which included the classic Sam Brown belt and side arm, and Mom and Dad never ceased to get a kick out of my intimidation.


As busy as he was with work and school and home improvements on the weekends, Dad made time to visit our local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Dad, at forty, was a youngster compared to most of the men who stopped in there for a beer or two with a fellow comrade-in-arms. How strange and unfair that all those old men would outlive him, as my father would die three years later.

It was around that time, when I was five, that Mom, Dad, my three older siblings and I, one chilly December day, headed out to the VFW hall. Rumor had it Santa Claus would be making an appearance.

I have to confess here that I never believed in Santa, even as a very small child. I was too logical, too analytical, even back then… and too prone to hiding behind Dad’s big chair—the invisible child whom no one saw even when I was in plain sight—eavesdropping on my parents’ conversations when they thought I’d gone to bed. And yes, even at five, I was the same withdrawn, wary-of-people creature that I am today, so I had nothing but reticence and trepidation about sitting on Santa’s lap. Telling my parents I would rather not participate was not an option, unless I wanted to subject myself to their scorn and a lecture about how ridiculous it was to be shy. I kept my mouth shut, pulled my tiny cardigan around my hunched shoulders, and soldiered on.

I can’t remember whether they served us dinner at the hall that day, but I know Mom and Dad had a few beers while they chatted with people they knew, and the large group of children in attendance tried to guess what was contained within the many packages stacked beside a Christmas tree in the corner of the room. At some point, I grew concerned as I realized I hadn’t seen my parents in awhile. (They had once walked off with the other kids and left me in a strange place, and I still suffered post-traumatic-stress moments because of it.) I tugged on my big brother’s shirt and asked him where they were, but he shrugged me off as someone made the big announcement: “I hear jingle bells!”

A man in a Santa suit entered the room with a few requisite ho ho ho’s and proceeded to take a seat near the stack of presents by the Christmas tree. My sibs grabbed me and dragged me up to stand in line with them, and I stood there watching this man talk to each kid in turn, eventually handing him or her a wrapped present. Even the promise of a surprise gift couldn’t entice me; I had no desire to sit on the lap of a stranger. I couldn’t even communicate well with the people who were familiar to me.

When it was my turn, I trudged forward, and the man’s hands lifted me to sit on his thigh, one arm stretching around my back to hold me snugly. He asked me what Santa could bring me for Christmas. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer. There was no correct, appropriate answer. If I said a doll or a tea set, I would have been lying, something I’d learned from my strict Catholic upbringing was a terrible sin. I couldn’t tell him what I really wanted—a Tonka toy truck—as Mom and Dad had already told me that girls cannot ask Santa for a “boy’s” gift. So I just sat helplessly staring down at the floor, wishing the ordeal could be over with.

The man asked me a second time what I wanted from Santa. This time his voice was less affected, more gentle. And somewhat familiar. I found the courage to look up at his face. Thinking back on it now, I can still see his eyes through the fluffs of cotton batting glued over his eyebrows and onto his sideburns. They are the same eyes that look back at me every day when I look into the mirror… my father’s eyes.

I want to believe that something changed for him when he looked into the sad face of his little daughter, her eyes beseeching him to simply let her be the person she was meant to be.

I know that something changed for me. My father, this strict, uncompromising man who enforced God’s laws as if he were the good Lord’s cop incarnate, was capable of playing Santa, of bouncing children on his knee and asking them to share their dreams.

Oh, to have that moment back, to look into his eyes again, and this time, say exactly what I should have said.

Tis the season

I was supposed to head off to a Christmas party on Friday night—the December meeting of my writers group becomes an opportunity to exchange gifts, desserts, and great stories. Alas, the instability of the weather required that I simply come on up the mountain after work. In anticipation of the party, I’d ordered a huge tray of Christmas cookies from the catering class at the high school, so I ended up bringing it home. Nothing to do but eat them up—oh, and share them with my neighbors, of course.

After dinner on Friday night, I pulled some of the plastic wrap off the cookie tray and wiggled my fingers inside to retrieve one of those small round cookies covered with powdered sugar. When we were kids, we called them butter balls. (If you put rum in them, they’re butter rum balls.) The first bite took me back fifty years.

When I was a kid, Grandma would catch the train in Los Angeles and ride out to Lakewood where we lived on a beautiful suburban tree-lined street. Dad would pick her up at the train station, and she always bustled in carrying bags filled with coloring books, crayons, and cinnamon raisin bread. She and Mom would spend days getting ready for Christmas, baking mincemeat pies, pumpkin pies, apple pies (all from scratch), cooking yams for candied yams, making cranberry sauce (from scratch as well). Grandma made a special Christmas treat by stuffing dates with half a walnut and rolling them in powdered sugar. Such a simple thing… yet I was reminded of how much I loved them when my daughter made something similar—but far more fancy—for Thanksgiving.

We had a real tree every year, and every year Dad would send one of the boys up the ladder in the garage to the rafters to bring down the large box of ornaments, decorations and our nativity. The only thing we bought new each year were several boxes of tinsel to cover the tree with. Oh, and glass wax. Most folks in our neighborhood would use multi-colored glass wax and a sponge to decorate their picture windows, much as the retail stores do now, with snowy scenes and holly berries. Of course, we had a long string of outdoor lights that Dad would dutifully hang around the eaves of the house every year.

Both my parents were veterans of WWII, and Dad was involved in his local VFW. One year, a few days before Christmas, we loaded up the station wagon and headed off to the VFW hall for an opportunity to meet Santa and be given a gift. I was pretty nervous about this, and truth be known would have preferred to forego the gift just so I could avoid sitting on a stranger’s knee. I was painfully shy and having to be asked by someone I didn’t know what I wanted for Christmas was torture for me. As the time approached for Santa’s arrival, I started looking around for my dad in order to seek out his protective arms. He was nowhere to be found. I finally asked Mom, who said first that Dad had gone to the bathroom, and a long time later, when I bugged her again, that I should stop asking so many questions. As soon as she said that, I knew. It was Mom’s catch phrase: “Stop being so nosy.” It always meant she was trying to hide something, and I knew right away what that meant in this case. Ha! My dad was Santa! A moment later he walked through the door and at his first “Ho Ho Ho!” I recognized his voice. When my turn came, I readily climbed into his lap and looked him straight in the eye, smiling. I didn’t give away his secret, and I never told my parents that I knew, but I was really proud that it was my dad who had the honor to be chosen for such an important job.

Yesterday when I was chatting with Mom, she mentioned that my brother had played Santa on Friday. I called him today.
“Yep,” he said, “a hundred and twenty kindergarteners.” His wife is their teacher. What a grand tradition.
“Hey Kev,” I asked, “Did you know Dad played Santa when we went to the VFW hall?”
“Was that Dad?” he replied. He never knew. Guess the secret’s out of Santa’s bag now. Sorry, Dad. But you did a great job with all those kids. Bet my brother did, too.