ALWAYS BEGINNING 3

Television networks are airing Christmas musical specials, both new and repeats from previous years. How many ways can one sing “White Christmas?” Church children perform various sketches for adoring grandparents and friends. (Perhaps this year a five-year-old will raise her skirt or shout the lyrics at the top of his lungs.) Crèche scenes are displayed on folks’ front lawns along with Santa, Walt Disney characters and miles of colorful lights.

The message is that this is the "most wonderful time of the year." In some homes this may be unequivocally true. For others the gatherings of family have proven disastrous in previous years.

The Christmas card I received yesterday proclaimed Peace on Earth and Good Will to All Men.

Through past experience I admit that I am only moderately capable of producing either. I accept the reality and relax. I forgive myself and my family for our individual oddities and annoyances. I become more skillful each year at picking the hype of Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas like lint off my shoulder.

Time to turn on the colored lights, turn off all others and rock slowly in the near dark. Breathe in Grace. Breathe out Peace.

Perhaps this year I can simply hope there is something here that doesn’t depend on me.

ALWAYS BEGINNING 2

How can a beginning be numbered? By definition a beginning is always first.

But beginnings do not spring from nothing. Diets are easily begun on Monday morning after a weekend of caloric infusion.

Even mold needs a wet dishrag neglected beneath the sink, or a remnant of cottage cheese forgotten in the back of the refrigerator.

Beginning may happen when we turn from a previous purpose or direction and step away, reaching for new support as we go. We carry wisps of the past clinging to our coat tails and deep in our heart. Inaugurating a new profession, we view each new experience in contrast to the last work, office, or management.

As we step up to take on caregiving for a parent or spouse, we wear our previous relationship even as we reach for the new cloak of responsibility. Unless the parent or spouse is comatose, they also remember their role in caring for us and how we disappointed or made them proud. We should not be surprised when regrets and conflict materialize like steam issues as cold and warm collide.

Beginnings can take us by surprise when our plans become disrupted. Winter drops cold temperatures onto us as we sleep through what we didn’t know would be the last autumn night. A fall, stroke or medical prognosis declares life as we know it at an end. The financial picture of our employer shatters into unemployment. We are pushed into a new beginning.

When we review the beginnings we experienced in our past, we can take heart. We survived before and will flourish as we begin again.

ALWAYS BEGINNING

Another season is beginning.

Public Television has brought out their Christmas concerts and married them to fund raising pledge drives. PUD is busily hacking tree limbs away from power lines. Snow plows and sanding trucks are lined up at the mountain passes. Sensible drivers who must traverse those passes are buying new tires for their cars.

Every evening more of our neighbors drape lights around their roof lines. We bought new outside lights last year and stored them so cleverly that we needed to visit Ace Hardware and purchase new this year. The cardboard point-of-sales signs declared our lights were priced 50% below usual. $9.95! But since the cardboard wrapping the lights made the same claim, I am suspicious of a marketing conspiracy. Our lights are 50% smaller than the LED bulbs sold at $15.95.

Our new lights are mounted on the back of the house so they can be seen by the hundred some neighbors coming up Ocean on their way home. We also purchased pre-lighted swags to drape over the dining room doors. They can be seen from 51^st Place cul de sac through our front kitchen windows. We only have five neighbors who might turn their heads as they anticipate the corner, so these are interior decorations.

The swags also serve as our tree. Heeding the admonition that what goes up must come down, we have conserved our energies and declared our decorations sufficient.

November 2010 the bulb in our front light post died and Harvey replaced it. He gave our residents the choice of red, green, or white. The discussion was hilarious and we ultimately voted for green. It has been green all year and is still shining appropriately for the 2011 Christmas season.

Maxine Kumin has written a book of “Essays on a life in Poetry.” Her title is Always Beginning.

In the midst of change and decline there is always a beginning of something new. We may not appreciate the resulting status, but homeostasis runs in our blood and we adjust. Each day brings a new beginning.  Four times a year, a new season.

Kumin, Maxine. Always Beginning. Essays on a life in Poetry.

THANKSGIVING

I give thanks today for elastic. The spongy strings avoid necessary strain to get a button through the hole.

I give thanks today for plastic. Lightweight and sturdy, it doesn’t shatter into thousands of glass shards. Colorful and whimsical, it gives joy to the user.

I give thanks today for fleece and flannel that softly wrap and warm us during our cold, winter rains.

I give thanks today for caregivers who take on the needs of our residents as though they were the risk takers, because they really do care.

I give thanks today for families who regularly demonstrate concern for their loved senior, but trust us to supply their daily needs of food and what comes after, comfort and joy.

I give thanks for each of you who read and respond to Adagio Lyrics. May you be blessed in your own thanksgivings.

NOTHING STAYS THE SAME

Insanity is reaching 60 and expecting the body and mind to function like 40, or perhaps 40 as if 20.  No one ever wishes for younger than 20 because teenagers are insane. For that matter, I’m surprised anyone considered me of much value before 50. So much to learn and so hard to admit there was a world I didn’t know.

On her 70^th birthday my mother exclaimed distress that she wasn’t perfect yet. I’ve never considered perfection a worthy goal. I prefer the connotations of flawless. The novelist’s lovely heroine was of flawless complexion with her every hair effortlessly in place. But how do you dig up gladiolas and replant garlic, chase children with no hope of catching them, hug a woman who has lost her baby, and retain the appearance of flawless. I guess that’s why our heroine exists in fiction.

We reach a point of decision: what is worth our time and energy? Why beat ourselves up when we need to set something aside for the time being?

We have all experienced being the caregiver whether with our children or parents, or a friend in need. In those times we can free ourselves from a lot of guilt if we relinquish the insanity of being perfect, flawless and especially the appearance of either.

In the Sept/Oct issue of Today’s Caregiver magazine, Dr. James Huysman writes on the Halloween theme of the mask of perfection. He identifies the danger of berating ourselves over our inability to do everything, and asks “who will care for you when you collapse from the effort?”

NOTHING STAYS THE SAME 3

Last night’s frost coats the neighbor’s lawn and roof with white sparkles in the morning sun. I knew it was coming, but the first frost always catches me unprepared.

The bird population at our feeders has for some weeks been the standard winter-hardy crowd of red finch, chickadees and tiny sparrows puffed to cold weather size. The frost on the neighbor’s car reminds me to move the hummingbird feeder closer to the house. I will need to replace the fuchsia with some camouflage as the tiny birds continue to feed all winter.

Today’s work fits into the allotted time, or not. My attitude for some years now has been that I clean our apartment once a week whether it needs it or not. And if something doesn’t get done then it didn’t need it. That goes for dusting picture frames, sewing seasonal placemats, cutting down expired asters. My ability to sit and watch sailboats chase white caps on the bay has improved with regular practice.

I am also learning to avoid shopping excursions that no longer serve me. Ross and Marshall’s irritate me with their bargains I don’t need and have no place to store. A collection can suffice at two or three rather than needing to buy another cabinet for 12 or 20.

I used to think that I was gifting my children. I hear friends use the same rationalization. The truth is that our children married spouses with their own opinions about what was important to collect. Rarely do they agree with mine.

When age and dementia remove us from our stuff, our children are stuck cleaning out the unfinished quilting and wood working projects. They will not appreciate the inheritance.

Our abilities and interests change. The ponchos we knitted and wore in the ‘60s are never the styles brought out in 2011. Nothing stays the same forever. Take a deep breath and let go.