The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

If you'd asked me an hour before, I would have said no, I did not remember the way.  I do not even think I would have remembered Lettie Hempstock's name.  But standing in that hallway, it was all coming back to me.  Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to me. Had you told me that I was seven again, I might have half-believed you, for a moment.

 But the real "Okay, get ready" moment came when I read:

I wondered if we had ever fallen in the water.  Had I pushed her into the duck pond, that strange girl who lived in the farm at the very bottom of the lane?  I remember her being in the water.  Perhaps she had pushed me in too.  Where did she go?  America?  No, Australia. That was it.  Somewhere a long way away.  

And it wasn't the sea.  It was the ocean.  

Lettie Hempstock's ocean.

I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.

Neil Gaiman has done it again.  He has totally confounded, dazzled, pushed, pulled, prodded, and befuddled what is left of my reason with this cautionary tale of childhood.

He tells his story through the eyes of a seven year old boy (come to think of it, I do not believe the boy was given a name) who is befriended by Lettie, an eleven year old girl who may or may not be as old as the universe.

Her mother, Ginnie Hempstock, has the ability to take her big black scissors in hand and snip out the bad things that a little boy does to get himself into trouble with his parents, and then carefully stitch everything back together so that there's no reason for anyone to be angry with him.  But care must be taken to make certain the edges match perfectly and the seams don't show.  One can't leave areas of gray emptiness where unpleasant things can creep in.  Hungry things.  Dark and shapeless things.

Old Mrs. Hempstock, Lettie's grandmother, can remember when the moon was made.

Are you getting a sense, yet,  of how very strange and magical this book is?  Well, hang on -because no one can drag a reader through the terrors which lurk in the landscape of childhood better than Neil Gaiman can.

If you asked me whether I liked The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, I would tell you I don't know yet.  It is amazing, yes.  It is.  But I will have to think about it.  I'll have to read it again before I know for certain.  I am not at all convinced it is a book one "likes" in any event.  It is a book one thinks about, and nibbles at, and sticks a toe into in order to get a feeling about it, and then dives into and swims around in...like jumping into the duck pond at the end of the Hempstock's lane that really is an ocean after all.

It is an adult book about childhood fears that somehow never leave us.  Haunting is an appropriate adjective.

The little boy is waiting in the ring of grass where Lettie tells him he will be safe. He must wait there until she comes back for him.  No matter what he sees and whatever he hears, he must not venture out of the ring.  The voices, so resigned and so practical and so many in number tell him that nobody cares, no one is coming for him.  He is alone in the dark of the world.

"Now, step out of the circle and come to us.  One step is all it will take.  Just put one foot across the threshold and we will make all the pain go away forever:  the pain you feel now and the pain that is still to come.  It will never happen."

"How can you be happy in this world?  You have a hole in your heart.  You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know.  They will call you, as you grow.  There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine, the lack of which will spoil your sleep and your day and your life, until you close your eyes for the final time, until your loved ones give you poison and send you to anatomy, and even then you will die with a hole inside you, and you will wail and curse at a life ill-lived.  But you won't grow.  You can come out, and we will end it, cleanly, or you can die there, of hunger and of fear.  And when you are dead your circle will mean nothing, and we will tear out your heart and take your soul for a keepsake. "

"P'raps it will be like that," I said, to the darkness and the shadows, "and p'raps it won't.  And p'raps if it is, it would have been like that anyway.  I'm still going to wait here for Lettie Hempstock and she's going to come back to me.  And if I die here, then I still die waiting for her, and that's a better way to go than you and all you stupid horrible things tearing me to bits because I've got something inside me I don't even want"....At that moment, for once in my childhood, I was not scared of the dark.... 

Gaiman knows every half opened closet door, every dark place under the bed, every whisper heard outside the bedroom window, and all the shadows from the leaf-less trees that reach out their grasping branch fingers by the light of the moon.

He might be Peter Pan.  He may be a mad genius.  Or perhaps he is a seven year old boy perched on top of a drainpipe getting ready to jump.  Whoever he is, we are lucky he is.

A Requiem for Atticus

Only you and I can help the sun to rise each coming morning.  If we don't it may drench itself out in sorrow ~ Camus

What did he mean by this?  He was a complex man, was Albert Camus.  But - oh - what a self-absorbed statement was that?  Rest assured, the sun will surely rise and surely set without our assistance and life will proceed on its own path and at its own pace.  Life and time move forward with or without us.  It will press on without my Atticus, although those of us who knew and loved him will wonder why the world has not stopped to take notice at this passing of quiet greatness.

My Atticus was an attorney named Talbird Reeve Sams.  He embodied all the noble qualities that Harper Lee infused in Atticus Finch - my favorite character in all literature. He was tall, and slender, and he spoke the truth with a soft yet deep honeyed Southern accent.  He was a man who could be trusted with his word, with a handshake.  He could be trusted to be on the right side of every moral argument.  Steadfast and unshaken as he followed his conscience.  Simply put, he was a gentleman...a gentle man. Reeve loved the law; he loved practicing the law.  He was better than good at it; he excelled.

We were friends for over 40 years.  This year brought the end of another very long-term friendship over a misunderstanding.  But Reeve never misunderstood anything; he never judged.  He saw me for the person I was (am) and loved me nevertheless.

I am sad; I am happy; I am fortunate; I am unfortunate.  The privilege of not only knowing him, but of being his friend, is tempered by the knowledge that I now know the difference between a world in which he lived and breathed and one without him in it.  It is much less painful to never have loved - to which I say run toward the pain and embrace it and hold tight to it and thank Heaven for it whenever you can.

Goodbye my friend.  Godspeed.

Hits, Misses, and the Tower of Broken Resolutions

Summer is apparently not conducive for blogging on Planet Grad; but, since it seems a little quiet out in the blogosphere in general I assume everyone has joined me on the beach.  I'm the one in the big yellow hat sitting just past that large clump of sea grass to the right of the wooden swing...the one not wearing a bikini (something for which you may all thank me.)

Although not blogging, I have been chugging along on my personal challenge to read 60 books in the year.  It's a very doable challenge - one book per week plus one audio book for the commute to and from work each month.  I am actually a little ahead of schedule and had hopes of exceeding the 60, but I'm not too confident that will happen.  You see, things roll along seamlessly for a while, and then I hit the skids with a bit of a clunker - or a non-clunker that becomes a bit of a slog because it is dense and difficult but too worthwhile to abandon. 

Two of the surprising "hits" have been novels by Jeanne Ray, an author I had not heard of before Litlove, of Tales From The Reading Room blogging fame, wrote a post reviewing Julie And Romeo.  It was such a delightful, happy read that I borrowed Eat Cake from the library and enjoyed it even more.  And then of course there were the usual suspects:  Agatha Christie, Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce series, and a re-read of To Kill A Mockingbird.  All good stuff - straightforward, well-written and enjoyable stuff.  And, except for Mockingbird, pretty easy on the brain.

That cannot be said for two of the shortest novels I've read this year.  Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner, covers about 185 pages in which very little happens other than taking tea and going for walks and having conversations with strangers. Nevertheless, it was one of the best things I've read lately although it took me an inordinate amount of time to finish it.  If I had to describe it in one word it might be subtly compelling - which proves I need at least two words to give it proper credit.

The other even shorter novel (a mere 119 pages) took even longer to read.  In Equal Danger, by Leonardo Sciascia, someone is methodically killing officials of an imaginary country (which resembles Sicily, by the way) and Inspector Rogas is assigned the task of solving the case - but it just isn't that easy.  It never is.  What a strange little book.  Is it a thriller, a murder mystery, a political commentary, a metaphysical character study?  I never was able to categorize it, but it sure was poetry in prose.  I  took me nearly a week to read - a mere 20 pages a day was all I could muster and it made my head hurt, but in a good way.

Pulling Taffy, by Tinky Weisblat is lovely little gem of a memoir.  It covers one year in the life of a mother who is living with Alzheimer's, and her daughter who is determined that "living" remains the operative word.  Make no mistake, these are no ordinary mother and daughter.  Jan Weisblat lived an accomplished, interesting and full life most of us would envy.  It ended with grace and dignity.   If you need something funny, poignant, sometimes sad, but always uplifting, this is the ticket.

There have only been a few "misses," but when they were bad I found them awful.  She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb was not simply a bore, it was populated by characters I found obnoxious and self-absorbed.  Unsympathetic characters are very often the death knell for a book and, thinking back, I can't remember one I liked.  The whole thing fell with a dull thud.

Let me begin by stating:  I love Neil Gaiman.  The Graveyard Book is one of my all-time favorites as is The Anansi Boys so it really pains me to say that American Gods was a big, fat loser for me.  In the "book world" this will sound like heresy, I know, but hear me out.  Look...I don't use profanity very much myself, but it doesn't particularly offend me and by the time one reaches my age almost all of it has lost its shock value anyway.  I get that some of the characters are very rough around the edges and it would seem that their vocabularies should follow suit. Ditto the sexual situations - although very graphic and in many cases unnecessary to the plot, no big shockeroo there either.  Here's what I found tedious about the book.  I equate it to being at a cocktail party populated with colorful and exotic characters...interesting characters I'd like to talk to.  But for some reason, the weird drunk gloms onto me and drones on and on about some topic upon which he believes himself to be an expert.  The drunk thinks he is erudite and fascinating.  In the meantime, I'm looking around the room, the condensation from my drink pooling in my fingers, trying to catch the eye of someone sane who will come and rescue me by taking me by the elbow and leading me over to the chips and dip table.  Alas, salvation never comes.  After that crazy drunk wanders off, another takes his place.  One after the other, all night, until I've had enough and all I want to do is go home where it's quiet.  That is my review of American Gods.  But my disappointment is not enough for me to swear off Gaiman and his newest is right there in my Tower of Broken Resolutions.

Which leads me to this:

I only made one New Years Resolution:  I was to read only from books I already had on my shelves.  At the time I not only meant it, I thought I could do it...cold turkey...without a twelve-step program.  The above stack represents my falling off the No-More-Buying-Books wagon and does not include books I purchased at the library's Big Book Sale in March (which I think numbered 17) nor does it include additions to my cookbook collection.  Additionally, there have been loans from the library.  In my defense, two of the above books were review copies I received directly from the authors (The Almond Tree and The Deadfall Project) and two are gifts (Catching Fire and Mockingjay)  At this point, once these books get put back onto the shelves, I will have officially run out of bookshelf space.  Normal folks would simply refrain from any further purchases, or resort to giving some titles away.  Book-folk think more creatively and a little less pragmatically.  They decide where to build more shelving and calculate the cost later.  

There is one more photo I must share with you.  Behold my $185 Japanese eggplant!   After purchasing the containers, soil, mushroom compost, watering can, and plants at the aforementioned cost, I have harvested that-there eggplant and those little yellow pear tomatoes, which are not yet ripe but which have been hanging on for dear life for 3 weeks without any intention of ever becoming ripe. The green sprig is oregano, which is prolific.  I was complaining to my brother about the sparse harvest and the fact I could have had a truck-load of eggplant delivered to my front door for the cost of that one lovely specimen, when, with the wisdom and sunny outlook on life that all true gardeners seem to possess, he sighed and explained, "But, that's not the point, Linderino."   Looking at my Tower of Broken Resolutions, I think I know what he meant.

Make My Day

We all have ways to cope.  When life brings its stresses, as it always does and will continue to do, we seek comfort.  For some it is drink, for others it is shoe shopping.  Some of us get a massage or a manicure, while others scope out the nearest French bakery.  I can personally attest that chocolate works quite well.  All of the above sound very fine and I would welcome any one of them.  But the ultimate for me is walking into a book store, which is what I did yesterday.  The smell of a book store is probably as alluring to me as an opium den was to Sherlock Holmes.  The world suddenly seems a kinder and gentler place.

As always, I headed straight for the sale table.  Even in the distance I could see it.  At first, I doubted my perception thinking my eyes must be cruel deceivers.  I could not...simply could NOT...believe them.  Stacked in beautiful, plump splendor were three copies of "Essential Pepin", the cookbook by Jacques Pepin that accompanies his PBS TV cooking series.  I honed in on the table like a hawk that had spotted a mouse (fearing a hoard of shoppers had noticed the same thing at the same time and was hot on my heels to grab them up before I got my chance) to snatch a copy.  I ran my hands over the cover and hugged it.  Yes.  I hugged it.  My mission was accomplished in spades.  No.  More than spades.  In fireworks and a brass band.  No.  More than that even.  Not a brass band.  An orchestra...with Pavarotti singing the famous aria from Nessun Dorma. "vincero,  vincero,   vinceeeeerrrrrooooo".  Well, I might be exaggerating just a bit.  But it was pretty darn exciting nevertheless. The TV show is on The Create Channel, a public broadcasting channel in South Carolina.  It comes on in the middle of the night, though, and unless I can't sleep (which is not usually a problem) I miss it.  And now, here he was...Jacques, in all his adorably handsome and culinary splendor for the bargain price of $11.68 - with my B&N membership card - a substantial savings over its original $40 cost.  I admit it might not work for everyone, but it made my day.

After returning to work and doing what I  get paid to do, I finally went home, patted the dog on the head, scratched the cat under her chin, and put dinner on to cook.  I poured myself a glass of Pinot Grigio and hit the play button on the stereo - Doo Wop on that day.  Comfortably seated in my reading chair, I released Jacques from his shopping bag and noticed for the first time that the cover announced the book came with a 3 hour DVD!  Could this get much better?  Yes.  When I opened the front cover I saw that the book was signed!  In the DVD Pepin shows in detail all the techniques I would ever need to know (from how to tie an apron - seriously, he explains the correct way a chef ties an apron - to proper knife work, prepping vegetables, making meringues, the difference between croissant dough and puff pastry and why the techniques are different, the special preparation needed for certain vegetables, classic French omelets, correct techniques for making proper French breads, dealing with shell fish, as well as the preparation of certain wild game - which I admit I had to fast forward through because, let's face it, French cuisine or not I doubt I will ever need to know how to remove the lungs, liver and kidneys from a fresh rabbit carcass.  And then, of course, there is some discussion of wines.  It just goes on and on and on.  3 heavenly hours of learning at the feet of the Master.)

The book itself is hefty and is lovely to hold.  It has what I can only explain as a padded, hard cover.  The pen and ink artwork is, well, artsy - with lots of flourishes.  There are no pictures of the dishes, but my favorite cookbooks don't have them anyway.   But the endpapers do contain photos of Jacques in his many stages of life, my favorite being the one of him and Julia Child facing the camera.  He is seated and she is standing behind him, with her arms around his neck in a warm hug.  I felt a warm hug myself as I slowly turned the pages.  Once again, life was good.

LOL, "Like" and IMHO

"The human mind is so constituted that in many instances it finds the truth when wholly unable to find the way that leads to it." ~ Justice Logan E. Bleckley (1879), Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia.

 If I were able to have a conversation with Justice Bleckley I would add sometimes we simply get "gob-smacked" with a stinging truth for which we were not searching. This happened to me recently when I e-mailed an old and, I thought, dear friend about the recent death of a former classmate. I admit I was surprised that my friend did not remember the Dear Departed One, since I recall a letter she sent me decades ago about a conversation they had during a particularly trying time for the classmate. So troubling, in fact, that the letter stuck in my memory even though I was not involved in the conversation. By return e-mail my friend stated she did not recall the girl and I explained why I had gotten the impression they were close friends at one time.  I told my friend that I knew she was of some comfort all those years ago to the (now dead) classmate. Something I said apparently sounded "terse" to her.

Thus began a string of electronic communications that eventually led me to the realization that to her, if maintaining a friendship with me required an effort beyond Facebook postings, it was simply not worth it. I am still trying to sort it out since the entire situation developed over a 24 hour period (which also happened to be my birthday AND Mother's Day) leaving me feeling a little confused, then irritated and eventually just saddened by an argument over something falsely perceived by her which triggered it all.  The best I can piece it together, her criticisms of me were that I had not posted anything on her Facebook page (I assume for a while, although she did not specify) leading her to believe I was harboring some unspoken anger. At first I wondered if she remembered I called her just a few months ago. Eventually the e-mails devolved into her remembering I failed to send her the gift I bought her at the duty free shop in Ireland in 1970. As I remember, the gift was a set of six etched aperitif glasses. I can't recall now why I never sent them.  (I have a reputation in my family for buying cards and then never sending them.  I apologized to my brother, once.  I said I was sorry I wasn't more thoughtful.  Because he is a prince among men, he said, "Linderino, you're thoughtful...you're just not do-ful.")  But with respect to the aperitif glasses, only one survived a collapse of the glass shelving of my drinks bar years ago, so it is really too late to make amends in any event.

 Nevertheless, over the years I have sent other things.  I have written letters.  I have telephoned.  But the fact that I failed to comment on her Facebook page was perceived as a snub.  It did not seem to matter that I never received letters or telephone calls in return for mine.  It did not seem to matter that books I sent to her when she was not well, did not warrant a simple thank you note.  I realized that she saw me as her Facebook friend whereas I saw her as my true friend and we have very different ideas about the care and feeding of our most cherished friendships. The "modern" tendency is to eschew the pen and ink, and even the telephone, in favor of a quick posted comment or a tap on the "Like" button.  It appears that is what currently poses for communication (derived from the Latin communis to share.)

 Granted, much of my business communications are quick e-mails, although there are still multiple occasions daily when I must write an actual "letter" letter. A letter written on stationary that someone will take out of an envelope, read, and put in a file to molder away. As I said to her, and as I firmly believe, relying solely on Facebook is a very lazy way to maintain important relationships - if they truly are important. Quick comments dashed off onto someone's Facebook page are fine and have a place. They keep us in touch with people we would otherwise lose track of, with people we were close to at one point but whose lives zigged when ours zagged, or with members of our extended families separated by time and distance. It is nice to hear what an old acquaintance is doing and to see pictures of his or her family. I am happy to have those people back in my life, if only through electronic media. But that kind of communication alone, no matter how heartfelt, is not good enough, nor should it be, for my close family members or dearest friends - especially those relationships that have survived longevity and the triumphs and tragedies of life. It isn't good enough for the people who have walked along beside me, and propped me up when I needed propping up. Not by a long shot.

 I was told that I was obviously one of those "people of a certain age" who was just too stubborn and stuck in my ways to embrace modern technology. And as odd as it may sound, with that comment she finally said something with which I can totally agree. If being "modern" means that a quick sound-bite or thumbs up on someone's public page is all that is required of me in order to maintain my most precious relationships, then I am unashamedly a fossil of the very first order.  But when I think of my children and their friends, Facebook seems to be used "in conjunction" with keeping in touch by telephone...or in person.  They are there for each other both figuratively and in reality.  So perhaps I am not quite the dinosaur I seem.

I will grant you, letter writing appears dead and buried.  There is a reason why schools no longer teach penmanship - aside from the cost cutting reasons. Penmanship is no longer needed; handwriting has become a lost art. Why strive to express oneself in a handful of written pages when you can simply hit "Like" or take brevity to its ultimate economical end and type "LOL". Why call a friend to share your happiness over their good fortune, when a smiley face on their Facebook page should be all they need or deserve? Call me a fossil; say I am an old fuddy-duddy who is obviously out-dated. Write me off as a person of a certain age who will never be cool. Worse...as someone without aspirations of techno-savvy coolness. In the meantime, I think I'll phone a friend, and then I believe I'll write a letter...a letter in which I will drone on and on my expansive and brilliant thoughts. If he or she is friend enough, it will at least be perceived as semi-brilliant.  It may not be the equivalent of letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, or Avis DeVoto and Julia Child (aren't we lucky there was no Facebook back then?), but it will be a tangible little bit of something from me that, if useful for nothing else, can be folded up and used to prop up the wobbly leg of a table.  Try doing THAT with a Facebook comment!

Dewey Decimal Doesn't Live Here

I'm not one who makes resolutions at the start of a new year.  In the past I never kept them, which is disheartening.  It is far better to make a resolution that will last for only the day.  If it works out, it can be extended to the next day and then the next.  If it doesn't work out no harm has been done since the resolution evaporated at midnight anyway, unless it was revived.  This year I made a decision, however, and that is far more liberating than a firm pledge.  I want to read from my own library this year rather than buy anything new.  This decision came about as I tried to get organized.  I may fall off the wagon as the year rolls forward, but how bad can that be?

So, on to the organizational effort:  I've been slowly adding my library to Goodreads.  Slowly because it takes a considerable amount of time to pull them out, one by one, note the ISBN numbers, dust them and put them back on the shelf.  Climbing up and down the step ladder is great exercise, which is a bonus, and I figure it counts as my daily "work out" plan.  Who knew reading was so healthily cardio-vascular?  I'm up to 222 entries; there are hundreds more to go, so it will be a long term project and I fully expect my thighs and tush to look splendid by summer.

This library project reacquainted me with books I never knew I had.  More correctly, at one time I knew I had but had forgotten I did.  And what marvelous books are living here!  I do believe that if I was cast away on a deserted island, or up on a mountain top in Tibet, with no contact with the outside world and without much knowledge of it, I could cover my education quite well if these books were with me.  There are certainly a few clunkers and some pulpy fiction; but, they could only work to make me a nicely rounded human being.

I managed to hang on to a great many of my school books - from kindergarten on.  So, I imagine if I was dropped on that island or mountain top as a child who knew the alphabet, I would be able to start with the reading primers and eventually work my way through a degree in history or English lit, or, for some reason...botany.  I only recall taking several biology classes in high school and none in college, so I am not certain why I have so many books that cover photosynthesis, geotropism and Gregor Mendel.  I suspect some of these were the result of my newly gained interest in gardening when I moved to the Southeast; others must have belonged to my children.  I would be able to learn German, Spanish and Latin...and psychoanalyze myself, taking notes in Gregg Shorthand, seeing as I have volumes 1 and 2 of "The Diamond Jubilee Series"!  I can actually still read some of the squiggles that make up shorthand.  Unfortunately, if I wanted to learn Greek I would be out of luck, but I would be able to discover Why The Greeks Matter and that John Adams thought it was sacrilege that his son, John Quincy, was not reading Demosthenes at school.  I do not believe I have anything by Demosthenes, but I haven't been up and down all the bookshelves yet, so there may be some surprises in store.

What I have found so far, not surprisingly, is I have a great many books about history - ancient, European, American, Russian, modern...but I was very surprised to see that I have so many by or about Presidents, politics and First Ladies.  de Tocqueville once observed that there is hardly a political question in the United States which does not, sooner or later, turn into a judicial one.  So, naturally, a girl needs a compendium that contains everything she would want to know about the Supreme Court and its decisions.  Oh, and also a compendium on skin care, diet and an figuring out what hair style looks best with her face shape.  That is a very important reference work as well.  Sherlock Holmes, inspecting my bookshelves, would deduce that I was avidly interested in the Civil War.  He would be correct - as always.  He might also be embarrassed to learn that I was deeply smitten with him and have followed his every sleuthing moment...repeatedly and without boredom...to the dog-eared detriment of The Complete Adventures of himself.  Of course, considering his ego he may find such adoration "elementary."

There are volumes of mystery, murder, mayhem, ghostly tales, spies and the Classics.   Christie and Sayers and Poe and Wilkie Collins - they stand around with their cocktails and canapes and get along quite well, carrying on some very interesting conversations about poison.  Gertrude Stein is, as usual, talking about herself and boring everyone within earshot.  Sylvia Plath just looks morose.  I think it's because she can't smoke in the house.  Ron Weasley is trying to find a Horcrux and Sigmond Freud is just trying to find himself - a total couch potato if there ever was one.    Sweet ole' Bill gossips about what an honorable man Brutus was, but would bury Caesar in a heartbeat rather than praise him - and we all know it.  He is a sloppy drinker and spilled red wine on my carpet.  "Bill, shouting 'out damn spot' does not work, trust me."  Someone, hand him the Woolite.

There aren't many volumes of poetry, but the ones that hang out here are good ones.  I admit, they need more friends.

There are books on sailing, knitting, sewing, and home decorating, but not about sailing while knitting.  Now that would be one interesting book!  There are volumes that teach the techniques of watercolor painting and how to make decorative gift boxes and objets d'art using dried herbs.  And then, of course, there are the cookbooks.  I never met one I didn't love.  At the public library Big Book Sales, my internal GPS guides me directly to the table where they sit in all their plump and promising splendor.  Assuming I could find the proper ingredients on my island or mountain, I could cook the world.  I even have a book on The Story Of Cutlery (a prize find at a book sale and probably the only one still in existence...for good reason, I'm afraid).

I've also joined a self-imposed "2013 Reading Challenge" at Goodreads.  Sixty books in one year.  Unfortunately, even though we are only in mid-January, Goodreads informs me I am already "two books behind."  Not encouraging news.  The first book I've selected from my library is John Adams, by David McCullough.  I believe it won the Pulitzer Prize, but I must have purchased it before the award was announced because the dust jacket does not bear the Pulitzer logo that later editions do.  In any event, it has been sitting patiently for over a decade, waiting for some attention which I am happily giving it.  I am currently a third of the way through and am mesmerized by every sentence.  (At over 700 pages, I wonder if I should count it as two?  It's a thought, but I imagine it would be cheating.)

So on and on it goes.  Up the ladder, down the ladder.  Dust, note, replace.  Eventually I would love to have the books themselves truly organized in some efficient and meaningful way - as they are in a well-kept library.  Little chance of that in the near future.  As it is, they rub elbows with the oddest neighbors.  But personality conflicts aside, the community remains peaceful...and I'm working those glutes.

And So This Is Christmas

We say a melancholy goodbye to another Christmas.  Although I seldom admit it - and in fact make a rather large deal of being a bit of a humbug - in reality I do love it.  At least, I love the true meaning and idea surrounding Christmas.

I did, in fact, get the tree assembled.  It took staying up until the wee hours of the morning.  I finally dragged myself to bed and dreamed of sugar plums - or perhaps it was clementine vodka.  In any event, the next evening I took a picture of it.  As I looked through the lens, I realized something was dreadfully wrong.  One of us was tilting.  I was fairly certain it wasn't me.

Miraculously I had my cell phone in my pocket and was able to call 911.  Not literally, of course, but my paramedic son did arrive just in the nick of time as the entire monstrous elephant of a tree collapsed.  He was able to mitigate the damage by catching it on the way down.  I should have taken a picture of the wreckage (but I fear I'm not photogenic) - and of the tree with lights dangling and branches missing and ornaments scattered across the landscape.  At first I cried, and then we started to laugh.

The next morning, with the tree once again secured in its base (Charlie hammered it together and I still don't know whether I will be able to get it disassembled - I am fearful I might have to live with it up all year) I began again.  After all, Christmas is a season of hope.  Some of the lights were in such a tangle it was hopeless to try to make them right.  It would be less "glow-y" the second time around.   But that is a very small thing.

Christmas is not about twinkling lights,

Or Prancer and Dancer and Donder and Blitzen...

Or faux snowflakes...

It isn't about Christmas crackers and party hats, or whistles and riddles...

It is about wonder...

It's about laughter and joy...

And traditions...

It is about remembering in prayer...

But most of all, Christmas is all about love...

Which, I believe, is the best birthday present we could possibly give that sweet, small infant.

I hope your own holiday, whether you celebrate Christmas or something else or nothing at all, was filled with magic.  Mine was.