When I lived in Kansas City, I was single.

This meant that I spent a great deal of my energy and mind space being frustrated and unhappy about my “alone”ness.

Like most young women (and men too, I guess), I really wanted to find someone special to connect with, to be with, so long as we both shall live.

And I did! YAY!

But before that time, I spent many Christmas times alone. Not the actual holiday itself, because on the that day I would head back to my parents’ house and hang out there.

But that time from Thanksgiving and the Plaza Lighting Ceremony to Christmas Eve … that was spent pretty much on my own.

This week, I’ve been nostalgic for Kansas City. I have so many great friends there. This is how I am remembering that time.

Even though I was “alone,” — a girl on her own in the big city — I had a family I created from people I met who loved me even though I wasn’t related to them at all.

Now that I have kids around here, I have lots and lots of things on my To Do List for this time of the years. LOTS.

So it is nice to reflect now and then on the “alone” days. I guess some days I even pine for them. But I also try to remind myself to not make them seem more wonderful than they actually were. Because I know I was pretty lonely back then too.

Now, I just want to remember them… the good, the sad, the beautiful.

The lights, the porches, the roommates, the parties, family visiting, the demanding customers I waited on, the smoky bars, the uncommitted men, and the house with two cats.

But most of all, the friends, the hugs, and the laughing.

–

This post is part of my BIG QUESTION December series “If Only in My Dreams.”

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(This is a guest post from Paul Merrill, part of the If Only in My Dreams: Big Question Series.)

Christmas means different things to different people. After 22 years of marriage, Heather and I are finally understanding how much our families influenced how we enjoy holidays.

• How many presents are under the tree?
• Do you open presents on Christmas morning or Christmas Eve?
• How many lights go up on the house?
• Which way do you have your kids celebrate the holiday?

So, what was that great Christmas memory?

One of my best childhood memories is riding in the back seat of our 1967 VW Beetle on a cold Christmas Eve. The weak heater forced us to huddle close to stay warm. (That model doesn’t even have a fan to force the engine’s heat into the cabin!) My brother Bill and I shared the secret of what present we got each other. I can remember the cold, but, the memory doesn’t stretch far enough to remind me what that present was.

My brother, Bill, and I still are great friends. Though we live 900 miles apart, we still share presents, though not whispered in the back seat of an ancient Beetle. And our presents look a little different.

This year, share some aspect of Christmas with someone you love.

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At the post office, the hated post office, where lines greet me
and awful racks of greeting cards
Line walls, ignored.
The post office and its
Perfume of desperation.
The place where scales and stamps sit in dusty corners
Like aristocrats awaiting their bloody fate.
The post office, doomed, because
It is about
PLACE
and we have no
PLACE anymore. We are no longer
PHYSICAL beings
we are no longer
ACTUAL.

We are
e-people, shoving our lives and our
words
(same thing)
around in
Formless
cyber worlds.

The mailbox
Has no shape
Anymore. It’s
A percentage
Full or
empty.
P.O. stands for
Pissed off, that the
WiFi doesn’t work.

Now’s the time to
Collect the actual.
Postcards from
A storied past.
It will be memorabilia
Hot on the auction block
Soon.

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I want things handmade. I want a life devoid of BPA-worries.
I want the holidays decorated in popcorn strings and toes of knee-high socks filled with sticky penny candy and tiny oranges.
I want to have the hot cocoa, but not the packaging the dried chocolate-flavored granules come in.
I want to make the gift bags, without needing the troll Jo-Ann in deathly fear of whatever other impulses may come.
I want the craft, but not the storage.
I want handmade — the originality, the texture and depth. The artist’s signature. But not the price.
I want beauty.
I want art.
I want tomorrow, but I am unclear about today.
–
I will to unwrap the porcelain cow again this year.
I will place him in his manger scene.
Arrange the kings and the baby Jesus.
Avert my eyes from box and its $9.98 Walmart tag.
–
I am not sure what I want.

–
This post is part of the BIG QUESTION Series in December, “If Only in My Dreams”. Click and read more.

No related posts.

December is the month of dreams, of nostalgia, of memories, expectations, hopes and disappointments.
We were all little children once… dreaming our dreams of light and mystery, wide awake under our covers. It doesn’t matter whether those covers were cotton or silk.

We are still those children. Some of us still imagine the twinkling light dreams – and decorate our lives that way. Some of us can only remember them. We cast those sepia shadows onto our grown-up holidays.

This month, my family and I are far away from our own families.

Colin and I are spending the holiday the way we did last year: here in Connecticut.

We are working to create our own traditions. We are working inside boundaries, like many people are: tight budgets and the even tighter bonds of our ideas of what this time of year should mean.

What does it mean to be home for the holidays?

How do we – intentionally or inadvertently — reshape the imaginations of our own children and our community?

Can we do it, without succumbing to the naiveté of nostalgia? Should we?

My December series is: “If Only In My Dreams” – featuring images, poetry, and thoughts that prod at the Big Question: What is our dream of holiday all about?

***

Feel free to participate; however you like.

You can:

Comment

Submit photos

Write a small stone or poem

Think about it

Talk about it.

Tweet it, hash tag #BigQDreams

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I feel like I’ve never had a home, you know? I feel related to the country, to this country, and yet I don’t know exactly where I fit in… There’s always this kind of nostalgia for a place, a place where you can reckon with yourself. – Sam Shepard

When we leave this World behind, it moves on

All the simple mundane bits of life become beautiful

Places we craved to escape seem suddenly magnetized.

Windows reflect back at us like empty faces filled with regret

In past views, illogical love morphs to quiet obsession.

And remembering becomes ritual passed on to naive hands.

All our childhood plays out in front of us, like a record we want to repeat over and over. Could the notes ever sound sweet again?

Memories live in rooms wanting to be aired. If we share the stories with others, they are bound to fall like foreign language.

So we set our heart's recollections free in safer outlets. There they hide like horcrux.

No matter where we fly, we are never free of memory.

 

Nostalgia is a seductive liar. — George Bell

–

This post is part of my September BIG QUESTION series, asking “What Does America Want?”. Thanks for thinking, asking, answering, and reading.

All photos in this post are original, taken on iPhone 4 and altered with Hipstamatic.

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The following is part of my September BIG QUESTION series, asking “What Does America Want?”. Thanks for thinking, asking, answering, and reading.
–
The therapist tells me that I shout because I want to be heard.

I don’t feel heard.

Therapists are good like that: noticing the target painted on our chests.

Communal Shouting

But isn’t that therapist saying something which is true of all of us? (I’m not trying to deflect here, really. Well, maybe… that’s for another session.)

The pioneers and pilgrims — those white Americans we tend to identify as our “ancestors” — weren’t getting heard. Their needs weren’t getting met. So they pushed on to the next destination. To places wider and opener and “freer”.

Maybe they thought the wide open space around them would cure the angst and desires of their hearts.

Maybe they thought their problems and anxieties of finding a home for their beliefs would blow out in the prairie winds.

Maybe they thought being “new in town” would erase them of their old attachments and labels. In their new country, they’d be cleared of old ideas people had about them, of an identity crisis they carried around. They could sing once again.

Tweet Tweet
Time passes. We are pioneers of the new, virtual frontier and it is endless and empty and ripe for filling up with our voices. No one knows us. No one has any idea who we are. We are brand new. Our brand is new.

At first, aren’t we are the chickadee singing mindlessly? Singing because we’re happy and because the sun came out and warmed us and because we feel unfettered?

But, like always, the awareness seeps in. We see others courting others and followers creeping up like cult-love. Everyone has some advice for someone on something to make us better, faster, and more.  So, we feel our tiny size again. The noise and the chaos deflates us.

Suddenly we are Buzz Lightyear, turning the corner in the toy aisle to face thousands of faces exactly like our own. And maybe even better versions of ourselves.

We Want to Be Heard

Once upon a time, we journaled on a piece of paper, in a book that never left our side. Just a journal to keep track of the day and its mundanity. Friends seen, dinners eaten, seasons changing.

Then, we wrote letters to friends and family faraway, just to keep their memory firm. They replied, a long time later.

Then the electricity came and made our lives “easier.” It moved everything and everyone around faster. In the noise, we spotted everything we desired and chased it. Meanwhile, friends rushed away with time. No one stopped to hear anything anymore.

Between all the new conversations, we wait alone. We wait alone, in the company of our passions and fears. It’s the alone we are interested in sharing, eradicating, comprehending. It’s the alone we notice and try not to notice.

So, then we shout or drink and then shout. Because want to be heard. We are pilgrims in a wild frontier, uncertain of the path into the forest of tomorrow.

I wish others would hear me. I shout imperfectly, because I am unsure of my footing and myself.

I think I am not alone.

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This heat has
No name at all until
You remind yourself
He. Is. There.
Exit the climate-controlled
Iceblock
Bedroom
Only to hit
The Wall.

Day 11, A River of Stones

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Out of the blue, I got a call/voice mail from T. Mallie the other day.

It was one of those lovely long rambling messages in which she updated me on her job status and her life and her hairstyle and the general feelings of things on the Other Coast.

Last time I laid eyes on T. Mallie was in London. She was travelling just to travel — she’s an ace at that sort of thing — and made her way to see me, along with her son Daniel. We went to the Tate Modern together.  Adrian came along one day, too.

Mallie and I met way back in College. She’s the sort of friend who sticks with you, even when you hardly see each other anymore. The sort  of friend that pops up at odd times– just when you need a travel buddy or phone call. She arrived to meet me after I’d been 4 weeks lonely in Italy, for example.

There are some people we meet and they are our friends. They attach to our lives and become a part of who we know ourselves to be. We have stories, and they the main characters. Immediately you are thinking of a friend of yours in your life. I am too. I do not need to names my friends here: they know who they are.

Of course, there are some people we meet who are friends, too, but not quite the same. They help us through. They fill our time. They listen and give to us. But we aren’t going to be with them forever. That’s O.K. We are grateful for them too.

Anyway, it’s often hard to say which is which until after we walk away.

Yesterday, driving home from swimming, I was thinking about Marcy and Heather and Karin: these are my bookclub friends here. I think it’s my turn to schedule bookclub but, sigh, you know how life and vacations and family members and work and kids sort of shuffle time around.

Thinking of them, makes me think of my bookclub friends from London, too.

Hey girls, just wanted to tell you– it’s 5:30 a.m. And I’m sending you a message. Good morning.

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This is a guest post from Paul Merrill.

Saturday.

For those of us who work Monday through Friday, Saturday is a precious day. It’s the only day we can knock a few things off that everlasting to-do list.

So a few weeks ago, my son asked me to spend a Saturday with him at the Buffalo Bill Longboard Race. I thought of that to-do list. And then I said yes to my son.

We had a great time. I promise that both of us will remember that Saturday far longer than we would have remembered what we may have accomplished instead.

My dad did the same thing for me, several times. We loaded up the old VW van and headed off for college. The four-hour journey gave us plenty of time to share stories and even get a little deeper than normal life would have allowed. We stopped at an old oil derrick that I climbed. (What an awesome view!)

And I treasure that memory.

Think of ways you can make a longer-lasting choice. And do it.

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