Mrs. Job's cover

Yesterday I was all wrapped up in holiday, but Lisa would probably tell you I've been even more wrapped up in Mrs. Job. It's cover design time, and I had a very specific vision in mind. The caves of Petra were to be in the background, representing her early years as a nomad. In the foreground was to be a beautiful, regal Mrs. Job with long, flowing, royal purple sleeves. Try as we might, however, the designer and I couldn't come up with it. So, time to change my set, I decided on an acacia tree. They are really lovely and flowing, at least some of them are, so I hope in 5 or 10 days to see her final work-up.

Now back to decorating and anticipating.

Holidays Again -- Amazing -- Part Two

PLEASE READ PART ONE (BELOW) FIRST
And then there were the Anderson Christmases, not always right on the Eve or the day, because there was a fairly large family to get together -- a logistical challenge. I don't think we ate a full meal at Grandma and Grandpa's, but whatever it was, it was Swedish. Everything about family Christmas was Swedish. Even the Lutheran church service was Swedish in my early years.

Christmas morning, however, was definitely American. Presents galore, or at least it seemed so to me, and opened one at a time, with full appreciation and thank yous to the donors. Then Hallie came over to see what I had received before I went through our adjoining back yards to see hers.

Later, as grandparents and first-born uncles aged and died, and as siblings married and had children, Christmases were celebrated in my home, my mother carrying on the smorgasbord tradition.

And I dated. Once I didn't make it home in time to help my father with the Christmas tree. I still suffer guilt.

Married in 1955, I carried on the smorgasbord tradition in my home, though not always so genuinely Swedish and not always right on the Eve or day. Oh, I did that the first couple of years -- Gustafsons on Christmas Eve and Affinitos on Christmas day, but it wasn't long before my family agreed to come a week or so before the 25th. And the Affinito celebrations were as close to Italian as I could make them.

Christmas Eve usually involved my going to my church -- Lutheran -- to sing in the choir, while Doug and Lisa went with their Dad to Catholic Mass. It was usually a long mass. I guess the Priest really wanted to take advantage of the size of the Christmas crowd. For me, it meant lots of time to wrap stocking stuffers before they got home.And our children had a very American Christmas morning, after we had paid a tradition visit to Mrs. Mirto. (I brought along one present for each of our children to open while we were there.)

My children learned about Santa Claus the same way I had -- my brother as Santa. But they loved Harvey as much as I, so it was OK that he was Santa. Well, I guess to be honest I should say that they suspected something was up even before Harvey's appearance confirmed it.

And so Christmas traditions change. Later tonight, if all goes as planned, Doug (my son, Lisa's brother) and KJ (Lisa's daughter -- senior at St. Olaf) will arrive in Williamsburg, VA to pick up on our new traditions. Doug and Lisa's children -- no longer children -- will make gingerbread cookies. On Christmas Eve Doug will make two different kinds of soup, and on Christmas day we'll have steak and chicken, and still an American slow exchange of gifts, though many fewer this year. Everyone feels the pinch.

And I'll bore everyone by saying, "I can't believe I've made it to another healthy Christmas. How blessed I am!"

And how spoiled I am. I do so wish everyone could enjoy their version of holiday celebration in peace instead of hunger and fear. I do so hope that we are edging closer to the day.

Holidays again -- amazing -- part one

Every year I am amazed to have made it to another happy, healthy holiday season. Oh, the truth is they haven't all been happy. Nothing was happy around the time that my marriage ended -- way back in 1976. But my Christmas memories encompass so many years that a couple of not-so-great ones fade into the background. And even in those years the celebrations were good and complete. I was still carrying on the family tradition of Christmas Eve smorgasbords at that time. That went on until the Christmas after my brother's son committed suicide just around Thanksgiving time.

The year of the suicide my brother called me on December 11th, the day of his birthday, to say that he had received the final "gift" from his son -- his ashes. We tried to maintain the Christmas tradition that year, but anyone could have told us the pall would be too great.

After that, for a while before I moved from Connecticut to Minnesota, I enjoyed presenting a modified smorgasbord for my women colleagues/friends at Southern Connecticut State University. They were such a blessing. I miss that group. I miss the non-Christmas memory of the time I hosted a tupperware party for that group and we got really silly/giddy fighting for a little plastic pill container. I still have mine.

But my memories carry me back much farther (further?) than that. I was pretty much the youngest of the youngest on both sides of my family. My cousin Eunice on the Anderson side was about six months younger. But you get the picture. I was really special. And how special those Christmases were! My father's oldest brother and his wife had acquired a lovely Victorian house by working for it. The stories vary, but I think the correct one is that they had worked as butler and maid for the family who owned it, with the deal that it would be theirs when the owners died. However it happened, it was a fantastic Christmas house. Christmas Eve found some 22 or more of us around a huge smorgasbord. I don't think I enjoyed it much, because I couldn't wait to go into the parlor to sit around the tree and anticipate the ho-ho-ho of Santa Claus. And he did come -- year after year. Somewhere around when I was 8 years old, my brother, eleven years older than I, stood in for my cousin. Harvey couldn't see very well without his glasses, so he needed my help reading the tags. I guess it was time anyway, but there was no way I could believe in Santa Claus after getting up that close. I didn't tell my parents until the next year, though, because I didn't want them to feel bad.

That was Christmas Eve with the Gustafsons. And now I have to leave this to go on to a newer Christmas tradition -- helping my daughter get her house ready for the family coming together for another annual celebration. I'll be back.

Happy Holidays, and Why I've Been Remiss

Yes, this is a wish for happy holidays. But first let me apologize that I haven't even looked at my own blog since I last posted, and steer you to a couple of interesting comments on previous blogs. I don't know how to reply to them directly. Maybe somebody out there can teach me a better response to those kind people, because this time I'm going to come right out and ask for comments. I'd like to suggest that what Marina had to say is especially potent given that she is a practicing psychologist in Minnesota who carries with her the experience of growing up in Russia.

And now to "Happy Holidays." Yes, Happy Holidays. I'm happy when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, though I do think "Happy Christmas," or "Blessed Christmas" or "Peaceful Christmas" might be more appropriate. But I do mean "Happy Holidays." Basically, this is a holiday celebrating the winter solstice, and how I do look forward to the days getting longer. But I want to make the point that I wish happiness for everyone as you celebrate this season within whatever context, faith, or non-faith is right for you. And, though I don't think I'm too good at it, I am in my own urgent way praying for peace, the end of poverty, care for this world with which we have been gifted, a growth of true liberty in our own beloved country, an end to torture and genocide, and the termination of the kind of greed that allows a man to be trampled to death in the search of bargains. I am offended by those who would exclude anyone but "Christians" from this hopeful time. There, I've had my say on that one. 

Now on to my request. Please accept this as a holiday card from me. You're on this list because you are important to me, and I wish I could do what I did back in the old days. I mean, the days when I had lots of energy, so I could be finishing up a teaching semester, preparing a sensational (I hope) Christmas celebration for my family, including choosing and buying presents, baking lots of cookies, planning and ultimately preparing feasts served on china, sterling, and silver, practicing Christmas music with the choir, and attending special celebrations. Then I used to have Christmas cards out pretty much at Thanksgiving time, with a complete 3x5 card record reminding me to forget no one. Of course, each greeting card was addressed individually, including a hand-written return address, each envelope licked closed (probably with a damp sponge), and stamped in the same licking way. The total used to add up to over 100.

Little by little, always with a terrible feeling of remorse, I have removed the names of friends who are no longer alive to receive the cards. But mostly, little by little, that young energy has dissipated, or maybe I've just become wrapped up in other things.  or maybe I'm just more in tune with the tools of our current time. At any rate, I do feel a little guilty, but I'm not sending out individual cards except to people I can't reach through the internet.

Some of those who will be getting hand-written holiday cards from me are people on Amnesty International's list if prisoners of conscience. We'll be doing a Write-a-Thon at Mount Calvary on December 14. I don't know if we'll have 5 people or 100 writing. I'm hoping for the 100. As with everything else, much will depend on the quality of the marketing. I think we have some good people doing some fantastic work on that.

Which takes me neatly, I think, into a bit of what else I've been doing. The Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church up the street from me has an awesome pastor who really gets things done! There are now in the little church a couple of empty rooms, vacated by a nursery school. Pastor Gordon Stewart has proposed developing some kind of restorative justice service for the community, headquartered in those rooms. We have a team ready to go on firming up a plan. You might, by the way, want to visit their web site. I think you'll still find there photos of the beautiful, indeed awesome, paintings done by He Qi, a famous Chinese Artist who was hosted at a reception there this past Friday.

At Mount Calvary, I'm getting a bit re-energized for our JustFaith+ group now that we have two fantastic new pastors bringing our pastoral staff up to five. (Obviously Mt. Calvary is quite a bit larger than Shepherd on the Hill.) The Amnesty International Write-a-thon is our first venture out of (my) approximate doldrums.

And then there are all the holiday pleasures. I'm beginning to get tired with all the activity, delightful as it is. On Thursday Doug (my son), Kirsti (my St. Olaf senior granddaughter) and I attended the St. Olaf Holiday Festival. Back in Connecticut I never imagined a school with so many students in so many large choruses with such beautiful voices. I especially love that the whole program proceeds without applause until the very end. (I really hate the disruption of applause in any situation.) And I like that it all goes on with no intermission. (I get cranky and irritable about intermissions, too.) St. Olaf is, after all, an ELCA school with a huge Norwegian influence. (ELCA = Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.) Therefore, there are lots of Norwegian sweaters in the huge audience. Best of all, they have the audience sing some of the songs, specifying which verses should be sung only by women, or only by men, or by all. And no one of those thousands ever sings when they shouldn't.  How's that for an ethnic characteristic? (And my heritage is Swedish. To the Norwegians in Minnesota, that's a significant difference -- makes me a bit lower class...)

Yesterday there were the Augsburg choirs in Vespers at Central Lutheran Church. For this Forestville, Connecticut provincial the Cathedral is like visiting Europe. Well, it is like a European cathedral. The Auggies were equally as impressive as the Olies (oops!  I may be spelling those wrong.)

This afternoon Doug and I will see and hear the Vocal Essence "welcome Christmas" program and then run over to the Xcel center to meet Kirsti and our friend Carolyn to hear the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Whew! 

I don't like the snow coming down, though. I don't look forward to driving to Doug's in my little Acura for which I failed to get the new tires that are needed. Twice already this season I have skidded into an intersection (actually blaming those darned anti-lock brakes as well as the tires.) Fortunately no one was coming the other way at the time.

In the meantime, I've been totally consumed with the latest stages in the development of Mrs. Job. I have received the copy-editing review of the book and spent a couple of days going through it. It has to be done according to the Chicago Manual of Style so the copy-editing was really valuable.  Of course, I really liked that the copy editor had very positive things to say about Mrs. Job, and most of the corrections were commas and semi-colons.  She had a little trouble, even though I had warned her, with the "G" or "g" in "-od" depending on whether Mrs. Job was accepting Job's god as one among many or as the one true God. Ah-ha, have I tempted you to read the book when it finally comes out?

The copy-editing used a Word function I didn't even know I had. Click a blue arrow and it takes you to the next comment/correction. Click the check mark if you approve. Click the red x if you don't, then fix it and click the check mark. Amazing. Not like the days of stamp-licking.

Next we work on blurbs etc. for the back cover, proof-reading (I really can't imagine what that involves after the copy-editing,) and finally the cover. I'm really anxious to see what they do with that.  

So, again I say HAPPY HOLIDAYS.