Category: Essays

Just Throwing Another Yule Log on the Fire

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

I feel like Nostradamus.  As if on cue after my most recent blog “Happy Yule” (below) a Merry Christmas e-mail debate broke out among the faculty of the college where I teach.   This yuletide uproar began with the benign announcement of the annual “Holiday Luncheon.”  The first e-mail response was offered with a scowl and a growl.  (Hint:  If you are scowling when you write an e-mail, astute readers will know this.)  The writer was offended that he couldn’t go to a “Christmas” luncheon and opened the door for his opposition by adding, “What other holiday would we be celebrating?  Fourth of July?  Memorial Day?  Martin Luther King Day?”

I’m proud to say that several faculty members returned fire by a) reminding him of what other holidays we could be celebrating, and b) offering reasons why their choices for December observances were every bit as valid as his.

I was discussing this at work tonight in the company of another faculty member and, as chance would have it, the chief of security.  I had just offered my own response to the online debate and was anxious to show it to my colleague.

“Oh, so you’re getting into the Great Holiday Luncheon Debate of 2008,”  Chief said.  And then he added, “You know, this whole thing started because they had to use the word ‘holiday’ since we’re a state school.”

“No, Chief,” I replied.  “This whole thing started when someone who believes he should own the holiday season decided to raise a stink about someone trying to be sensitive and inclusive.”

My friend, Priscilla, (props to Priscilla) offered a wonderful argument that I think I shall adapt for my own, with her permission.  I hope I don’t misrepresent her position, but the way I got it was this:  When the Christians agree to give back every “Christmas” symbol stolen from other traditions, then I’ll agree to give them December 25th.  Lock, stock, and barrel.  (Actually, to be technical, they would also have to give back December 25th since that was stolen from other traditions as well, but I shant quibble in that regard.)

ATTENTION ALL JESUS-FOLLOWERS:  When someone says “Happy Holidays” to you, they aren’t trying to offend you, ignore you, or even de-Christianize you.  What they are trying to do is NOT offend or ignore or inadvertantly Christianize you if you happen to not be a Christian.  When you respond defensively to Happy Holidays, you are, in essence, offended by the fact that other people aren’t getting offended.  How very WWJD of you.

Just be sweet.  Spread love and joy.  If you’ll leave your religious superiority out of the holiday season, I won’t point out that pagan mistletoe you have hanging above your door.

Happy Yule!

~ Deb ~ 2 Comments

Last year about this time I was sitting in the dentist’s chair getting my teeth cleaned.   Or perhaps it should more appropriately be called the dental hygienist’s chair.  I only see my dentist for two minutes every six months when he pops in after my cleaning to ask if I’m having any problems with my teeth.  He’s a jovial kind of guy, a quick hello, a short joke, a few jibs and jabs about current events, and then he’s off to the next cubicle.  I’m not even sure he’s a dentist.  I think he may just network really well and run a teeth-cleaning business.  He’s like a dental pimp with a stable of cute girls with sharp, metal instruments.

Anyhoo, at this particular visit a year ago, something interesting happened.  As Dr. Rodney Dangerfield was finishing his obligatory glance at my pearlies, he stood up to leave the room and gave a cheerful, “Merry Christmas!”  It was so cheerful, in fact, that I think there actually was at least one “Ho” thrown in for good measure.

I smiled back and said with an equal amount of holiday cheer, “Thank you!  Happy Hanukkah!”

The continuous advertisement of his own perfect masticators ended abruptly.  He literally frowned, a playful frown, but a frown nonetheless.   “Uh, . . . well, I’m not Jewish.”

I hesitated not even a second.  “That’s okay.  I’m not Christian, but I took no offense.”

He mumbled something about a root canal and scooted out of the room.

And here we are again, a year later, and here comes the great Merry Christmas debate one more time.   I’ve seen some ugly scenes over the last few years regarding this issue.  A woman at the post office two years ago responded to a “Happy Holidays!” with a venomous “WE say Merry Christmas!”  It was the angriest Merry Christmas I’ve ever heard, and it almost ruined the season for me.  I don’t begrudge anybody their Merry Christmas; I just like to be inclusive.

I have my personal feelings about the religiousness of the holiday season, and I’m savvy enough to recognize that so does everyone else.  Debating the “reason for the season” is rather pointless.  For you, it might be the birth of a baby 2,000 years ago (whom most theologians agree was probably born sometime in August).  For another it might be a Festival of Lights.  For some, it might be the winter solstice and the return of the sun.

Whatever your personal reason, I say offer the greeting of your choice, as long as you do so with joy in your voice, love in your heart, . . . and no point to prove.

Feliz Navidad!

The Last Age of Innocence

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

In 1973 I was nine years old.  It was a time of banana-seat bicycles, The Brady Bunch, and that bad, bad Leroy Brown.  I remember the latter especially because Tracy Shapow and I would play the song over and over again on her portable record player in her garage and take turns “singing” the lead.  Tracy Shapow lived just across the street from me.  We would ride our bikes half a mile up Studor Drive and cross a very busy two-lane highway to get to the Seven-Eleven and buy candy.  And our mothers didn’t even worry.

I would play outside on summer evenings until dusk would tip-toe up on me from behind and suddenly throw a blanket of darkness over my head.  An acceptable answer for a mother inquiring about the whereabouts of her child in 1973 was, “Oh, somewhere around the neighborhood.”

To the best of my knowledge there was no fence around the playground at Thomas White Elementary School.  At recess we would scatter to corners of the school yard that seemed quite a distance away and certainly not meant to be a part of the official playing area.  There was the pavilion where my sister married Henry Ozeritis in the sixth grade (much could be accomplished during recess).  We were well out of the teacher radar range there, but somehow we always managed to know exactly when to head back to school in order to beat the bell.

In one isolated spot on the playground, there was a large round cement section like builders use for underground sewers, or so I assume.  It was about six feet long and tall enough for a nine-year-old to walk through.  If you crawled up on top, there was a metal pipe that had been somehow inserted into some sort of hole and was bent just right and just long enough for a fourth grader to leap out and grab and swing from.   Some days this was more popular than walking across the top of the monkey bars.  Other days it was deserted.  As it was on that day.

On that day, I leaped and swung, leaped and swung, and then just before leaping again realized that I was completely alone.  The closest person was well outside of hearing range.  I hesitated, looked all around me in a complete circle to make sure no one was there, and then I said it, almost as a whisper.   “Fuck.”  And then louder, with more authority, and for the second time in my life.  “Fuck.”

And leaped and swung, and leaped and swung, and leaped and swung.

My First Best Friend

~ Deb ~ Leave a comment

Well, I have awoken from my turkey coma and have a few quiet moments to purge some thoughts.  This time of year always makes me reflective.  I think about family and personal history and events, both joyous and traumatic, that I have been witness to and/or participant in.  From now until, oh, about January 5th or so I will be never too far from some memory or the other.  Probably not the best testimony for “living in the moment,” but true all the same. 

So I have decided to begin a series of Memoir Posts, sprinkled throughout other posts and occurring simply as they come to me.  And so we begin.

I had my first broken heart when I was six years old.

My family was moving from Indianapolis, IN, to Saginaw, MI, because my father had chosen the nomadic profession of ministry.  Some ministers’ families stay put, or so I hear, but we had about a four-year expiration date on most of our hometowns.  We had moved to Indianapolis from my birthplace of Metropolis, IL, when I was two.  I didn’t remember enough about Southern Illinois to miss it.  But, at six I had formed attachments and felt the pain of them being torn asunder.

I only remember two things about Beth Ann Barker, her name and the fact that I cried for her as our Plymouth Duster left the Indianapolis city limits.  And even as I write that sentence, other snippets come to me.  Her father’s name was Ronald; we called him Ronald McDonald.  I believe I had attempted a sleep-over at Beth Ann’s house once, but cried so for my parents that they came to get me in the middle of the night (it was probably 9:00 p.m., but my memory is that it was the middle of the night).  I think she had an older brother, but that memory is as unclear as a Rorschach blot.

Beyond that, nothing.  I couldn’t even tell you what Beth Ann looked like at that age, let alone pick her out of a line-up today.  I don’t remember her house or her clothes or even the color of her hair.  I just remember that she was my friend and I had to leave her and would probably never see her again.

That scenario would play out time and time again in my life.  Four years later when we left Saginaw, two-and-a-half-years after that when we left Springfield, MO, then leaving Bay City, leaving Saginaw Part II, leaving Denver.   Crying over Beth Ann, crying over Martha, crying over Denise and Michael, crying over Jerilyn, crying over Stephanie.  My heart breaking again and again.

It’s no wonder I had to work so hard to grasp any sense of continuity in my adult life.  Every now and then, Susie and I will be in Kohl’s or Target or Kroger and she will run into an old friend and stop and chat.  After the conversation ends and the old friend walks away, Susie will say something like “We went to high school together,” or “I’ve known her since kindergarten.”  The idea of going into the grocery store and happening upon someone whose thread first wove into the tapestry of my life 40 years ago is as difficult for me to imagine as vacationing on Mars.

As a young adult, I changed (insert any of the following: colleges, jobs, houses, partners) like I changed socks.  Change was not something I had to learn to accept.  It was familiar and oddly constant.   But it eventually became as old and tiresome as living 50 years in the same house you were born in.  I became bored with change and sought something new and interesting: stability.

I have now lived in this house for six years.  I have had same job for nine years (and the same “second” job for 11).  I have had the same partner for seven-and-a-half years.

I don’t want to move.  I don’t want a different job.  And, as Paul Newman used to say about Joanne Woodward, why would I want hamburger when I’ve got steak at home?

The carousel ride has turned into a porch swing.  I embrace the change of seasons as I watch them from the same spot year after year.  I don’t miss the irony in the fact that Interstate 40 is in my backyard, that I can sit on my deck and watch others in motion while I sip tea.

And sometimes as I sit there, I remember just how much it shattered my heart to leave Beth Ann Barker.