More Dignity "Dialogue"

I received this comment on my second "dignity" post over at Blogspot.

Who are you hanging around with and what are you watching on TV? I wouldn't describe the people I associate with in the way you describe people. I think dignity is alive and well.

It's not that I'm unaware of bad stuff going on in the world every single day. But that's because this is a fallen world. It won't be all put right until the end of time when Jesus comes back.

But I am very blessed in my part of this world. I am always spending my time around good people. And I don't pay too much attention to the news, because it's depressing.

Posted by Donna | 1:31 PM

I read it last night when I was really, really tired. And I thought, "Yikes! You’ve got to be kidding me."

This morning, as I was frying eggs and flipping omelets, I thought about it again. Charitably conceding that no one could be that hopeless, and be cocky enough about it to leave such blatant evidence thereof, I convinced myself that of course, obviously it was tongue-in-cheek! I would log on this evening and find that this person had a wonderful, thoughtful political blog somewhere and was just poking fun at the clueless right wing masses.

No such luck. Couldn’t find a link to any blog. I suppose I could email her, but I really don’t want to get too close. Maybe she has some dreaded brain-devouring superbug, and I don’t want to catch it.

Seriously. Maybe I do hang around with the wrong people. Maybe I do watch the wrong stuff on TV (HGTV and Food Network…?)

But I’m not about to slough off my possible accountability for some of the uglier aspects of modern American society by blaming the situation on "God." Or some mystic battle between good and evil, where my only responsibility is to sit on the sidelines and wait to see who wins…

More frightening is her parting line, almost as an afterthought… "I don’t pay too much attention to the news, because it’s depressing."

Oh. My. God.

Most terrifying? It's a cinch this vapor-brain votes.

Tags: dialogue

This Month's Blogging Rant...

I’m feeling a little peevish about blogging today.

I know blogging was (is) a technological fad… Subject to the short life-span of the genre. Even I had to curb my involvement for several months while my physical life (I don’t like to refer to it as my "real" life...my internet life may be ethereal, but it is still real) demanded more of my body and soul. But I never stopped writing, and I never stopped clinging to the community of which I was a part, even as it dwindled. I always assumed that when I regained enough of my wits to go back to writing about the things about which I was most passionate—instead of just shooting off messages of frustration and venting about my "new" life—the community would be there, just as it was at the beginning. And it’s not.

In the beginning, when there were only a few of us, part of the beauty of blogging was that you got to read and "know" people from vastly different realms of experience; from stay-at-home moms in West Virginia to brain surgeons in Boston. It was fascinating to see life through eyes so different from one’s own. Now, the blogosphere has become so huge that it has had to specialize. It’s not just blogging anymore, it’s blogging about… The days of a big pool where everybody swam are over. Now, you have to find the little pool where the people who are most like you swim.

If anyone has a line on where the Politically Disaffected Agnostic Baby-boomer Christmas Freak Nature Loving Small Restaurant Owner pool is located, could you point me in the right direction?

Tags: blogging

More On Dignity...Point and Counterpoint

I double-posted this entry into my "Better Terms" journal on blogspot. I received this comment. He makes some good points, and I would like to open up a little more dialogue here:

One of your bottles washed up on my beach [a reference to my introductory blurb on my other blog...] and I must say I've rarely endured such a tongue lashing re: dignity. Yes, I am a baby boomer, aged 54 years as of yesterday. I grew up in the deep south, Birmingham, Alabama to be exact and had it not been for iconoclasts like those you condemn as the source of our cultural decline I dare say we would still have white and colored water fountains. Granted, you seem to make an exception for opposing racism and antisemitism but then make sweeping generalisations about the negative impact my generation has had on subsequent generations. True, there were excesses but that is true of any cultural change. You mention the "greatest generation" and their sacrifices during the depression and WW II but go back and take a look at prohibition and the "roaring twenties". I suspect there were more than a few of those paragons of virtue you describe that drank untaxed liquor and danced in a speakeasy. I could go on but I think the one that needs to practice moderation is you, before you throw all the boomers out with the bath water, like so much sewage.

Arguing that a return to the values of our elders is the only chance of saving the planet must be one of the most grandiose things I've ever read. As the father of two daughters, that would be anathema.

Sometimes, in order to be treated with dignity, one must DEMAND IT!

Respectfully,

Randy Johnson
dreamersdo97@dtccom.net

You are right, Randy. I did make some sweeping generalizations. But in-depth treatment of this particular subject would have required a book…perhaps several. In trying to keep this short enough to make a point in the space of a decently readable journal post, I omitted a lot of the peripherals.

Yes, history is, to some extent, a parade of generations, each rebelling against and rewriting the rules of the previous one(s). Without that intrinsically human desire to stretch the envelope, civilization would have stagnated and disappeared eons ago. But I think that we boomers and our parents faced some unique challenges that caused some rather larger blips on the civilization meter than have transpired in a long time. Or perhaps it’s simply that since I am a part of this particular generational schism, it seems like a really big deal to me.

The "Greatest Generation" (our parents) attained adulthood to find a World War—against a true evil—staring them in the face. Fighting that war, and then reconstructing their lives afterward, kept them from doing too much rejecting of the values of their elders. I suspect that after the upheaval of the war years, they actually craved the relative calm and ease of their parents’ lives, and set about trying to emulate rather than break free of it. They settled down and gave birth to—the post-war baby boom. And because many of them had also faced the deprivation of growing up during the Depression, they wanted to make sure we had all the things they couldn’t have when they were kids. Which may have been one of their biggest mistakes…

The Boomers were presented with a very different set of rules. First of all, we were (here comes another of my infamous generalizations…) spoiled. Our parents, rich or poor, did everything they could do to make our lives better than theirs…because they could. To a point. Unfortunately, we also grew up in the shadow of something our parents gave us that I’m sure they wished they could take back—the mushroom cloud.

Perhaps we believed that if we were going to make changes, we’d better hurry up before the world exploded around us. Perhaps we felt betrayed that our parents not only didn’t contrive to leave us a better world; they created the means by which our world might be snatched out from under us at any moment. I think it’s safe to say that could make anyone a little bit crazy.

Too, as we came of age, many of us were sent halfway across the world to die in a war that we were told had direct bearing on whether that mushroom cloud would indeed explode in our faces. When we figured out that was a lie, I don’t think we had a whole lot of patience left to pick and choose what parts of our parents’ social codes to reject and which ones to keep. We just picked up the whole mess and heaved it.

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My argument is not that we need to return to the values of our elders. My point is that we need to understand that some of the things we threw away were not "values of our elders" at all, but things basic and necessary to the survival of a society. What makes dignity one of those things? To have dignity is to be "worthy, honored, esteemed." Respected. What does our society, as a whole, respect anymore? We don’t respect each other; we don’t respect ourselves. Respect, compassion, empathy, charity—these are the things that keep us from annihilating ourselves. As we reject these concepts, we move closer and closer to the brink.

The question is, how does a society go about recouping when it starts throwing away the basic building blocks of its very survival? I don’t know the answer to that. There must be historical examples; then again, how successful could they have been, as it seems that every great society in human history has eventually gone down to decay. Are we there now? Are we on the brink of that extinction? And since we—the Boomers—took such an unusually large step down that road, can we discipline ourselves to take a giant step back? Or is it too late?

…And as to "DEMANDING" to be treated with dignity… One can demand to be "treated with dignity," but if one is not dignified, one would be demanding acknowledgement of a trait one did not possess. That would be like McDonald’s demanding to be treated like a fine dining establishment. (President Bush’s handlers have demanded that he be treated with dignity…but since he hasn’t an ounce of dignity in his body, at least none that he has ever demonstrated to the public, how can he realistically expect to be "treated with dignity?" For that matter, Bill Clinton’s exploits demonstrated his lack of dignity as well). Dignity is no longer cultivated, even in the highest echelons of our society. For whatever reason, our generation branded dignity a stuffy and outdated concept, and we set about not only throwing away our own, but making damn sure no one else had any, either. A glance at any of our highfalutin 21st century media will leave no doubt about that.

Tags: dignity 2

On Dignity

dignity~~

Main Entry: dig·ni·ty

Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural dig·ni·ties

Etymology: Middle English dignete, from Anglo-French digneté, from Latin dignitat-, dignitas, from dignus

1: the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed

Lately, I’ve contemplated the concept of dignity. We argue and wrangle and orate, these days, about "death with dignity." For whatever reason, it’s of profound importance that we die with our boots on, with our heads held as high as our failing faculties can hold them. But apparently death is the only activity upon which our society will confer the blessing of dignity. Perhaps that is because such a large block of us—we, the ubiquitous baby-boomers—step closer to that eventuality with each passing moment.

Yes, we boomers demand Death With Dignity. But aren’t we also responsible for the death OF dignity? Worth? Honor? Esteem? Haven’t we contrived, since we were old enough to brandish protest signs and burn our bras, to tear down everything our parents—indeed, everything every American generation before us—esteemed, honored, or thought worthy?

Much as we would like to assign the blame for the state of our society to those generations that came after us—to gen-x or –y or Little Cat "z"—the fault is ours. It was our generation that scorned our parents’ etiquette and social behaviors, creating a nation of inconsiderate boors committed to "looking out for number one." Our generation that spawned the shock jocks and the foul-mouthed comedians and the gritty violence of modern cinema. Our generation which threw off the sexual constraints of our forebears, creating a societal obsession with all things pertaining to below-the-waist relations. We were too cool, too hip; too busy cultivating our infant world vision to be constrained by our parents’ "hang-ups." And now, as our parents die and we step into the role of matriarchs and patriarchs, we wonder why our children, and their children, wouldn’t know dignity if it bit them in the ass.

Dignity is an old-fashioned concept. Our grandparents were dignified. And a little bit scary. They mostly didn’t straymuch outside the communities into which they were born. They walked tall through adversity—and they walked through adversity that we can’t even imagine. They kept their personal business to themselves. And yet the community always rallied to stand behind a member or a family in need. Quietly. Without fanfare or hullabaloo, they went about the business of life. With dignity.

Our parents were born into those communities. And the monumental events of the Great Depression and The War changed and molded them. But still, they understood about dignity. They had it themselves, and they allowed for it in others.

Then, along came the Boomers. We didn’t understand the social codes that were handed down to our parents from their parents, and we were in too much of a hurry to take our places as the movers and shakers to learn. While our parents’ society was heavy on loathsome concepts like anti-Semitism and racial bigotry, it also embraced the injunction to care for those less fortunate; the mandate to protect the weak; the obligation to fulfill the needs of others before looking to one’s own needs. The softer and nobler concepts that differentiate humans from lower animals, and that keep a society from destroying itself from within. But we….we were so eager to throw over the outdated prejudices of our parents’ society that we didn’t take the time to sort the good from the bad. Wholesale change was the order of the day. And we threw out the baby with the bath water.

Why is it surprising to us that our children, and their children after them, took our selfishness, our carelessness and our impatience, and ran with it? It’s unfortunate that our progeny did not wholesale reject us as we did our parents, and turn in the opposite direction: toward mercy, compassion and…dignity. Unfortunate that the downward path—toward corruption, self-centeredness and anarchy—is so much easier to tumble down than it would be to clamber up a road to a nobler, more liberal plain.

Life, now, has to be lived at fever-pitch and light-speed. Everything is exaggerated. We all live as perpetual adolescents, where there is no happiness, only ecstasy; and sorrow can only be utter desolation. The measured, circumspect concept of dignity has been utterly forgotten.

I don’t knowabout you, but I’m too old for this…this world that we have created. What should we do now? What can we do now? Do we bug out of the 21st century? Fade out and live our remaining decades in the quiet shadows of the world we wish we had created? Or do we rouse ourselves, become the critical mass of which we are capable, and foment one more colossal change? Can we all—all xxxx-million of us—drop our feet off the side of the merry-go-round and slow it down, just enough for society to shake its head, get its bearings, and find the stuff that we threw off thirty years ago?

I think the future—of our nation, if not the planet—depends upon us doing exactly that.

Tags: dignity

Where's the Sun?

No one has to sell me on the concept of global climate change. I’ve seen the bizarre meteorological manifestations in the past few years, here in the US and all over the world. Just two days ago, a tornado laid waste a neighborhood in a town about thirty miles from here. A tornado. In the Pacific Northwest. In January.

This morning, another universal anomaly took place. I could swear that the earth has reneged on the solstice. Some great celestial thumb has come down on the cosmic "pause" button. Or maybe even "Rewind." The week before Christmas, I would arrive at work at 7:30 am in the twilight of a rising sun. This morning, it was pitch black when I got to work. What gives? Did the world somehow stall on its journey around the sun? Or start going the other way?

I’m crazy desperate for a sunny day. I need to go sit on a rock like a lizard and absorb the vitamin D. This malady afflicts me more and more as I grow older.

Two years ago, I wrote this poem on the solstice. It’s been in my mind lately…

Winter Solstice

hand raised in shield and salute
I’ve watched my retreating love
disappear southward
his warmth a mockery
his smile weak and distant
the cold of his absence
claims my world

each day sees a larger plot
of my heart in shadow and frost
as he grows smaller
and now the rain
has washed away
the consoling memory
of his wink and grin

someone tells me
he has turned
reconsidered his leaving…
tomorrow and tomorrow
will he be nearer?
will his closeness thaw my heart?
when will I know?

So Little Time...

Here we are, already more than a week into the new year. I SO have not been feeling like writing. I get an idea or two in my head, I turn on the computer, and I just sit and play solitaire. It seems like way too much trouble to think hard enough to write any kind of an engaging essay. Life is not too bad right now, either. I think I just have the mother of all cases of the winter blahs.

The weather has been absolutely miserable. When it’s not dark and rainy, it’s dark and icy. Either way, it’s dark. I know the days are supposed to be getting longer. It’s hard to tell if the sun is showing up earlier or sticking around later when the clouds are so heavy you have perpetual twilight. Ugh! I REALLY need a sunny day right now!

I have a stack of things a mile high (as usual) to accomplish at the café. We just got the last Christmas tree taken down this evening, took the wreaths off the doors and peeled off the rest of the decorations. All that’s left are the poinsettias I bought from one of the local school fundraisers. They’re still alive, still beautiful, in fact. I can’t throw them away, and I know if I bring them home they will become garbage almost immediately. And there is the added concern that we don’t want the cats eating them. Not good for them at all. And I clean up enough barf around the house…I don’t need poinsettia puke added to the mix.

At least de-Christmasing has been accomplished. The million and ten other thing I need to do are still weighing heavy. I have to re-do the menu. I did a rudimentary cost analysis last week and found that the price WE pay for provisions has increased over thirteen percent since last January. So if I don’t raise my menu prices, we’ll be going to the poorhouse fast. And I just hate to raise the prices. People are very price-conscious out here in the sticks. I’ll have them bitching and moaning for months; saying things like, "How come your prices are so high? This isn’t Portland, you know." No, it’s not Portland. But my damn food comes from Portland, and they don’t charge me any less just because I do business in the boonies. If anything, I pay more. Why don’t people get that? Duh!!!

AND I have to plan our Valentine’s special, create the menu, design the ad, figure out the decorations, try and guess how much of what to order, etc. etc. ad infinitum. This one has me kind of intimidated. Last Valentine’s Day, we didn’t do anything special, and we still had a pretty good turn out (overflow from the local restaurants that DID do something special, I imagine…) This year, I want to try to actually make the most of the day (it’s supposed to be one of the top two or three days of the year for dining out…that would make it an opportunity I can not afford to pass up!) So I’m feeling some pressure, here…shaking in my boots and cultivating my ulcer.

There are times when I’m concerned that I take this all too seriously. And times when I worry that I don’t take it seriously enough. Either way, I worry. And I hate worrying. It takes all the fun out of it…

Coming to Terms with 2007 (Or 2007 with Coming to Terms...)

I got this idea from Judi this morning. She, in turn, got it from a couple other blogs she frequents. The idea is to review the past year by taking the first line from the first post of each month. It looked like fun, so I thought I would try it. The results surprised me, a little.

I should preface this by saying that I am not one of those who never goes back and reads my own writing. On the contrary, I derive a measure of satisfaction from going back into my archives from time to time. I guess I just need constant reassurance that I can string together a coherent sentence or two.

So, let’s take a look at those first lines, first posts of the months of 2007---

January--Last Saturday evening we tuned in to NPR to be treated to "Special Coverage" of the execution of Sadaam Hussein.

February--Thirty years of childless marriage have by no means meant that our nest, or our hearts, have been empty.

March--I decided to post something pretty, because today was SO not.

April--Early last week, Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards stood beside his wife and announced that the deadly specter of cancer had returned to Elizabeth Edwards’ life.

May--These days, American government is like a bad case of hives: crazy-making and torturous, and you don’t know which itch to scratch first.

June--The ever-shrinking neighborhood of the blogosphere into which I sank my roots almost four years ago, is once again twisting, turning, contracting...fading.

July--I did indeed have to terminate Mr. Hawaiian Shirt.

August--My next thirty hours will be spent preparing to step out of my new life and back into my old one.

September--After school, while my sisters glued themselves to soap operas on the big color console in the living room, I would hole up in my folks’ bedroom and watch the Cubs on their little black and white portable.

October--From time to time, I try to look back and assess the progress I’ve made in any given area of running the café.

November--Fall arrived at the café last month, dropping duffel bags full of problems into our laps.

December--In the last six weeks, my mother has been in the hospital; in a nursing home; a day away from going back to her apartment…then back to the hospital, and back to the nursing home.

Honestly, I thought I had spent the last 365 days (and more) coming here to whine about how tired, abused, put-upon and overwhelmed I was by the challenges faced by an over-the-hill small business owner. But, look! Only four of these twelve first lines are lead-ins to bitch-fests about my café struggles. This truly amazes me. Knowing how much of my life force really was poured into my business over the past year, I’m surprised (and happy) that the café apparently is not all I’m about.

What surprised me even more is that three of these posts are political rants. I can’t say how happy that makes me. I’d started to think that my political fire had been snuffed under tons of the chaff of everyday living. It was easy to explore and promote lofty ideals when I was half-retired and didn’t have anything else to do. Not so easy to write about, or even care about, those things when life is coming at you at 100 miles an hour. And yet…and yet, obviously, I still have my political wits about me. It remains to be seen how that will play out in the new year (2008, folks! I’ll have to get a new graphic for my sidebar…)

And then there were the posts about the losses…in February, we lost one of our dearest animal "children," and in December, my mom slipped away to the other side.

There’s even one post about one of my favorite subjects on which to rant—my ever-changing, ever-shifting relationship to this—my four-year-old ethereal brain-child. I’ve gone full-circle—from no readers, to lots of readers, back to (almost) no readers and all the places in between. I’ve been inside the community, and (more often than not) outside of it. I’ve had friends, and lost them, too. They’ve disappeared **poof** into the ether, never to be heard from again. But…I stick around. Never one to be unduly influenced by the actions of others, I soldier on. I like it here. I write here. I do it for me.

And to those of you who drop in from time to time to see what I have to say…thanks.

And Happy New Year.

Tags: New Years Eve 2007

Old Life, New Life, and Benazir Bhutto

This morning, my clock radio woke me with the unhappy news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. I’m not well-informed about the politics of our "ally" Pakistan. I know I don’t trust Pervez Musharraf any further than I could throw a tank. I know I feel a little soiled, a little jaded, every time I hear Dubya go on about what a great partner Musharraf is in our "War on Terrah." It doesn’t seem to matter that Musharraf’s government presents only the flimsiest pretense of democracy, and only when it doesn’t inconvenience Musharraf.

Benazir Bhutto, as the leader of Musharraf’s chief opposition, was many things. She was loved and revered, discredited and exiled, and tainted by corruption. Who can say, entangled as she was in the political strife inherent to Pakistan, what Bhutto really was. I can only believe that to have become Prime Minister of an Islamic nation—even an unsuccessful and ultimately deposed Prime Minister—she must have been a remarkable woman. I admired her. And I feared for her life when she decided to end her exile and return to Pakistan. May she rest in the peace she was fated never to know in this life.

I considered posting a quick tribute to Bhutto this morning, since I thought I didn’t have to work until 11 am. My life being what it is, however, half my crew crapped out on me today, so I had to give up any nobler aspirations and run to the café.

I get to work, and thoughts of Mrs. Bhutto are still swimming around in my head. I say to my counter girl, "So they killed Benazir Bhutto…!" And she says, "Who?" I say, "Benazir Bhutto." Totally blank face. "Do you know who Benazir Bhutto is?" "Uh, noooo…"

Okay. Counter girl is only nineteen. But she is also in her second year of college. What made me think a college student must have somehow heard of Benazir Bhutto?

Toward the end of this exchange with clueless college student counter girl, my cook walks through the door. Cook is in her late thirties, never struck me as being particularly well-educated…but I also know she is a total internet junkie. "P, do you know who Benazir Bhutto is?" "Who?" No surprise there, really. Apparently, cook zaps right past the news blurbs on her home page…

Over the past year and a half, I’ve had such a hard time letting go of my "old life" and embracing my new life as a (completely lost-in-the-weeds) entrepreneur. And I’ve been trying to figure out what my problem is. Though I’m inching closer to the total immersion I think I need in order to be successful, I really feel like I’ve been dragged to that place kicking and screaming. After today, I have a little better idea of why that is.

I work in the freaking Twilight Zone. I’m surrounded by people who have absolutely no idea what is going on in the world beyond the ends of their own noses. For someone who has spent much of the last four years nurturing and immersed in her personal political identity, this is a particularly bitter pill to swallow. I feel like I’m finding a life, but losing myself. And I’m not entirely sure that’s a trade I’m willing to make.

Tags: Benazir Bhutto

Christmas 2007

Around Thanksgiving (was that only last month?) I predicted a hard holiday for my family, and wished for Spring. It did indeed come to pass, that sad and difficult season. Thanksgiving was a non-starter…we were even then in that watching and waiting pattern that establishes itself as a loved one dwindles. Mom passed away on December 3. Her memorial service, and our ability not to tear each other to shreds in the preparation of it, was the single shining moment for the Baldwin family this season. We sent Mom to her rest with love and dignity.

We didn’t feel like celebrating the holidays, but we thought that not celebrating would be too sad and empty. After the funeral, and the unhappy task of cleaning out Mom’s apartment, sifting through her prodigious angel collection and her sixty years’ accumulation of costume jewelry brought us the comfort of fond memories. Each of us chose one or two pieces to hold and remember. By mid-December, that business was mostly concluded, and we tried to scrape together some kind of family holiday. But we just…ran out of gas. Yesterday saw some of the sniping and the anger and the tears that we had worked so hard to avoid.

In the end, maybe it would have been better to just…give Christmas a pass this year. It was so hard not to compare last night’s somber little celebration to "The Good Years" and find it pitiably wanting. No one was really in the mood to count our blessings and put a good face on it. Mostly there was a lot of food that nobody needed, and a few presents that nobody really wanted. Christmas 2007 is just about over now, and nobody in our family is going to miss it, I think.

Hard to believe that the bright spot of my life the last few weeks has been…the café. That thing which has been more inclined to kick my butt than feed my ego for the past nineteen months…

This may be the worst Christmas since the Grinch licked his evil lips over Whoville, but Old Town Café is chugging along at a record pace. Not world record, of course, but record in relation to our own history. The first week of December, while I was in Eugene tending to my sad family business, my crew piloted the good ship OTC to its highest December sales week in its three-year history. And we’ve repeated that performance in each of the last two weeks. As of today, we’re showing a 1% increase in sales over last year’s total December sales, and we still have six sales days remaining. And I haven’t laid out one dime in advertising money all month. I’m having a hard time believing we’re the same restaurant we were one year ago.

Oh, do I remember the goings on of a year ago, though I’d rather forget. 2006—the year of the chronically sick, reliably unreliable and/or disappearing employees, and sales so bad it didn’t really matter whether I had employees or not. The year of no mercy, which threatened to chew me up, spit me out, and grind me into the pavement. The year where the best I could say of it, as it dwindled into its final hours on New Years Eve, was that I had survived. (And yet, I felt giddily victorious to be able to say that much…)

Last year, my family was my life preserver, the thing that kept my head above the waters surrounding my foundering business ship. This year, my business is the thing that my hands are grasping as the waves of grief and loss toss me about. I suppose I should be grateful—and I am—that there is always something to keep me afloat. But I’m still hoping that next year will be a little less tempest-tossed.

Tags: holidays 2007

Reinventing Christmas

Christmas, to me, has always been about tradition. When I was a kid, we had our family rituals. We cleared the everyday chotchkes from the shelves, laid them away and brought out the Christmas knick-knacks. The plastic magi—identical but for their colored robes—one pink, one blue, one green--astride their shiny silver camels; the caroling china angel quartet, their mouths eternally frozen in cherry-red circles; the candy-cane striped "N-O-E-L." My mother’s creche with the hand-repainted figures that she rescued from an attic fire in the ‘forties. We left the manger expectantly empty until Christmas Eve, when we placed the tiny plaster Jesus gently in his crib before we went to bed. To the mouldings around every doorway in the house were taped the scores of Christmas cards we received from every person my parents ever knew.

Dad cooked a turkey for Christmas dinner, Aunt Mary brought her jello molds—strawberry (yay!) and carrot (yuck!) There were pumpkin and mince pies, always over-baked and a tad leathery. The pumpkin was perfect, piled with enough whipped cream to overpower any other flavor. The mince was…well, Dad liked it. After dinner, we’d clear the table, scavenge the leftovers and fearfully wash my mother’s china. With those chores done, we’d adjourn to the living room, where there always lingered that particular smell of hot tree lights inexorably singeing the scotch pine or balsam fir needles.  In the warm glow of those lights, we'd talk quietly, tell jokes or sing carols.  The youngest among us would remain conscious only long enough to nestle a head into the soft lap of the nearest willing adult.

Those were the traditions of a post-war suburban baby-boom family. Quaint, comforting, with deep connections to the past. Written in stone. For about a decade. Until the sixties hit and tweaked everything in the direction of the pop culture of that decade.  Shiny aluminum Christmas trees, Charlie Brown and Barbie... 

The thing is, our family’s traditions never were written in stone. They were liquid, changing with the complexion and demands of the times. As we changed and grew, our rituals evolved to accommodate the growth. When I hear folks wax nostalgic about the traditions their families have followed for decades, I have to wonder how they do that. How can they be so…static?

This year, I’m particularly aware of the temporal nature of our family traditions. In this season of change and loss, the keeper of the last traditions is no longer with us. There’s no call to indulge in the faded remnants of the old rituals, and the traditions that we had built around her decreasing mobility are suddenly unnecessary. There was no trundling her wheelchair around the World’s Largest ChristmasBazaar on Thanksgiving Friday. No Dollar Store shopping sprees. No casting call for the 2007 additions to the heavenly host adorning every inch of her apartment and overflowing into the hallways. In her last years, she was at once matriarch and the child some of us had never had. Christmas, in many ways, was for her. And now, it’s….not.

And so we’re stumbling through this Christmas season, liberated yet bereft. Finding new meanings, missing the old ones. Stepping forward, but with one foot stuck in the past. There will be moments of beauty and magic, punctuated with wistful sighs. We will miss her. But we will take our memories of her, as we did those of Dad and my sweet sister, into our futures. Always part of our ever-evolving traditions.