Deep Thinking

Okay, I don’t like chain letters. I scoff terribly and refuse to send them along. You aren’t going to suffer some crazy disease because you don’t participate in internet superstitions. I’m just as likely to send you all the truth behind urban legends as I am to hit delete and be warned: I have been known to send the truth to every single person listed on your forwards. Sometimes it isn’t pretty.

But then here comes this blogging phenomenon of tagging. I was tagged in December by Doug Johnson who I deeply respect. I was tagged and played tagged last year, but this year I’m not going out there to tag other people. (You can thank me at Midwinter) I will participate but only because I tried to explain this concept of tagging to my hubby dear and he kept coming up with outrageous examples of 5 things that other people don’t know about me. I can’t remember his examples, but he threatened to share them here if I didn’t get busy so I’m going to list some quick ones:

1. I have been paid to sing at weddings and at funerals.
2. I have had 7 ear surgeries in my life so have a hearing problem. I concentrate most of the time and pay attention to people’s faces when they are talking so you probably didn’t know that. But some days everything is muffled and my constantly saying, “What?” drives me crazy. The inability to hear is frightening. I do get frustrated and will finally pretend that I know what you said and then I’ll get into trouble, so before I agree to do something stupid like run for office, could you please check that I actually heard what you said?
3. My nickname in college was Squirrel. So was my best friend Shirley’s. We were outrageous together. We roomed together my sophomore year in the Nut House. We had lofts where we threw all our possessions but we lived on the floor sleeping on bean bag chairs along with who ever else wanted to just crash on the floor.
4. I love the games Colonization & Civilization. I don’t want fast-paced games. I want to try out the endless permutations to see what my actions can bring about.
5. I have never been married in America. I was married in Taipei, Taiwan the first time and in Horsens, Denmark the second time around.

Now, you know five more unusual things about me. Odd facts that don’t add up to a whole person, but they do help explain the strangeness of me. I enjoy reading your 5 things, so do continue to write. I’m just not going to cast any evil internet curses on people who don’t pass them along.

Back from a wonderfully restful holiday in Northwest Iowa with my family. Usually we keep Christmas decorations up until January 6th so I can call my father-in-law with his Eastern Orthodox view that January 6th is Christmas. This year I missed the beautiful purple tree at my mother’s so I packed up our decorations the day after we returned. As I was lovingly putting some of the special ornaments away I spent time contemplating their origin and history. Usually I decorate with my children and they laugh with me as we pull out every ornament they made when little. This year I took time for myself while deconstructing. Some of the most precious ornaments are those that students have given me. I found the first 3 I ever received, one while student teaching, one from my first librarian job, and one from a parent volunteer who had kept apologizing for not being able to give more generously. I wish she could see that I still treasure this gift from her. There are some missing ornaments this year. A volunteer brought in a tree the last 3 days of school and we decorated in the library. While hanging some ornaments, a student came up to tell me she had never seen anything so pretty as the golden snowflakes I was hanging and she wished that she had something to decorate with. Her parents are separated, not working, and it’s not a great situation to allow for extravagances. So, she now possesses my golden snowflakes and I have a memory of a child’s delight.

I hate the tree I have at home. It’s artificial and I am disgusted with it each year. My hubby dear insisted it would be good enough 4 years ago after he suffered the shock of going out with our 4 boys and chopping down a real tree for the holidays. The boys and I had a great time tramping the tree farm, choosing our tree, chopping it down, loading it on the farmer’s atv, drinking hot cider and cocoa while eating Christmas cookies. My hubby moaned and complained that we had just terminated the life of a tree. Now, this didn’t bother him the year we had lots of snow in Clarksville, TN, and tramped through the trees to Wal-mart loading a pre-cut tree on our sled and sliding it home to decorate. No. It was the actual process of seeing a living tree becoming a memory that did him in. So, he bought me the cheapest 5 foot tree in America after seeking out the ugliest ones available. You may think I’m exaggerating, but I could take a green garbage bag and create better branches than this thing has.

While I deconstructed this tree, I contemplated whether I should go in debt to eliminate this eye-sore. But then I spent some time thinking. The tree is so incredibly ugly that we hurry very quickly to cover it with beautiful items to distract your eye. Everyone feels compelled to add something to it to help make it better. #2 son contributed the silver string of odd-shaped balls that supplied his astronomy project. #1 son hung lots of lights. #3 son passed out the balls as fast as he could. #4 son found extra garland to wrap around the pretend greenery. And everyone vowed that someday we would be able to afford a better tree.

It’s amazing how the act of taking something so ugly and making it tolerable, possibly even pretty at nigh t, can bring everyone together. It’s important for me to continue to see how we take the imperfect and make it better. We don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world that is waiting for us to make it better. That will be my New Year’s resolution. Make it better.