Advent Musings 2015

Advent Musings Day 1.
Advent is about waiting and preparing. I don't know about you, but when I wait and prepare for guests, sometimes the preparing is just as much fun as when the guests (the day) arrives. I find that is how Christmas Day is for me. I guess that this is why you see me getting excited for Christmas starting in spring or summer. And just like a successful dinner party where we start talking about the next one, and how to make it better, I even think about Christmas for the next year as I take down my decorations.

I guess for me, it's about making connections, creating and sustaining relationships. I look forward to celebrating this time of Advent with all of you, in all the various and bumbling ways it might go for us. Please feel free to share your stories and pictures of Advent (waiting and preparing) with me.

And may we also remember that part of waiting is sitting and doing nothing amongst all the bustling.

Speaking of Remembering

Speaking of Remembering

I noticed something that happens a lot. I am in the middle of an incredible event, and I think that I will never forget it. Then, time passes, and I don’t remember the details of that event. This illustrates the importance to me of being in the moment. All we really have is now.

Last night while watching a movie where a husband and wife decided to have a baby, I was struck by something. I couldn’t remember when my husband and I decided to have a baby. I knew we did decide, but I couldn’t remember the conversation around it. I do remember we took our best friends out to dinner and announced to them that we decided to have a child, but I don’t remember the conversation (or was it conversations?) that led to that decision. This made me wonder what else I had forgotten, or what memories I remembered wrongly.

Take the dining room table for example. I love the dining room table. So much happens here—family gatherings, board games, home work, writing Christmas cards, and wrapping presents. The other day we were sitting around the dining room table looking at my 23-year-olds’ school scrapbook. We got to a letter he wrote promising to not ever do drugs. This was my now-sober son who spent two months (and $55,000 later) in rehab in Texas. I love the dining room table. When gathering around it, I think to myself that I’ll never forget this moment., but that isn’t true. I don’t remember gatherings around the table we ate at when we lived in England. I couldn’t even remember where the table was kept? What about the other house? I only remember one event from that table—receiving a hot wheals car for my 16^th birthday. What about more recently our house on Fillmore Street? I know we must have eaten at that table there but I don’t remember who sat where. I don’t remember specific events around that table, people and conversations, though I’m sure there were many.

What about photo albums and stories; those things that we talk about are the things we remember. We sit around the campfire and tell, “I remember when you ...” stories. At Christmas we pull out all the stops, and when family gathers we remember individual goofups. We love to tell the stories of who really made the coveted Christmas ornament, or crashed the car the night of a party. The chore of being the archivist can be a burden. We become so busy documenting the event that we forget to live it.

We’ve lost the art of story telling. It keeps us alive and keeps the memories going. Yet we can’t document every moment. Some just have to go. So, in between the documenting and the remembering, there is the living. Let’s not get hung up with documenting and remembering, and let’s get into the business of living.

Dizziness

It seems that I will live with this dizziness indefinitely.
Surrender--Surrender to what is. This is a new normal, and suffering comes from not accepting it, to wanting it to be different.

What to write.....

How does one do a blog on something so personal. I can share good things, but why would I share anything deep?