Not really a Grinch

Christmas doesn't mean much to me any more.  It used to.  I can vividly recall that bubbling, sparking feeling of anticipation I got throughout the holiday season when I was a child.  I loved the lights, the colors, the movies, the rituals, the cookies, the presents, the tree.  That feeling, that excitement and joy, the weepy, gooey emotions that make up Christmas spirit were in fact themselves my favorite part of the season.

Then, when I was a young adult living on my own in Los Angeles, desperate to become a working actress, desperate to be loved, surviving on next to nothing, Christmas became a time of spending money I didn't have and time I couldn't spare on trying to think of, find, and buy presents for the first tier people in my life.  And I am just terrible at thinking of and finding the right present for anybody.  My history of gift giving is full of failures and embarrassments and letdowns.  There is also the fact that I began to be oddly repelled by 'stuff'.  I wanted to declutter my life, live more simply.  I couldn't stand going into stores and seeing all the rows and aisles and shelves and rooms jammed with stuff and more stuff and even more stuff.

I finally declared that I was simply not going to give Christmas presents any more, and requested, begged even, that people not give presents to me.  (Some still did, and some of those presents were lovely, but some just became more clutter in my life.  Several times a gift didn't fit into the suitcase I had taken to wherever the family gathering happened to be, leaving me to hold it on my lap on the flight home, or mail it to myself.  I guess I'm not the only person who isn't good at choosing gifts to give.)  I did begin to enjoy Christmas a bit more after that declaration,  I'm not so much of a Grinch that I couldn't still take pleasure in the classic holiday movies looking at light displays, singing carols.  But those bubbles, those sparkles, that poignant, happy feeling in my stomach was still missing.  Without that and without presents, Christmas just doesn't feel all that special.

Still, when I woke up yesterday, Christmas morning, I discovered that Sweet Hubby had opened our boxes of decorations and hung them around the house.  He made us French toast and sausage for breakfast.  We took a walk out in the brisk air, then watched "Miracle on 34th Street".  We Zoomed with my family for a while, then I made us chicken and dumplings for dinner.  By the end of the day, I noticed I was feeling sort of Christmas spirit-y.  Not the bubbles and sparkles of a child, but the sweet happiness of an aging woman who loves her life.  And it was good.

"Smell my fingers"

"Smell my fingers" is a much nicer game to play with Sweet Hubby than it was with the 9 year old boys who used to ask me to play, back in the innocent and often gross days of childhood.  I'll always take a sniff of SH's fingers because I trust him, and trust that his invitation means he has just washed his hands with one of the soaps I love.  I know him and know he wouldn't ambush me with a stink.

Trust is not a matter of hoping for the best, as in "I trust you'll do the right thing", which too often means "I sure hope you do the right thing, but I'm not certain you will."  Trust is actually a matter of knowing someone's character.  We can trust people to act in accordance with their character.  We can absolutely trust Donald Trump to be a liar, a bully, a narcissist, a sociopath.  Sen. Susan Collins' "aspirational" hope that Trump would grow into his position was bullshit.  She knew his character.  We all did and do.  It has been on display since before he even thought about becoming President.  It just didn't matter as much when he was a TV star and product huckster as it does now, when he has the nuclear codes and a very large microphone.

It took some time to get to know the character of some of the Republican Senators, those such as Cruz, Graham, and Rubio, who excoriated Trump's character when he was campaigning and then became some of his most devoted bootlickers after he gained power.  But now we know them,  They have revealed their characters and so we know we can trust them absolutely to abandon their principles and any pretense of serving the people of the United States in exchange for - well, I'm not sure what they thought they were getting in the bargain, not sure what made it worth it to them to sell their souls.  I have to think they have a very short view of history or they would have taken into account how their behavior is going to be logged in its annals and in the memories of those of us living through the nightmare ugliness of the last four years.  They asked us to smell their fingers, and too many of us fell for it.

So if someone betrays you, don't say you'll never trust them again.  Now you know them.  Now you can trust them as you couldn't before, because they have revealed themselves to you.  Now you know not to take a sniff. 

Beauty and certainty

I've been with a lot of men.  Men who fell out of love, men who were critical, men who cheated.  I've been with a lot of good men, too.  But not a single one of them made me feel completely loved and completely known and completely beautiful until Sweet Hubby.

I was in my 50's when we met, on the far, far side of anything that could be called youth, and, naturally enough, have only gotten older.  Now I've got a belly and not much of a waist.  My chin sags.  My hair is limp.  My eyes are small.  I'm wrinkling.  And still I know for sure, with absolute certainty, that SH thinks I'm beautiful.  He has given me that gift in word and deed and glance every day of our marriage.  If ever I began to doubt that, even for a second, my world would change and my joy would be diminished.

Every one of us needs to know, deserves to know, that somebody thinks we are beautiful, no matter what.  We are all the Beast hoping to be saved by Beauty in the fairy tale of our lives, saved by someone who sees our souls and not just our appearance.

The Snow White fairy tale sends a different message, which is powerful and destructive.  (I'm talking here about the Disney version.  The original is rather disturbing and dark.)  In the iconic moment in the story, the Prince's kiss brings the girl out of her coma, gives her back her life.  And he only kisses her because she is beautiful.  He doesn't know her, doesn't know what scares her, what she's like in bed, how bad her temper is, her favorite color or food, what kind of mother she might be.  The Prince loves this dame because she's beautiful.  Snow White isn't even doing anything.  She's not dancing nor swimming nor working nor playing tennis.  She's sleeping.  So there's nothing for the Prince to love except how she looks.  No wonder women spend hours on make up and hair and dieting and working out, and wear those ghastly pointy-toed shoes, and have cosmetic surgeries.  We get the message early on: We will be loved when we are beautiful because we are beautiful.

So those of us who don't fit the Hollywood standard of beauty - and let's face it, that's where it comes from, there and Madison Avenue - we need someone to light up when they look at us, and smile, and mean it.  It's a hard world to be happy in without that.

I am able to believe SH's appreciation of my beauty because I give the same gift to him.  I can see his grizzles and grays and pouches and hair where it shouldn't be and no hair where it should be and still, I find him thrillingly handsome, absolutely swoony good looking.  Not because, or not just because, of how he looks, but because of the him-ness of him, because he is who he is, because of his intellect and kindness and integrity and wacky sense of humor and love of color and kitties,  These are the factors which make up true beauty.  The you-ness of you.

Ordering dinner from a Mediterranean café

This evening Sweet Hubby and I decided to get takeout from our favorite Mediterranean café.  As we drove toward it, I called in our order.  The young woman I spoke to was just lovely, and it was right on the tip of my tongue to ask, "Are you Middle Eastern or...?"  But then I realized that I don't know what I was thinking comes after that "or..."  What do I think is the opposite of Middle Eastern?

It seems as though, in the broadest of strokes, the peoples of the world divide roughly into European, African, Middle Eastern,  Asian, and indigenous.  But think about how many thousands of different indigenous people there are, how many different cultures, even today.  And Europeans - are they more like  Spaniards or more like Danes?  And of course before there were borders and nations there were tribes and all people were indigenous, developing and evolving within however large a territory their tribe's world extended.  Each one speaking a different language, having a different relationship to the natural world, learning different lessons.  And now how homogenous the world has become and everyone is speaking---

It all seemed to big to grasp, so I didn't ask.  I just said, "We'd like an order of grape leaves and some hummus with pita."  It was very tasty, by the way.

My perfect, special day

Dec. 4 this year was the first anniversary of the death of our little girl cat Stachie.  Stachie of the black velvet fur and the perfect little Got Milk? mustache.  Stachie, who loved to nestle and around whom no shoestring was safe.  Stachie of the peepie-cheepie voice and the infinite appetite.  When she began to turn away from food, we knew something was terribly wrong, and the vet confirmed that her kidneys had failed.  We gave ourselves one more night to hold her and love her, and then said our good-byes.  The next day, Dec. 5, was my birthday, but Sweet Hubby and I didn't feel much like celebrating and spent the day instead quietly and in tears.

For years, SH used to give me an Anything I Want day for my birthday, bur for the past four or five years, those plans have been waylaid, by travel or illness or I was acting in a play or Stachie's death.  This year, even though I was feeling sweetly nostalgic about Stachie, I was also determined to celebrate myself and the fact of being alive.  Possible activities are restricted, of course, by COVID, so SH and I simply worked from the more limited menu.

The day started with breakfast in bed.  Actually, my day started at about 6am, but once SH was awake and functioning enough to make us a nice egg sandwich, I got back into bed to eat it.  Breakfast in bed is ridiculous, with all the crumbs and balancing of plates and what have you, and I can't imagine doing it more than about once a century, but I did like the idea of being able to say "For my birthday, my husband brought me breakfast in bed!"

It was a gorgeous, brisk, sunny day, so I followed breakfast with a 2 mile walk to a wetlands park.  SH drove there to join me and we strolled around looking at ducks and other duck-ish birds, holding hands (us, not the birds), talking about whatever.  I also got a call from my ex-sister-in-law, now a good friend and sometime traveling companion.  In fact, a lot of the day was spent fielding phone calls and texts and reading cards and emails.  My goodness but it's wonderful to have friends.

After the walk home, we played some Phase 10 (card game), had lunch, watched some Grey's Anatomy (our current series binge), and then came another highlight of the day.  My cuzzy Donna hosts a game gathering for a bunch of her friends every Saturday, and this day, not only had she coordinated everyone in the group to hold up a Happy Birthday sign, she had also constructed a Jeopardy board that was all about me me me.  Very cleverly done, and fun to play.  (Oddly enough, I don't think I won.)  My goodness but it's wonderful to have relatives.

SH got us pizzas and salad from our favorite place, and then we watched a movie of my choice, City Slickers, which he would probably never have watched on his own and which we've put into our Let Go Of stack.  Then, you know, some whoopee and then to sleep.  A perfect, special day.

One fun story from the day is that on birthday eve, I got a card from my best friend Bill in Los Angeles.  When I opened it, I had to laugh, because I had chosen the same card to send to him for his birthday in January.  But wait, there’s more.  Later that evening, I found a card SH had hidden in plain sight for me.  I opened it, and it was the same card.  I’m going to be laughing about that for a long time to come. 

It's an amazing thing to have been born at all, considering the odds.  That exact sperm had to reach that particular egg that particular time for me to be me.  Knocks me out to think of it.  Thanks, Mom and Dad, for that particular time.  I'm so very, very happy to be alive and to get to experience this complicated, challenging, amazing world.  Believe it or not, I'm even happy to have lived through the past four years, because they are going down in the books as one of the more colorful and controversial chapters in American history and I do hate to miss anything.