Flat Kira"s "lost" day

I was all set to introduce Flat Kira to her "round" cousins, Michael and Cassie, last night when I discovered, to my dismay that she was not safely tucked away in her envelope in the comfort of her handmade Christmas card and directions for handling . . .

Where could she be????

Horror of horrors!  Had I left her at SCHOOL where she would shiver in the dark and silence and winter's chill until January 3????

Kira Rose would never forgive me!!!!!

I did the next best thing . . . logged onto my Simple Pleasures blog and read all the letters and stories about Flat Kira to Michael and Cassie.  They decided that she must be a little bit like Jack, their Christmas elf, and wanted to know more about how she got to my house and especially how she moved around now that she was here.  I told them they'd have to ask Kira Rose when she came to visit after Christmas.  Unlike Jack (and Pixie and Ryder, the elves at Kira Rose's house), I suspect Flat Kira will not disappear when Santa arrives . . . unless I lose her again.

I still don't know the whole story but she was napping with the dolls on the loveseat in the study again when I got home late last night.  I'm really going to have to keep a closer eye on that young lady!!!!

Flat Kira will  be meeting Michael and Cassie soon--on Christmas morning, if not before.  Hope she doesn't climb to the top of their tree!!!!

Flat Kira: Days 3 and 4

Dear Kira Rose,

Grandmommy says we only have one more day of this middle school stuff before we can be truly home (at her home anyway) for the holidays.  YEAH!!!

After watching all those big kids take their exams yesterday (reading and writing and reading and writing and they still had to read and write some more today!), I was exhausted!  Last night, Grandmommy put on a movie that she was planning to show to one of her classes today and tomorrow.  It was about this really stingy old guy named Scrooge who is scared by a bunch of ghosts into changing his ways.  He was still pretty old at the end of the story . . . older than Grandmommy even (and that's old!) . . . but he wasn't a grouch any more.  So I guess those ghosts were good ghosts?

Anyway, I must have fallen asleep on the couch the second the movie was over.  I don't even remember Grandmommy carrying me upstairs and tucking me into bed.  And I didn't get to write to you like I'd hoped  . . .  Did you miss me?

Today was more of that reading and writing exam stuff , though we did get to see the beginning of A Christmas Carol in her last class.  We were just to the good part--the part where Scrooge sees the ghost who's all tied up in clunky chains--when the bell rang for school to be over!  Some of her second block class students brought Grandmommy Christmas presents.  She wouldn't unwrap them but they look like chocolate to me!!!!   YUM!!!

I also got to sit on Grandmommy's lap(top) while she worked on school stuff during lunch (we had granola bars and bananas), something she was writing for the school newsletter about the history of the Christmas card.  Did you know that stamps and Christmas cards were invented at about the same time . . . and actually just a few years after A Christmas Carol (the book, not the movie) was published?  I feel almost  like I've been teleported back to the 1840's the last 24 hours!!!

I think that, after dinner, we may be doing something in the living room with this box she received from FEDEX last night . . . I'll let you know how that goes!

Love you bunches and miss you even more!

Flat Kira

P. S. Do you know what a "receiver" is?

P. P. S.  It's a little bit warmer outside, but now it's raining!  Yuck!!!  Did you get snow today???

Flat Kira-Day 2: middle school immersion . . .

Dear Kira,

     You forgot to mention that your grandmommy would make me go to school during my stay at her house!  Not even elementary school, like good old McKee (miss you guys already!). Middle school!

     Her students are BIG . . . and a little crazy too this week before Christmas break.  A couple of them are hoping I'll be able to help them take her language arts exam tomorrow . . . as if I understand all that stuff about "extended metaphors" and "annotated bibliographies", whatever they are!

     It was pretty fun getting to explore her classroom though.  As you can see, I found



another tree to climb

 


and many, many more books (not many with pictures) to read.

 

    I spent most of my day safely perched beside this bird (she said it was an origami crane and to ask your mom why I make so many of these) on top of her SMARTboard.  Not so sure about SMART.  That board didn't have a thing to say to me all day, and your grandmommy and her students spent most of the day answering all its questions . . .

     She FORGOT to take me to lunch with her!  I understand I missed some awesome meatballs in the teacher's lounge, but the chocolate chip cookies she brought back were pretty good (and you know how I love chocolate chip cookies). 



      After school she did take me to a meeting where I got to sit with a couple of her friends.  They had never heard of Flat Stanley and his travels until I filled them in on his story and why I was in town for a couple of weeks.

     Hope you guys aren't having too much fun without me!

                                                           

                                                            Love you bunches,

                                                            Flat Kira

P. S. Please send me some warmer clothes.  It's brrr cold here!

(away from) Home for the Holidays?

Flat Kira arrived on my (mailbox) doorstep this afternoon, bringing all of that blustery western Pennsylvania chill (minus the white stuff) right along with her.  Brrrr!  But she certainly made herself at home, like she'd always lived here (Kira Rose must have been telling her clone lots of stories about grandmommy's home down south :-)!   




 First she climbed the Christmas tree to check out that ornament Kelsey made for me several years back and to touch (at least one of) the stars (Believe from Heidi of SCRI fame).

  

Then she scoped out one of the stacks of gifts . . .

nothing with her name on it there . . . yet! 

 

Next, time for her first "long winter's nap" and she knew where a doll friend, grateful for the company in that too lonely guest bedroom,  wouldn't mind sharing the use of a comfy bed by a shelf full of books.



 Stay tuned for more of Flat Kira's saga!

epiphany

World English Dictionary, definition 2: epiphany-any moment of great or sudden revelation.

My baby boy--who could not carry a tune until second grade--sang the second solo of his life today . . . and what an epiphany that was for me.  Jamie, a singer--and an accomplished one at that!  Yes!

His first solo was as a second grade.  I was not there . . . but at another school that evening, greeting other parents of children not my own.  Creating a void in my lifetime memory collection.  A void filled to its brim and beyond today!

Collins English Dictionary definition: Epiphany-a Christian festival held on Jan 6, commemorating, in the Western Church, the manifestation of Christ to the Magi and, in the Eastern Church, the baptism of Christ.

How fitting that Jamie's solo today was in the words and the voice of those three wise men . . .

In my lifetime memory collection are images--in color but blurred with time--of the Christmas pageants I religiously recruited (or compelled, if need be) my three younger siblings to present each year for our parents.  We were costumed, of course.  I remember especially the colorful (silk or rayon?) robes my grandmother across the wide Atlantic sent one year, colorful like Joseph's coat, worthy of kings from the Orient.  I remember the songs we sang.  Always opening with "O Little Town of Bethlehem." Did we dare sing Martin Luther's "Away in a Manger"?  "Silent Night," I'm sure . . . and maybe "The First Noel," in honor of our mother because we thought it was French (the minister this morning had a very British explanation of the origin of "Noel"). 

For my mother, I always ended our pageant by singing her favorite" "Hark the Herald Angels Sing."  My solo in the days when I could sing. How fitting that this morning's cantata ended with choir and congregation singing the third verse of that hymn, words still engraved on my heart.

And for me, most especially for me, we always sang "We Three Kings"--every verse!

For me, most years since, those wise men had to come to Bethlehem, had to once again experience their epiphany, before the dismantling of Christmas could begin . . . 

NOTE TO SELF: the tree stays up, the Nativity scenes in their places of honor, until January 7, 2011!

a cotton tale . . .

When I go to my mother's for Thanksgiving--or any other time, for that matter--I love taking the back roads from busy I-95 to my home (?) town.  I'm not so much from there, I guess . . . but there's something about picking cotton time that strikes a chord with me. Not sure why . . .

. . . but this year's cotton bales, not to be confused with cotton bolls,  certainly got my attention the day before "turkey" day this year.  So much so that I promised myself that I would stop on the trip back to what is now home to take a few pictures to capture this modern version of a back-in-time sort of memory.

For what it's worth, here they are :-)

putting up the tree . . .

I could have written about so many things tonight but, in the spirit of simple pleasures, putting up the Christmas tree bubbled up to the top of the list.

This is no small feat, having the tree up and decorated the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  After two consecutive years of two-week-long, if that, wonders (AKA having the tree up and decorated), it's almost a minor miracle!  Of course there were reasons for both years' late arrivals and early departures, difficult reasons that demanded that Christmas this year be easier somehow. Putting up the tree is a beginning . . .

As I struggled with where did I pack the stand and the rug and the angel topper?--sensible packing decisions once I retraced my mental steps--I had an idea!  Why not photograph this solitary ritual of mine, tell through pictures the story of how this tree came to be?

The first solitary ritual tree--a Norfolk Island pine that long-ago Christmas of 1994--had nine foil paper cranes (one lost her way four Christmases ago . . .), a rocking horse, a ceramic snowflake studded with flowers, a pair of miniature bears (Hallmark's "Friends need a Hug") . . .  Only one of this year's ornaments predates that most difficult and loneliest of Christmases . . .  The silver ball with the pink rose first hung on a family Christmas tree when I was two . . . 

Each ornament has a story, a meaning.  The collection has evolved over time, mostly through gifts from others . . . 

May Christmas this year be a time of joy and wonder, a maker of treasured memories . . .

remembering a king and an earl . . .

1976
"The Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibition opens in Washington, D.C., to a record-breaking crowd of five million, before moving to Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York.
http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/timeline.html
National Endowment for the Humanities

It was January, one of those Virginia wintry days when the trees from the Parker Mountain farmhouse to Washington’s Smithsonian were treacherous:wondrous ice-clad marvels, the stuff of which fairy-tale illustrations are made. For me, that day was to be a fairy-tale dream come true.

My fascination with mythology paralleled my fascination with outer space in my adolescent and teen years. The names of those other-world gods and of those other-world planets and moon and stars and months and days that bore their names . . . I knew them all. I discovered the pyramids of Egypt—and the tomb of its boy-pharaoh—at about the time that I discovered academic writing. My first ever research “paper” was about King Tut. And now, on that coldest day of a new year, I would place myself in the presence of Tutankhamen’s earthly treasures, those which believers in other gods had once set aside for their boy-king's journey into the afterlife.

How strange then that—among the throughtheyears ghostly memories of my baby boy in his stroller as we waited in the long-lines cold, of ice skaters twirling on a frozen outdoor rink, of either the remnants or the preparation for someone’s inauguration, of Tutankhamen’s awe-inspiring treasures—the one memory from that day that is yet crystal clear is that of a cup of tea!

I think it was in the cafeteria of the National Gallery of Art, though I have no memory of art that day other than the contents of that cup of tea. I could not tell you of bergamot other than its magic . . . that day, and so, so, so  many wintry (and not so wintry) days since.

Earl Grey tea and King Tutankhamen’s treasures . . . what a day full of simple pleasures that was . . . at a time in my life when simple pleasures meant the world . . .

Almost time to brew a second mug of tea. I was “out”—not of tea (I have become quite the collector over the years) but of Earl Grey—until this afternoon . . . This afternoon, I also placed an Amazon.com order for White Chocolate Kisses, Cherry Vanilla, Vanilla Caramel, and something with eggnog in its name? Yes, tea. Six-pack boxes of tea bags—some for Christmas bags and stockings but, yes, many for me.

But none, much as I enjoy each of them and will enjoy those yet to be discovered, will ever displace the memory of that magical moment, that first sip, Earl Grey . . .

on "having the courage of [my] convictions" . . .

Of all the advice that my mother has given me over the years, this is the one I most associate with her, the one that I have truly made my own. I remember thinking as a child, adolescent, teen, young adult that what she really meant was that I should have the courage of her convictions. She probably did . . . But, from the time I first stood up for what I deeply believed (I was five), I have drawn strength from my own.

My father always took time from work to vote on election day. He always voted--with the exception of DDE (Daddy couldn't find it in himself to vote for a divorced man)--Democrat . . . straight party ticket, or at least that is what I've always believed. My mother's example shaped me more. She did not become an American citizen until I was in college--and we still agree on almost nothing political in nature--but I was moved, even as a child, with her voting--absentee ballot and always making sure we saw her example--in the French elections. Charles de Gaulle was her hero . . . as John F. Kennedy would be, ever so briefly, mine.

Which brings me, I guess, to the topic of this commentary--election politics. An unseemly topic for a blog devoted to simple pleasures . . . but I've always managed somehow to salvage a moment of simple pleasure in knowing that I have had, in the privacy of that voting booth, the courage of my convictions. Courage to vote according to my beliefs--not those of, usually, the vocal majority. Courage to vote for the welfare of us all, born and unborn--not just for my own.

Which is why I need to write this today, two days before yet another election . . .

I often choose to define myself through quoting what respected others have said. The quotes below reflect my thinking as I choose--no straight party tickets for me, though my choice of quotes will surely lead to predictable labels for my thinking--the candidates I believe best equipped, in terms of their beliefs and values, to shape the best world possible for us all.

The words are theirs. The bold is mine . . .

Ebenezer: But it was only that you were an honest man of business!
Jacob Marley: BUSINESS? Mankind was my business! Their common welfare was my business!

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I rarely talk politics. I do talk often and passionately about the beliefs on which my voting decisions are grounded. I rarely talk religion. I do talk often and passionately about the values on which my spiritual life is grounded.

I am rarely judgmental--unless in the presence of those who judge others--but I was deeply offended yesterday. I rarely watch mainstream TV but there was a football game I wanted to see so . . . a predictable clash of basic needs. The trade-off for watching two teams with their hearts in the game work their way through four quarters was to endure the negative political ads that filled every break.

I found myself wondering if not being out there touting my candidates of choice is akin to not having the courage of my convictions . . . if I should do and say more than I do in my quiet private voting booth moment in time. So here it is . . .

My ideal candidate is the unassuming visionary, a man (or woman) of the people.

The final piece of the this year's gubernatorial puzzle fell into place for me at a local festival this summer. The candidates cast themselves for the event as beauty queen (sitting high in a convertible, waving at her fans and surrounded by her entourage of propaganda distributors) and man of the people (walking the parade path alone [he had to have an entourage somewhere but they blended in too well to be noticed], shaking hands). Vincent Sheheen held me in the palm of his hand that day. He has my vote.

The final piece of this year's superintendent of education puzzle fell into place long before the primaries. Holleman's is the vision too many have lost in their quest to quantify academic excellence, in their efforts to equate results with standardized test performance. He also understands that putting public education first is essential to the common welfare of our children. (NOTE: I am, with the exception of my last three years of high school, a product of private schools. As a young adult, I chose--not just for financial reasons though that reality cannot be discounted--to enroll my three children in public schools [two attended state universities in other states] and to further my own education at a state university. I chose to devote my professional life to public education. I chose this path because I believe it is everyone's responsibility, mine included, to ensure that all children have access to a quality education. In today's challenging world, it will take all of us--our combined vision and resources--to make that assurance possible.)

There! I've done it! Gone on public record two days before an election to say, in indelible internet ink, how I will vote in the privacy of Tuesday's polling booth. Is this anything like having the courage of [my] convictions?

One last comment on convictions and courage . . .

I have the conviction that ours is government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I have the courage to accept the choice of the people on Tuesday and to do my best to make a difference in whatever world those leaders shape. And I will find some sense of satisfaction--simple pleasures--in continuing to live my life in just this way . . .

Pristine . . .

I was sim-ply trying to add this im-age as my G-mail signa ture, hon-est! And, as it so often does,
my building frustration morphed itself into creative solution-making attempts and somehow landed here in the shape of yet another blog post . . .

I suppose I should tell the rest of the story--at least the public version--while I'm here . . .

That this photo exists is nothing sort of miraculous, in my opinion.  Years and years and a lifetime ago, when I was without a home (a rented condo, even one with a lake view, is not a home in my opinion), I bought three roses.  These were to be my front-steps-planters garden, faithful greeters of my weary soul after too-long, too-weary days of trying to sort out who I was and how to make my way to someday. . .

The first of these was Peace.  And Peace was the first to succumb to the overabundance of shade and tree roots in her new garden home in the haven I now call home.  I've replaced her . . . maybe three times?  The only Peace rose that has survived me, though, is the lovely cross-stitched blossom my mother gifted me with one Christmas.  A beautifully symbolic gift, given its history and hers and ours . . .So Peace now graces one wall of my dining room, blooming eternally where family comes together in those blessedly peaceful days between Christmas and New Years . . .

The second rose was Brigadoon.  I must admit that the name entranced me, bringing back fond memories of a movie of that name and of the friend I shared it with that long-ago college evening . . .  But I have since come to admire Brigadoon most for her courage to survive, to gift me with a single bloom each spring, each bloom more glorious than the last, as if she knows it will be her last.  For most of her life she has been a single stem, significantly eaten away at its base the last several of those years. Brigadoon bloomed for me this spring . . . as the trees above her were leafing out.

But Pristine, the third of these long-ago roses, did not . . .  And I thought, in the throes of midsummer's challenges, that she had moved on before I could let go of that elusive . . . hope? . . . that her survival represented.  So I let go, drifted, moved on, moved on again, lived as I was meant to live . . . I thought.

One bearably warm late August afternoon, I retreated with mountains of schoolwork to the back porch hammock swing.  Not sure how long I rocked and read before . . . I saw . . . her perennial, her pristinely beautiful gift to me . . .

?