Cherished Memories

My son likes to dress as Santa on Christmas morning and pass out the presents. When he first wanted to do this I thought it was just because he was small and believed in Santa. He surprised me every year wanting to do this and I always meant to make him a costume. Last year we managed to put something together with a red turtle neck and sweat pants and I sewed on some white fur. After Christmas I managed to get this costume on clearance though in all honesty I thought he wouldn't wear it. He's getting older, into those teenaged years, do Christmas dreams last that long?

What I asked that question? The child who spent twenty-odd years dreaming about The Christmas Story (Dad's) coming true? I was sick all of Christmas, still am, I'll go to the doctor tomorrow to find out if it is pneumonia or asthma, or just stress related. It's very rare for me to manifest stress through physical illness. I usually have a mental break-down. They're easier to recover from and don't require pills.

Given my difficulty with breathing I'm guessing asthma complicated by fluid in the lungs.

In the meantime it was a good Christmas and the more I learn about my extended family the more I appreciate the parents I got. My life could have been a lot worse than it was or that I thought it was. I have a cousin going through AA and I'm praying she stays with it. You know it's hard road and my daughter and her son were listening to this song about a little girl from an abusive family, the Dad kills the Mom and the girl goes to a new home. They take her to church and the girl says, "I know that man on the cross." I could only comment, "It isn't that easy. It takes a lot of courage and will power to overcome a harsh childhood." I still like the song it's just sometimes it seems people who haven't lived through it don't understand, not that I have lived through it, but I know enough to empathize but not enough to nod and say, "I know," when they talk to me.

Feverish brains make for weird blogs.

The Biggest Tree

When I was seven we were living in Aruba just before Christmas. It was hot with a field of cactus to our right and a woman who literally cut off chicken's heads to our left. Yes, I can honestly say I've seen a chicken running around with its head cut off. It was also boring, no tv, no friends, no after school activities, no toys, no books, nothing. Dad would come home from work and my brother and I would be so excited. It broke the monotony. After supper he would tell us "The Christmas Story."

For as long as I live that story will be as much a part of who I am as the real Christmases I've experienced. It was just as real as the cold tan tiles of the living room floor where we sat listening to Dad. When I'm old with Alzheimer's, I'll ramble about the Christmas we spent in the Smoky Mountains and how Dad and Darrell went turkey hunting and I brought hot cocoa, how Michael's car got stuck at the bottom of the hill, the school bus did too because the snow was so deep, and Gramps put the star on the top of the tree and we had to shake all the snow off the tree before bringing it in the house. All the details are still as vivid in my mind as they were then.

The hardest part though was learning that The Christmas Story would never come true. I believed in that story long after I stopped believing in Santa. I believed we could all get together in one house, twenty-five people, and have a good Christmas. It didn't matter that I slept in the barn, Pam was with me, it didn't matter that we had to eat our meals on benches and up along the stairs, we were together. Oh yes, that was why the story was so real. Dad didn't forget a single detail. Except the one about it being an impossible dream.

I used to plead and plead with my aunts and cousins to come up for Christmas. No one ever did. I had a habit of walking and daydreaming when I was sixteen. You know I built? A house in the mountains big enough for twenty-five people, but being a person inclined to want a small cabin I built it so that 80% of the house was dug out inside a mountain so that it appeared to be a little mountain cabin until you got inside. I even had an aquarium in the library to provide light and give a feeling of life to the room and the playroom was in primary colors to give it a sense of vibrancy.

I never built that house. I ended up marrying a traffic engineer and following the logic of my heart instead of my head because, umm, there's no traffic in the woods. So here I am living in the city and dreaming of that country Christmas. Anyway, we bought a house big enough to hold twenty-five people, it can't really sleep that many without a lot of folks being on the floor, but there is floor space. Then my sister moved into the area, just five minutes away. I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed this. I didn't even get envious when she got published in Chicken Soup for the Soul. I was happy for her and happy that she lives close by. Then my favorite cousin moved into Virginia. God was blessing me despite my many flaws. Christmas got bigger. We had two houses to accomodate folks. Then my cousin joined the military and he is stationed in Norfolk, oh and he gets Christmas off this year. He's coming for Christmas and so is his family!

I can't begin to tell you how much it means to me. I am so praying that nothing goes wrong this year. My favorite cousin's husband is a preacher, they can't really come on Christmas Day but maybe during the season it is possible. My house and my sister's house will be packed with people. "The Christmas Story," is coming true. I can't believe it's coming true, I'm holding my breath and saying my prayers, saying Thank you.

Condensing words

I'm having trouble at the moment. This newsletter I'm putting together is for a non-profit organization. The problem is that there are a lot of potential cross overs into a for profit situation. I have to be careful and I've got people pushing me to put in for profit items because they don't see where that fine line is.

Despite the pressure, this is fun. I absolutely love this whole business of figuring out what will entice readers to open up the e-mail (yeah we gets stats on how many do) and taking photos of book signings and finding interesting news that doesn't cross the line and I did an interview I'm excited about. The interview is too long for the newsletter but I'm so hoping they will post it on their website. I've written up a summary and condensing the longer version into something tighter was a lot of fun too.

This led me to thinking, the problem with my writing is that I condense too much before it ever gets to the page. What I need to do is allow myself to ramble, to describe in overwhelming detail, and then later to condense. I enjoy finding just the right phrase or quote out of a three hour event that will make something sound so much more exciting than it was in reality. I mean, yeah, some events can get tedious and I wish they would give some folks a vodka and tonic before they go on stage, but when the people on stage click with each other, it is an enjoyable show. Later when I'm perusing my notes I enjoy it all over again. I suppose I'm a little odd, but I don't know, it's telling a story even a little short one paragraph story, and it's fun.

So I'm off to describe each and every hemlock in the forest in order to find that single tree with the twisted branches.

Meg Medina

I went to a book signing yesterday at Narnia books. I did this mostly because I want to have something to put in the newsletter I maintain. I had no idea who she was except her name had come up in the last newsletter as having a book launching on this day. From the outside the store looked deserted and I got the parking space directly across from the front door. There was even another space empty behind me. My heart sunk, this was going to be another one of those awkward moments when I walk in with camera dangling wondering how do I avoid buying another book? I can't afford to buy books every two weeks just so I can get a picture to put in my newsletter.

The place was packed with people. I knew several of them too. Not only that her best friend from New York flew down. I am amazed and impressed by this. Here lately I've begun to stop by a couple book signings mostly so I can take photos and do a quick write-up for the newsletter. It is a time consumer and I'm not really sure how much it benefits me to do this but then again I'm starting to understand things about book signings.

One of the things I've sort of always known is that these things depend heavily on advertising. The author hopes the book store will advertise this signing so that he or she will have people attending. The book store hopes that the author will have a bevy of friends and family and do their own advertising and therefore bring a lot of people into their bookstore. So it's a situation that sort of depends on the both of them actively putting effort into the event. In yesterday's case it seems both of them were successful doing their part.

Later in the evening it occurred to me that I never see myself on the other side of that table with a book in one hand and a pen in another. My brother's wife is all into this whole idea of if you can visualize it you can make it happen. Yeah, that may be so, but I just don't see myself sitting behind a table or desk signing books. I think the problem is I can't visualize a message that I think is so important that it must be written, it must be told, that the world will benefit from this message and no matter how awful introverted I feel I must overcome this to tell the world this message. Ummm, messages like that don't come to me. I like to read though and I enjoy other people's messages.

Which is why I'm thinking more and more about going over to goodreads and writing book reviews. That author from VCU said this is a good site for interacting with your readers because they set the site up so that authors can talk to the people who read their books. I'll have to go look more closely because as I write this I wonder does it mean they can "chat" with someone who hated their books? Anyway this seems like an interesting way to lift your profile so that people notice your book and a little less emotionally risky such as a book signing can be. Not to say that author's shouldn't do books signings, hey what would I put in my newsletter? It's just that it seems that you're less likely to be sitting there wondering, "Why am I here?"

By the way cudos to Meg Medina whose signing was very successful. The people attending her signing were interesting folks too. Gigi Amateau showed up so while she was waiting for Meg to sign her book she was also signing her latest book for other people.

Lewis Ginter Light Show

For your viewing pleasure, the Lewis Ginter annuals light show which featured spiders this year. This is one beautiful display of lights.

Breath and Bones by Susann Cokal

First of all I have to say that I know this author and like her so the review will be biased.

This book is different. I tend to gravitate to books with unusual dark tendencies, not murder and mayhem though I do like a good mystery, I mean dark in the sense of exploring the anti-social side of human beings. In many ways that is what this book does. Famke is a teenager, young beautiful and afflicted with tuberculosis in the 1880's. She serves as the model for an artist and falls in love with him to the point that she follows him from Denmark to the American West. The darker side of it all is that he has abandoned her, she is following the dream that he loves her, and along the way a lot of people get hurt. The thing is these people getting hurt aren't exactly naive nor do they despise her for what she did, they actually seek her out so that it becomes this pied piper event across the American West.

In reading this book you learn a lot about the west at that time in history, everything from the brothels to the Mormons silk worm trade. There is also a lot about tuberculosis but not in the medical sense of analyzing it but in the way that the disease affects Famke and how she perceives this persisent cough with blood. At one time one of the prostitutes tells her that her throat is septic. It isn't until she runs into this rather odd and wealthy man who has some self education in the medical field that she learns this is tuberculosis and so as a modern reader we learn about some rather unusual choices for how to get rid of the little tubules that afflict her lungs.

It's worth reading the book to find out what the doctor's methodolgy is.

From the outset you know how the book will end, it is in the first chapter, the opening scene. "It was a large cylinder with thick, slightly green walls. The ends of the cylinder were of glass, too, and the craftmanship was so fine that the joinings were scarcely visible. But it was what the cylinder held inside that constituted the great wonder: the body of a woman, floating in a clear liquid with a blue velvet gown and hair such a brilliant red that at first glance it appeared unnatural." pages 4-5

Throughout the book I kept thinking she died a slow agonizing death from the disease so the spectucular ending was unexpected. It was one worthy of being embalmed in a glass jar.