A Substantial Identity Crisis

(Originally published in 8/16- re-released 12/18)

Judging by my output over the last several weeks, it should be fairly easy to conclude that I haven't had much to say...

You know you are experiencing a formidable dearth of creativity when the most original thing you've done in two and a half months is create a playlist of all songs with the word 'magic' in them. It was a doozy though, with everything and everyone from Olivia Newton John to the Cars.

I've been in a sort of philosophical 'funk' of late. Inspiration has never seemed so far away. Began to think that I might be experiencing some sort of 'mid-life' crisis...Nothing is more hackneyed and clichéd, I know, but how else to explain the fact that the only things I've looked forward to of late was TCM's Summer Under the Stars Movie festival and the fact that Yacht Rock returned to Sirius XM Radio. Even more worrying was the recent trip I paid to my local used book store in which I spent 45 minutes and emerged empty-handed! That's never happened in my personal history. Not Ever....Absolutely Never.

Panicked, I retreated to a local antique store hoping to find some sort of tchotchke or piece of décor to pluck myself from the oblivion I seemed to be inhabiting. It didn't work. I emerged like a sleepwalker from the shop mumbling to myself some gibberish about not wanting 'more clutter' or 'things that would only collect dust'. Alien phrases I've never before heard myself use...

After retreating home to huddle cocoon-like with a cup of tea and a few pieces of verboten Scottish shortbread on my sofa, I proceeded to spend some time staring off into space contemplating my seemingly erratic behavior of late.

What was happening to me? 

I realized that I was tired of the same old, same old.  Nothing substantive. I'm sick of reading magazines in which the only 'meaty' reading was the disclosure page for prescription medicines. They seem to be writing periodicals these days for people with zero attention span. The pages were a hodge podge of 'bites' of articles with no real story with a beginning thesis, supportive documentation and a conclusive ending.   I went into the bookstore looking for a sweeping novel and all I found were breezy pieces of 'chick lit' and for some reason I can't work out, hundreds upon hundreds of books about vampires, zombies and various other assorted stories of the undead. I couldn't even find any of the Louis L'Amour(s) which were so prized by my late great-aunt.

It's as if  I'm in a state of perpetual mourning, (no I'm not really depressed) for more than society is capable of providing. I mourn the lack of civility, manners, the casual dress, the appalling lack of education. In the time period between my last writing on this blog and now, I've been informed that cursive writing is no longer part of the standard curricula in our schools. Upon hearing this, I embarked on a lengthy period of research (nothing thrills me more than doing research) and in several articles I read, I was backed up by several eminent sociologists, many teachers and educators as to the irreparable harm this is doing, but in the midst of my quest for validation, was the far more sobering thought that, "No one cares..." If the parents whose children this is affecting say nothing and thus far, their silence in this case is deafening, then what do I, a parent of none, a childless spinster have to say? I've got no skin in this game. My contemporaries who have school age children argue that "computer skills are more important...and no one writes in cursive these days anyway".

Except well...me...I always write in cursive. Even down to the notes that I write to myself.
So I am once more perhaps, an anachronism in my own time.

Maybe it's foolhardy to be this way, but I find myself unable to deny the fire that burns within me for substance. So in spite of the fact that it is possibly an exercise in futility, I will continue to seek out the elusive well-written sweeping novel, I will keep using 'big words'. I will keep my inner pilot light lit with zeal for the beauty and class of classic movies, for the arts, for music and for the hope that somehow the written word will stand the test of time.

Stuff

I am going to ramble a bit in this post...
I couldn't marshal all my thoughts together...into one cohesive theme.

Perhaps Annie Lennox said it best in my favorite of all her songs, "Why".

"This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head"

So here are the contents of my head....

1. Feeling bad about the way that I snapped at a grocery store clerk earlier this evening. I stopped off to pick up a few things at the store and when I was in produce, she (the grocery store clerk) offered me a flower saying "Happy Mother's Day!". I snarled back a graceless "No Thanks!" and then I snapped, "I'm not a mother!" It wasn't her fault, but I am so tired, so...so tired of 'getting through' Mothers' Day. Why is it that just because you are a female on Mothers' Day, everyone assumes you must therefore be a mother? It just needs to stop. Don't we inflict enough pain on people through taxes, reality shows and this current political election without reminding them of other pain?  Not everyone is a strong empowered female who is okay with the life she's been handed. Don't make them feel worse because corporate America needs to find another way to guilt the public into buying more 'stuff'. I just want to get my groceries in peace; if I really wanted to be accosted by people giving away 'free carnations', I could hang out at the airport in search of a Hare Krishna. (although do they still do that?)

2. Last weekend, I decided that I had the time to go and while away some hours at my local Books-A-Million, so you can imagine my dismay when I pulled up to the shop and it was no longer there! Just a darkened storefront with empty shelves and a sign taped to the door telling me not to despair, that I could still find them online. Don't Despair! My stomach felt like it had been dropped into my shoes. You can't smell freshly ground coffee and cinnamon snickerdoodles when you shop online. Nor can you find inner peace and tranquility in the quiet hush of a shop with thousands of tantalizing titles right at your fingertips where you can read the blurb on the back, take a few pages for a test drive, or much like Billy Crystal in "When Harry Met Sally" read the ending in case you die before you finish the book. You can't make discreet eye contact with some hipster guy in really cool glasses and skinny jeans while inwardly rejoicing in the fact that he too is mildly obsessed with Outlander. No Books a Million, I can't...not despair! Sometimes it feels like I am the only human being on the planet that still likes to read actual books. I felt less alone in bookstores. So now I am not only in despair, but alone in a weird alien world of non-readers. It is constantly held up to us that United States is consistently lagging behind the rest of the world in test scores. Maybe statisticians would not completely agree, but I bet you could draw a pretty significant corollary between the drop in test scores to the amount of books stores closed in the last 10 years. Please don't comment to me about your Godless Kindles. True reading is done curled up in an armchair or sofa with a paperbound volume in your hands, perhaps a cat in your lap, or a faithful dog at your feet, a glass of red or a cup of chamomile at your side as God intended. Anything else is just- soul-crushing.

3. Whenever I go visit my Mom, after I've crossed over the bridge which always makes me feel as if I'm on a long journey, instead of a mere 20 or so miles, there is a little, what I believe to be auto-repair or some sort of industrial site that has out in front of it a large 30 foot or so T-Rex figure. They always dress the T-Rex in season-appropriate clothing. For instance, at Christmas he might wear a Santa hat and hold a wreath in his massive claws. For Easter, he'll have a basket in his claws and a stuffed rabbit dangling from his teeth, an Uncle Sam hat at the 4th of July...you get the picture. I always want to go and pull off the road, knock on the door of their warehouse, etc., and tell them how much I look forward to seeing the Rex every time I cross over the bridge and into their city. That I appreciate their whimsy and the trouble that it must take in order to get a crane out there to lift off the various attire and re-dress him, the expense of it, etc. That it always just makes my day and I always chuckle at what they dress him in. I should do that some day... really I should!

4. Being a very doting pet parent, there is almost nothing that I like better than going to a pet shop in order to buy treats and 'stuff' for my boys. I am almost as at-home in pet stores and the vet as I am in book stores. I am one of those types for which the great impresario PT Barnum once famously remarked (or not depending on which side of the conjecture you come down on) 'there's a sucker born every minute'.  I think that Pet Smart, or Supermarket or Petco or wherever probably gleefully rub  their hands together when they see me, 'It's okay guys, she's here, we'll definitely be able to make payroll this month!" In any case, the Go Cat company certainly must have had dupes like me in mind when they came up with their As-Seen-On-TV video "Cat Dreams". In my defense, it was sold as a freebie tacked on to the purchase of a large pouch of "Tiger Grass" Gold Standard catnip. 'Cat Dreams' is a DVD of what purports to be 'Natural Sights and Sounds Cats Love'. It's basically images of birds moving slowly, cheeping merrily while squirrels cavort chasing each other's bushy tails. On the same day that I purchased this visual feast for the feline eye, in the interest of trying to decrease stress and stay hip and current at the same time, I purchased an 'adult coloring book' for myself complete with special markers. After coming home and treating my two moggies to a catnip infused mouse play session, I attempted to get them to come down off their 'kitty high' by running the 'Cat Dreams' DVD. At the same time, I was attempting to try and de-stress with my coloring book. The only thing is...I am not actually very good at...how shall we say...coloring. I was attempting to fill in something called a mandala. I don't even know (or particularly care) what a mandala is! But the book promised hours of relaxing color therapy, so I gamely continued, certain that at any moment, stress would fall from me like water from a colander. The opposite occurred, the more I colored the tighter my shoulders got, I couldn't seem to stay completely immersed in the center of the image and occasionally, mortifyingly strayed outside the lines. The color didn't seem to be spreading evenly, one of my markers dried up, and I found myself ranting, "Damn it, now I'm out of green, I'm going to have to double up on orange and the whole design will be off!  The whole mandala is ruined, just ruined!' Reduce stress, I think I tripled it...After throwing my markers down and tossing the coloring book to the side, I caught sight of 'Cat Dreams'. Gordon and Jamie my now manic catnip-laced cats were nowhere to be found, having decided that watching 'Cat Dreams' was lame, they engaged in a game of racing each other up and down the stairs. As for me however, after just 15 minutes or so of watching birds and squirrels and the restful sounds of their chirping, I was fast asleep, completely stress-free!

5. I attended my 3rd funeral of one calendar year last Wednesday, I am not going to blog about this one however out of my deep respect for the family other than to say that life is short and finite and you need to hug your love ones often and tell them why they are special. I work in an industry that is all about estate planning and is very tied into life and death. It has felt so much lately like I have been surrounded by death and yet something that has very much surprised me is that when I came into this line of work, I was impressed with the vast amounts of resources and money I worked with, but the longer I am in this business, the more I see the folly of running after the accumulation of money. Yes, you need to have the necessities of life, people need homes to make memories in, but do you really need to have subway tile, quartz countertops or an outdoor kitchen to be complete? At last, I see that it is the people, the relationships that really matter. I believe it was Thoreau who said "Friends they cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.” Care about your friends and family, build up their hopes and dream with them.

I am going to close this out Oliver Wendell Holmes...

"Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them"

Whatever you do in this life, don't die with your music in you, sing your song, dream your dreams and love even when it's easier not to.

Purple Elvis

Occasionally, I will chide my Dad for making an off-color or seemingly 'racist' remark.  My Dad's invariable shot back is something to the effect of, "Hey I'm not racist, when I took your Mom (my Dad's now ex-wife) to see Purple Rain, I was the only white guy in the theatre!"

And in 1984, that was probably true. 

By now we all are probably familiar with the fact that Prince Rogers Nelson passed away at his home in Chanhassen, Minnesota last week.  Many of us may not have even known he had a middle or last name. To my generation, he was simply...Prince.  All you needed was that one word. Just that word usually conjured up the image of a man of slight stature, clad in sequined purple, armed with a guitar and absolutely insane dance moves. To this day, despite my admiration for Fred Astaire, Michael Jackson and Gene Kelly, my secret ambition has always been to see if I could even come close to Prince in dance moves.

I never have.

Just yesterday, listening to the radio in the car, "When Doves Cry" comes on the air. It's not surprising. It seems to be the done thing now, when an artist passes away, a station will devote significant air play in tribute. I expect we'll hear a lot of Prince over the next few days, But what surprises me, is that all of the sudden, I feel a tear streak down the left side of my face. It's not usual for me...I respected Bowie, but I didn't shed a tear for him. Ditto for Michael, Whitney, all of these grand artistes. And yet, one song by Prince, and there I am, mourning for a man I certainly never knew or even met.

I analyze it. And then, a moment, streaks through my mind as if I were looking at a VHS tape of a summer day in 1985. It's my living room and the four of us, me, my sister Erin, my friend and her brother are all mesmerized by "Raspberry Beret". My sister and my friends' brother create a 'dance' for "Raspberry Beret" and they spend a great deal of that afternoon trying to perfect it and to 'teach' us the moves.

 I think about it now...4 white kids trying to get funky with Prince. Something that would have been almost unheard of only two decades earlier in my parents' generation. My older self now understands the gulf we were trying to span. I have clear memories of being asked why I liked all that "black music" (Motown), Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, etc. I guess to my parents and their generation, it was 'black music', to us though, it was just good music. Just music to 'get down' to.
Just three years later, my sister and I are called upon to 'rap' Will Smith's "Parents Just Don't Understand"(we'd memorized all the words) to our indulgent grandparents who thought it 'cute'. Amusingly my Dad likes to listen to an MC Hammer cassette in his mini-van on the way to church in the early 90's.  As I get older, in my twenties I discover, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and P-Funk. It's a revelation.

But it all started with Prince. Only an artist of his caliber and mesmeric performances could ever have induced my parents to a movie theatre in 1984 populated mostly by African-Americans. In fact, I am not even allowed to see it in 1984, my sister and I beg a cousin who abides by our aunt's decision and takes us to see "The Muppets Take Manhattan" instead.  I finally see a sanitized TV version sometime in the mid-90's. Knowing as I do now the names and lyrics of some of Prince's tracks, I'm certain my parents were somewhat alarmed.

Fast forward to 2007, and it's Super Bowl XLI and like most of America, my Dad and I are dutifully watching. It's raining in Miami, I'll never forget that...and then Prince takes the stage and with his guitar and dance moves, he mesmerizes us. I remember my Dad and I just looking at each other and saying one word, "Wow!".

Then my Dad says to me, "You know, I took your Mom to see Purple Rain, I was the only white guy in the theatre!"

And that's how I will always remember Prince. He was our generations' Elvis. A guy who could unite races, bring people together who didn't see the music in terms of black and white, electrify us with his guitar, paint the world in purple sequins and make us all dance.

I never knew you Prince Rogers Nelson....but I will certainly never forget you.

Writers' Paralysis

You don't have to tell me...I know....

I haven't been here in quite awhile. And the world it seems, survived. It did not spin off its axis and hurl itself into the sun. No-one wrote me great angst filled emails begging for just one more piece of my writing. No one cried...possibly no one noticed...

I noticed.  I've been here sometimes, staring at the great vast wall of white with the single blinking cursor. Many's the time, pardon the pun, that I've cursed the cursor...wishing it would let me issue forth, something...anything.

So let's say I've been on sick leave, struck down with what I term writers' paralysis. Too much life to live I guess. Not enough pensive thoughts that needed to be committed to the page.

I've been living.  Working. Working hard. On myself, my job, my sense of fun, my need for belonging.

I'd been so busy over the last months and years trying to belong, to put my great square peg self into a round hole that I'd forgotten what fun felt like. What it really felt like to live, to play, to be silly.

Last weekend, I found myself twice in a sense of homecoming.  Family was here, when family comes to Florida, you usually A. Go to Disney or B. Go to the Beach.  We opted for the latter. It's ironic, I live within an hours' drive of possibly the most famous coastline in the world and I never go there. As we got closer, I could see it, aqua water with rolls of foamy soap-like waves. I felt 4 years old again, scrambling out of the car, impatiently waiting for the others to catch up to me. I simply could not wait to get to the sea and when I was finally there, the most odd sense that it had been waiting for me, just waiting for me to come back. Home, back where I belonged, the place that I most loved. Why had I stayed away so long?

The world has always seemed to me to be divided between two types of people, ocean-people and mountain-people. As majestic as mountains are, I must admit I am ocean person. It's there that I feel most myself.

As Ann Morrow Lindbergh wrote, in her famous "Gift from the Sea" (which I can never be without) "I walk far down the beach, soothed by the rhythm of the waves, the sun on my bare back and legs, the wind and mist from the spray on my hair. Into the waves and out like a sandpiper. And then home, drenched, drugged, reeling, full to the brim with my day alone, full like moon before the night has taken a single nibble of it, full as a cup poured up to the lip. There is a quality to fullness that the Psalmist expressed: "My cup runneth over."

My cup runneth over, I stood in the surf, the sand retreating from the pools under my feet, and just took it all in and I thought, "I'm happy. If nothing else comes of life but this moment, I'm happy and it can never be taken from me."

My next moment of homecoming took place in a gallery that I work within walking distance of. It's small and eclectic compared with the galleries one might see in NY or larger cities like London or Paris. But I've always loved it. Down to the smell and the heavy wooden doors that are on either side of it. I am passionate worshiper of beauty and design. Although frequently befuddled by it myself,(to wit, I spent the better part of one evening this week trying to buy throw pillows on Wayfair.com and becoming completely overwhelmed with the variety and colors offered, I slammed down the lid of Gavin (my laptop) and burst into tears), I always find myself completely enthralled with the product of another man's genius. I drank in beauty in paintings, vases, pottery, jewelry and other media. I asked questions of the museum guides, I reveled in color, in textures, in light. I found myself wanting to somehow capture it, to savor the moment, so that when I needed it, I could take out like a talisman against disappointment in man and humanity. Sometimes when life becomes overwhelming and too teeming with the problems of humanity, you need to be able to remember that there is still color, and beauty and romance left in the world. I found all of those things in that same neighborhood gallery that I visited so many times before.

So I guess I could say that for me, the antidote to Writers' Paralysis was to find inspiration and imagination again. And I guess, all apologies to Jonathan and Drew Scott, HGTV offerings are not always enough. I had to step outside of my own insular world and into the wider world and explore the things that are outside of the ordinary, even if my fear of heights did prevent me from climbing up the whole Lighthouse at Ponce Inlet and knocking an item off my bucket list!

All the writing prompts in the world cannot make you feel...
Writing is so much more than just the words...just setting them down will never do...you have to do the heavy lifting, the living...the feeling, the scents, the sounds...

Going through this time of paralysis makes me that much more grateful for the times when they words do come...

Improver Guy

It all started because I'd been running late, actually I'm almost always running late...
I'm not a morning person, never have been. Many mornings my first waking thought is, "how many hours do I have to be awake before I can crawl back under the covers again?" I love sleep, everything about it, soft pillows, cool silky sheets, quilts...It's probably the reason I never had kids, they'd have gotten in the way of all that.

I'm off topic, sleep led to me running late, egregiously so this morning and the result was I didn't make my lunch. I decided that I would turn it into a positive and treat myself to Chick-Fil-A. To the un-initiated, Chick Fil-A is the maker and the proprietor of the best chicken sandwich in the South, if not the whole world. It's simple really, they take a plump juicy chicken breast, bread it in a coating of 'secret herbs and spices' (no really, I worked there and I still don't know the contents of the breading which comes in non-descript brown sacks) throw it in a pressure fryer full of peanut oil, then they take all the crispy goodness of that chicken cutlet, lay it on a buttered toasted hamburger roll with two dill pickles, throw in a paper sack of waffle fries and it is quite honestly the best lunch ever!

I sat at a table, eating my sandwich and browsing my phone when for some reason I looked up and there in line was a guy with a face I swore I'd seen before, I thought about it and all of the sudden I got that dizzy, cold sweat, my stomach is in my shoes feeling because whether or not it was the actual guy, he had the face of a man I knew all too well.

Most women at some point date a guy I like to categorize as "improver guy". You aren't quite his type of girl, but he thinks with a few tweaks here and there, you just might get close. You won't. Let me state that again for all the cockeyed optimists out there... YOU WON'T. You'll never get close, but you will half kill yourself trying.

I know, I've been there. Seeing that guy in line today, it brought it all back. Many years ago in the days  when Windows XP was all the rage; I entered into a nine-month 'relationship' with my 'improver guy'. He was like the foreign exchange student that you can't send back until the program is over. We weren't really even friends by the end of our time together.

I still can't quite understand what made him stay around. Maybe it was the fact that I was gullible, emotionally needy and co-dependent.  I think that he enjoyed toying with me much in the same way that a cat will toy with prey before actually 'killing' it. To his way of thinking, I needed a great deal of 'improvement'. My clothes were "too dowdy' and "prematurely middle-aged", my exercise program needed overhauling. I ate far too many carbs and didn't appreciate the finer points of a good curry. My taste in music he found appalling, my politics too conservative. Slowly, piece by piece, he took me apart until I could barely find myself.  I'd been a kindly optimist cum idealist until I met him. When he left, I'd become a world-weary cynic with barely enough enthusiasm to get out of bed in the mornings (much like him).

After he was gone, I started to eat. I craved Lucky Charms, Twinkies, M & M's, burgers, and Chick-Fil A fries. I couldn't seem to eat enough to numb the memories.  I just wanted to get rid of the despair, the emptiness that comes with the realization that no matter how hard you work, how much you try to change, you can't make someone love or care about you.

I had fantasies of running after that guy I saw in line even though I don't really think it was him. The last I knew, MY 'improver guy' was in Spain trying to 'improve' someone else. I wanted to say "Listen, you don't know me, but I knew a guy once who looked just like you and seeing you (him) today brought it all back. You (he) hurt me so deeply, that even now, I can't hear songs from that time period or smell your (his) cologne without nausea. I want you (him) to know that you (he) may have bruised my spirit, but you (he) did not break it! That I'm successful in my life, in my work, that I'm happy in myself. I want you to know without any of your (his) shaming or running until I threw up, I lost over twenty-five (nearly thirty now) pounds and this time I did it for myself, not to get someone who was unworthy of me in the first place to care about me. That I unashamedly listen to Opera, Classical, 80's New Wave and yes, even Easy Listening from time to time and I don't give a damn if you (he) think that it's appalling! Lastly, I heartily enjoyed the Scottish Highland Games this past weekend!" (Improver Guy was English and never had a good word to say about the Scots)

I didn't say any of that of course. I did almost get hit by a pickup truck in the parking lot while fantasizing what I would like to say and I admit that I got distracted a bit at work this afternoon wondering if it really was him, but the important thing is...I'm okay now. I never really wasn't in the first place and it took seeing that guy to realize it.

So, wherever you are, Facsimile Improver Guy...Thanks from Happy Well-Adjusted Woman!

Post Partum Star Wars...An Existential Crisis

Maybe it's the fact that Mercury is  retrograde...

Maybe it's the fact that Kylo Ren killed his own father, Han Solo...(or did he?)

Maybe it's the fact that now that I've seen Star Wars VII, there's nothing to look forward to until Star Wars VIII...

But, I'm definitely on this side of bummer...

I can't explain it, but while I'm not exactly unhappy, I'm just not feeling as creatively challenged lately. Ever so often, I go into a sort of existential crisis where I examine my life and I debate whether I am living up to my own potential? Every so often, I debate as to whether or not I should even bother with this blog anymore. The optimist in me, will rear up and say, but what if you were one more blog post away from some major life-changing 'thing' that would blow up on the net and make you achieve a sort of immortality? The realist in me says that many people live their whole lives and die never achieving anything other than a sort of humdrum existence and are only mourned by a select few.

I'd settle for something in between that.

Actually, the way things are right now, I am probably the fulfilment of that line in Bridget Jones' Diary where, in a particularly dark moment, she speculates whether her only meaningful relationship will be with a bottle of wine and that she will die fat and alone, being found three weeks later half-eaten by wild dogs. In my case though, it'd probably be cats.

At least, I am at the point in my life where I no longer self-medicate with food or alcohol. I've given that all up and now spend much of my time debating the merits of quinoa vs brown rice. Chia versus flax. I spend endless time trying to assess the degree to which I absolutely abhor and detest kale, all the while stuffing it in everything from soup to salad.  Two to three nights a week, I ingest fish, I say ingest because to me eating implies enjoyment. I don't enjoy fish per se. I ingest it because it is healthy.

All of this should, I rationalize, make me a better person.

But am I?

Or maybe I'm the same carb-loading, junk food junkie I always was, just under better control.

In any case, I realize that I am complicated.  Probably most of us are. However, lately I worry that I am complicated to a higher degree than some.

Take Amazon, for instance. Getting ready for work this morning, I experienced yet another existential crisis when thinking about my Amazon recommendations. I did a lot of my Aunt Jill Christmas shopping on there. Toys for various nephews and niece. As I ran my toothbrush over my pearlies, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't remembered to check off the field on Amazon that states, "This is a gift". Sure enough, after sprinting to Gavin II (my laptop natch, don't any of you read this thing?) and checking my Amazonian recommendations, in addition to the usual coterie of book, CD, and Blu Rays, there were all manner of Disney and other assorted toys recommended to me based on my shipping and browsing history. And all of the sudden, I am beyond mortified, imagining some Amazon lowly imputing my orders and thinking that I am some sort of freak who is 'into' kids toys! A second and worse thought occurred to me, that Amazon probably didn't even care, heartless profit making machine that they are, they probably don't even recognize what kinds of persons with predilections for kids toys that they are enabling! On the heels of that, was a third and probably the most unsettling thought of all that, if I was into toys, didn't they know that I would probably buy collectible and 'retro' toys that I coveted in my childhood like a Snoopy Sno Cone Machine or Easy Bake Oven? Sheesh!  Doesn't Amazon even know me AT ALL! 

I slumped back from Gavin II, world-weary and despondent. Did I even want to venture out into a world that was so out of touch that even Amazon.com doesn't 'get me'?

Like I said, maybe it's just the New Year blahs...sloughing off Yuletide cheer and thinking of how many months I have to get through to hear "Silver Bells" again...

Maybe it's Mercury...

Maybe it's just post-partum Star Wars depression...

Yeah, let's go with that.

For Great Aunt Dorothy

For my mom, Jan, who is a pretty cool chick!

Dear Aunt Dorothy:

Feliz Navidad Prospero Año y Felicidad

I remember that's how you started out your annual Christmas letter. Mom always insisted on two things, that we (my sister and I) read your letter and that we write you one of our own. A thank you letter.  You always sent us a check for Christmas and as your (and ours) years advanced, the sum grew larger. I remember, hating to write that letter. Hating it with a deep dark purple passion. Mom always proofread them and sometimes there were rewrites and grammar revisions. She really put a premium on us completing them properly. Usually, it was during Christmas vacation from school and I wanted to use up every last precious second of freedom in selfish pursuits, sleeping in, reading non-school books, going to movies and I admit I resented any time 'wasted'.

Mom insisted though and so I would think and labor over it, filling up pages with my large almost illegible cursive scrawl, thanking you for money and telling you what I was doing. I can't help but wonder if you enjoyed the letters at all? I'm sure they were a bit tedious.

You would probably be distressed to hear that the art of writing the thank you letter has all but disappeared. I don't know that I have ever received one for a gift.

 I'm glad you gave us the money then. Instead of making us wait for an inheritance.
If I had the money now, I probably would do something boring and adult, like deposit it into my IRA. Truthfully, what I did with the money was to use it to buy presents. Back in those days, money was always tight and I was always 'short' at Christmas.

Well Aunt Dorothy, I'm an aunt myself now. A maiden one, like you were. I think now, I've started to understand what you were trying to say to us all of those years ago.  I  more fully 'get' all of the virtues you wanted to instill in us, a love of knowledge, intellectual curiosity, to love animals, respect others and care about the environment. Having no children yourself, you wanted to leave a mark, a legacy, some sort of immortality when you were no longer with us.

Your Christmas letters were full of your pursuit of making the world a better place. Your hosting of students, teaching English, your artistic endeavors, your garden and beloved dogs and cats all your way of trying to leave the world a little better place than it was. I didn't understand that at the time, I'm beginning to now.  In my 40's now, you start to leave the self-centered brat behind more and more.

In case you didn't know it, you have left a lasting mark in my life. I'll never forget two experiences you shared with my sister and I. An outdoor amphitheater opera concert in the Sangre De Cristo mountain range and Shakespeare in the Park in Santa Fe. I'd never experienced things like that before, and may never have, if not for you. To this day, I love opera and I'm fortunate to have the ability to hear it frequently on satellite radio. Very few written words thrill me more than Shakespeare's immortal poems, comedies and tragedies.

As I mentioned, I'm an aunt myself now and I feel that sense sometimes, as you must have done, of wanting to have an impact on the lives of my nieces and nephews. Trying to share wisdom, praying for them, sharing favorite books and philosophies, hoping that their eyes will be opened to all that life can be. Just as you must have found, it's difficult when there is so much distance between you, both physically and emotionally.

Sometimes I found it hard to relate to you, being that you were so accomplished, so crusading and pioneering. Magna Cum Laude graduate, WAC in WW II. My mom always described you 'as a force'. In the old home movies I've seen of you, you are magnetic, your looks and joie de vivre. I've struggled with joie de vivre myself, being introverted and shy. I've only recently begun to sort of claim for myself a feeling of beauty and independence. I like to think that some of it was passed on to me from you.

Politically, I don't know that we are all that similar, except to say that I am as passionate as you were in wanting the best for the country. Maybe we might go about it in different ways, but at the root of things, I don't think we would be all that dissimilar in our belief in the independent rights of man.

You were always distressed that I didn't read Louis L'Amour novels, and I'm sorry to say that I never really changed my opinions on that. I've always been somewhat of a deep romantic type. This is not to say there isn't romance in the Western cowboy that L'Amour wrote of, it's just that when I pined after a man on a horse, he was usually in a kilt, as the Laird of a clan or a English Dandy on a white horse with breeches and tri-corn hat.

I'm sorry we didn't talk more. In my only visit to Santa Fe, I remember it wasn't until the night before I was to leave, that we really 'talked' and I shared with you my thoughts, dreams and hopes for the future. We finally 'connected' that night. I think it's what the visit had been all about. Up until that point, I'd been struggling with the altitude, (living my whole life at sea level in Florida to suddenly be thrust into the mountains took some getting used to), homesickness and I guess I wasn't 'up' to trying to figure out what you were trying to 'say'. I wish I'd been able to see that visit with adult eyes, to really appreciate the majesty and wonder of the mountains, to get your joke about the Rio Grande not being so 'Grande', to understand what you saw in Navajo pottery and beading, why you wanted us to feel the plight of those living on the pueblos. I only saw the appalling poverty and felt the relentless heat of the sun. For a Floridian, the lack of humidity just felt 'wrong'. The lack of rain implausible. I'm sorry it took until now for me to 'get it'.

You might be glad to know that I've tried to pick up a bit with the ancestry digging. You have justifiable pride in the family. Some of them were quite remarkable. Through this, I begin to understand that I'm just a link in this chain that has gone on for so many decades.

So, in this posthumous thank you letter. I sincerely express my gratitude for all that you did and said with an eye toward building my character. I hope you'd be proud of the woman I am today. I've worked hard and striven for all that I have. I am strong and independent and maybe in my own way, "a force".

I miss you and your sister, Helen more than I can say. You presence in my life has never really disappeared though. It's there every time I look in the mirror, every time I recite the poem about the Goops, every book I read, and every time I strive in my own way to make the world a better place.

Your Great Niece,

Jill