An Open Letter to Santa Claus

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Holidailies had a prompt suggesting we each write a letter to Santa. I liked the notion.

* * *
Dear Santa,

Hi there, it’s me again. Yes, the hair’s a different color. Again. This really shouldn’t surprise you. I mean, no one – including me – has seen my natural hair color since I was fifteen.

I was on the phone with my mother the other night, and we were laughing about an attempt to make fortune cookies in high altitudes, from when I was seven. It’s weird the way memories surface at the oddest times, but our brains are like multi-dimensional treasure boxes that way. I don’t mind. I like surprises.

I was also thinking about all the times my mother did special things to foster my belief in you, and encourage me to expand my imagination, and enjoy childhood with all its magic and wonder – things I still appreciate today. She used to eat the carrot sticks I left out for your reindeer, and nibble the cookies, and drink the milk intended for you. One year, I woke up to find “hoofprints” in the snow outside my window, and another year a trail of red construction paper “footprints” led me from my bedroom to my over-stuffed stocking. We won’t even mention the year she stayed up to the wee hours finishing the entire wedding trousseau for Barbie, Chuck (Ken was so 1977), and all their friends – neighbors still remember the cursing that came from her lips as she worked with tiny darts. My mother was a pretty amazing elf, when you consider that she worked full time the entire time I was growing up.

When I got too old for footprints and plates of cookies, my mother still let her gentle mischief out to play. I turned 38 earlier this year, and I still receive gifts that are marked from “Santa,” and while mom and I both know that the handwriting on those tags matches her own, we play the game because it’s fun.

The point of all this, Santa, is that you and I have a very special relationship that goes all the way back to when my mother used to use Elmer’s glue and glitter to draw stars and candy canes on my packages. I may have stopped writing to you, but we have a connection, you and I, so when I give you my list this year, I know you’ll pay attention.

I could ask you for any number of things – subtract forty pounds, please, patch the dry wall in the hallway, make Fuzzy’s job less stressful, help my dog feel better, let me win the lottery (without having to play, of course, because those scratch-off things wreak havoc on my nails…) – but all of those are things for me, and at Christmas when we’re inundated with commercials for THINGS and STUFF, I believe it’s important to look outside ourselves.

So if you would wave your magic peppermint-stick wand and give the world the PEACE it needs, that would be a pretty nifty thing. Peace used to be a beautiful word – it meant serenity, but not complacence, and stillness, but not oppressive silence. Now? Now it’s something most people are afraid to ask for, afraid to want, unless they’re begging for it in the voice of a harried parent or caregiver who just wants “a little peace and quiet so I can hear myself think!”

Maybe we think Peace is bad for the economy, but look at the numbers, Santa: war certainly hasn’t helped us much. Maybe we’re afraid peace would mean bringing home soldiers and we equate that with putting them out of jobs. Santa, I’ve come to know a LOT of soldiers over the last three years – most of them relish peace as well. There are very few people who actually LIKE violence, hatred, and anger.

Speaking of anger…we all seem to be kind of bitchy and angry far too much of the time. This level of stress has become pervasive, Santa, and it’s not good. In times of economic disaster, we need to be calm, we need to be supportive, and we need to have hope. So, add HOPE to my list, please, because it never goes out of style.

Let’s throw in some TOLERANCE, as well, but only if it comes in one of those sets, like oil and vinegar for dipping bread into, with RESPECT as the other half. Tolerating beliefs that are different from yours is just the first step, you have to respect them as well. This doesn’t mean agreeing with other viewpoints, it just means accepting that there are other viewpoints that are as equally valid as your own.

I only have one more item on my list, this year, Santa: CONNECTION. We are all so wired into our smart phones and social media outlets that we’ve started interacting via sound bite. Such things are great for minor day-to-day interactions, but life doesn’t happen in neat increments of 140 characters, and despite our technological advances, we seem to be losing a lot of personal connection. When was the last time you wrote a letter, Santa, on actual paper? When was the last time you received one that wasn’t a bill or an advertisement? I’m a fan of Christmas cards, of course, but I’d much prefer it if each of us picked one day during the coming year to write a letter to a friend or relative. Not email. Not a fax. An actual letter. With, you know, postage. We need to stay connected to language as much as we need to connect to each other.

So, that’s my list, Santa: PEACE, HOPE, TOLERANCE, RESPECT, and CONNECTION. I could add LOVE, but I think if you have the other five elements, love follows on its own.

Thanks so much for your time, Santa. Give my love to Ms. Claus, and scratch Blitzen behind his antlers for me – you know how he likes it.
Best regards,
~Miss Meliss

P.S. I bet you’re totally wishing I’d asked for something simple. Like a pony.

Small Things

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it’s even more fitting, as we enter this month that is packed full of holidays (Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Solstice, etc.), that we remember that sometimes the best gift we can give is something small – greeting card to a solider serving overseas, the offer of a home-cooked meal to someone who doesn’t have local family, the seventeen gazillion (or three) bags of bottles, cans, and other recyclables that will grace the curb strip in front of my house on Thursday morning…which may seem ordinary to those of you in California, but here in Texas recycling isn’t mandatory.

Box of Me

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Some men’s memory is like a box where a man should mingle his jewels with his old shoes.
~George Savile

Louisa May Alcott wrote, in Jo March’s voice, of the treasure boxes Jo and her sisters kept in the attic. Part real, and part metaphor, these collected the essence of each of the four “Little Women.”

“Jo” on the next lid, scratched and worn,
And within a motley store
Of headless, dolls, of schoolbooks torn,
Birds and beasts that speak no more,
Spoils brought home from the fairy ground
Only trod by youthful feet,
Dreams of a future never found,
Memories of a past still sweet,
Half-writ poems, stories wild,
April letters, warm and cold,
Diaries of a wilful child,
Hints of a woman early old,
A woman in a lonely home,
Hearing, like a sad refrain—
“Be worthy, love, and love will come,”
In the falling summer rain.
– Louisa May Alcott

For Café Writing this month, we are asked to list seven things that would be in our own treasure boxes.

The lid of my keepsake box bears no name; the box itself is made of dark walnut and is very simple. It was hand-made just for me, by my mother’s only brother. At some point over the years, the back piece, which was merely decorative, was lost. Originally a place to store toys, it now sits at the foot of my bed. What does it hold? Here’s a list of what may or may not be inside.

  • Zorro’s paw prints, invisible to most, indelible to me, for he uses this box as his step onto our bed, and sometimes curls up on the blanket draped across it.
  • Letters my grandfather wrote to me during my childhood, painstakingly printed for the eyes of a young girl who had not yet learned to parse cursive writing.
  • Barbie and Chuck (not Ken) and their wedding party, all in couture from my mother’s sewing machine. If you listen carefully, you can hear the echo of her voice cursing the teeny, tiny darts she had to make.
  • Spiral notebooks full of old stories and bad poems, some going back to 1975, which is when I really began writing. (I was five). Some are covered in doodles, some are not.
  • Ballet slippers and tap shoes, all sized for tiny feet, from when I took such lessons. Old leotards, worn tights, and an ice skating costume I inherited from a cousin and wore in a performance of Really Rosie when I was seven.
  • A red binder full of old MUSH code, including the first dragon I ever Impressed in an online game, and the first song Fuzzy ever typed to me, as well as printouts of email from before we were married.
  • Fishing poles and beach hats, from summers spent at the Jersey shore with my grandparents. Old reels, and a favorite beach towel, faded beyond recognition but still scented with sand, surf and Sea & Ski.
  • Suzuki books and crumbled rosin cakes, and the programs from various honor orchestras I was in throughout the years. A t-shirt from the National Cello Institute, ca. 1986.
  • Powder puffs with traces of scented bath powder still clinging to the fibers, and empty lip gloss tins like the ones currently being sold by TINte. (I liked Root Beer best.)
  • Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, which were always fun to read. The copies from the school library pre-dated the whole “update for a modern audience” trend, but somehow they never seemed horribly dated.
  • Leather pony-tail wraps, and beaded pony-tail holders, from when I wore my hair in tails or braids every day, some with smiley faces instead of beads.
  • Records and tapes ranging from vintage Shaun Cassidy (yes, really, Shaun – and my mother never knew I had that one), to the movie soundtrack of Grease on vinyl (I’ve got it on disc now), to Billy Joel, Erasure, and Voice of the Beehive, this last which was the official soundtrack of the Thursday Nights at Mel’s Diner Ms. Pac-Man Tournaments in 1988 & 89.
  • Vials of sand from Sandy Hook, NJ, Martin’s Beach, CA, and the black sand beach in Baja Sur where we had a very windblown picnic with my parents several Christmases ago, plane tickets from a 2002 trip to France (we both got the flu, but we didn’t care because we were puking in French toilets), and old maps of SFO’s MUNI and the NY subway system.

Written for Café Writing’s November/December Project: Option 6, Seven Things, and also for Thursday Thirteen. Yes, I know, 13 is more than 7. This isn’t a math quiz.

A Friendly Reminder

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If you’re one of the five people in the United States who isn’t aware today is election day, this is your reminder to go vote. If you are aware, go vote, too.

I don’t care who your candidate is, or what your beliefs are – and I’d prefer that you don’t tell me unless I ask you directly.

I do care that you exercise your voice by going to the polls, if you haven’t already participated in early voting, or mailed in an absentee ballot. Voting isn’t just a right, it’s a responsibility, an obligation, and while it does NOT give you any special tangible treats (except for a free cup of coffee at Starbucks, this morning), it does give you license to bitch later.

Have a lovely Tuesday.

The Day After

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There were no orange cupcakes this year, though my friend Jennifer did call while eating one. There was chili and monopoly and about a billion trick-or-treaters.

Seriously, we gave out about $100 in chocolate.

Best costume: girl and her dog dressed as matching ladybugs.

— Post From My iPhone

Thematic Photographic: Night

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Ring Around the Moon
Click to enbiggen

Carmi says that the theme for this week’s Thematic Photographic is “Night,” so I’m offering this picture of the moon taken from my back yard near Dallas just as Hurricane Ike was ripping Galveston apart, and just before I fished the frog out of the pool.

Fuzzy had the good camera in Hong Kong, so it’s not great, but there really was a ring ’round the moon, and I swear it’s not a picture of a flashlight beam.

WordSmithing

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I like folk music.

Partly, this is because I grew up with parents who were activists, and partly it’s because I love stories, and storytelling is a key element of all music, but especially folk music.

Every month, the local UU church hosts a coffeehouse evening – there are homemade baked goods and fair trade coffee, and folk singers are hired to come in and sing. Despite the fact that I felt like crap last night, and much of today, I knew the music and company would make me feel better. So we went.

The opening singer was a man named Bill Nash, who began his set with an instrumental piece. He wore a baseball cap, and a rainbow tie-dyed shirt, and used several capos to compensate for a left hand weakened from MS, but his songs were full of amazing imagery and wonderful internal rhyme.

The headliner was Kathy Moser, who has close connections with the UUs in general, and this UU fellowship in particular. Her songs, and the patter between them were full of the sort of observations and wry wit that, as a writer, I really appreciate.

Both singers shared a common background element: participation in the Rocky Mountain Song School, where one of the exercises involves each group being paired off. You and your partner each tell each other a story, and then you write the song of the story you heard. Even without the addition of music to such a project, it intrigues me, and I think there’s a way to turn it into a regular writing exercise.

Kathy Moser will be attending services at the church tomorrow, and singing, and she’s agreed to an interview about her next album for ATG, and about her life philosophy. Her goal is to make production of her next album not merely carbon neutral, but “oxygen positive.”

I like folk music, because of the storytelling as well as the music.
I like folk singers because they are wordsmiths.

We Are NOT A-Mused.

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My muse has gone missing. I can’t find the voice for anything I want to write. My novel won’t talk to me, my blog is taunting me rather than being an outlet, and in recent days I’ve taken to spending huge chunks of time doing anything but being near the computer.

Yesterday, for example, I:
– re-arranged the linen closet
– took care of all the garbage, which is usually Fuzzy’s job
– cleaned the kitchen, a lot
– cooked rice to mix with the leftover stir fry for lunch
– baked chicken and rice for dinner, after chopping lots of veggies to roast with the chicken

And today, I:
– woke up before seven, despite not going to bed until nearly two
– made a pot of coffee, and drank it all before noon (well, only three mugs full)
– baked banana bread
– cleaned my downstairs desk
– cleaned my upstairs desk
– filed a ton of old financial documents
– rearranged my file drawer

Do you see any writing in there? No, I don’t either.

I have been in a reading mood – in the last week or so I’ve read the first two Sookie Stackhouse novels, and the first one and a half coffee house mysteries taking place at the fictional Village Blend in New York.

And tonight? I’m watching some show on PBS called “THE MOON” that KERA’s website claims is from 2007, but no one seems to have any information about, and it’s driving me crazy because the narrator has a soft, gravelly, British voice I could listen to forever, and he sounds SO familiar, and I can’t figure out who it is.

When it’s over, I think I will go take a bath, and see if being immersed in lovely warm, sudsy water recalls my muse.

And if that doesn’t work? Well, there’s some lovely chilled chardonnay in the fridge.

Chilly

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My twitter feed is full of friends and acquaintances remarking upon the chill in the air this morning. I woke to a weather alert from the desktop client from Weather.com, warning me that severe weather was possible. This being Texas, “severe” means “there might be frost.” While the part of me that is happiest in cities finds this ridiculous – frost is hardly severe – I have to remind myself that much of the country is still involved in agriculture and such, in which case frost can be an issue…though, honestly, it’s nearly Halloween. If the upper midwest hasn’t had snow yet, they’re all wagering on when the first flakes will fall.

And yet, waking up to a 45-degree chill is sort of bracing. It’s cold enough to justify turning on the heat, but I find myself unwilling to do that. While we do have central air and central heat, air conditioning cools but does not refresh, and right now, after a couple of days of wide open windows, the house feels breezy and light, and not stuffy, and I don’t want to click the heat on and ruin that.

Besides, it’s not 45 degrees IN the house.

I had planned to sleep late today and then work on my own writing, since I’ve got nothing due until tomorrow, but even though I went to bed around two, and took melatonin, I was up slightly before seven. Even the dogs were restless, asking to go out, and then standing there on the deck doing nothing.

I poured a glass of cranberry juice and came back to bed, and now that I’ve written this entry, I think I might follow their lead and curl up for another hour or two.