Lying Fallow

Call me old-fashioned if you will, but I prefer to exclude violence, mayhem and murder from my personal holiday traditions. Granted, there was that memorable exchange over a lavender cashmere sweater at Von Maur’s department store in Kansas City, and a sudden, stubborn insistence on my first and only trip to Bloomingdale’s that I did so have it first, but nothing in my life compares to the headlines emerging from the beginning of this holiday season.

“Woman Pepper Sprays Shoppers to Gain Advantage” in her quest for a discounted Xbox, reads one report.  “North Carolina Police Use Pepper Spray to Calm Black Friday Crowd”, reads another.  There was looting reported in New York, and a beating near Phoenix. Shootings in San Leandro, California and Fayetteville, North Carolina competed for ink with a stabbing in Sacramento. Instances of opportunistic petty thievery among midnight shoppers walking to their cars were too widespread and frequent even to detail.

“The difference this year is that instead of a nice sweater you need a bullet-proof vest and goggles,” said Betty Thomas, 52, shopping with her sisters and a niece at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, N.C. She did go on to suggest that the sale prices on merchandise had been over-hyped, and the shopping wasn’t as good as she’d hoped. “If I’m going to get shot,” said Thomas, “at least let me get a good deal.”

Waiting for Santa Cat…

Laugh at the antlers if you will, but laugh at your peril.  That business-like look in the eyes of my beautiful calico is very real. Her name is Dixie Rose  (short for Dixie-Rose-Center-of-the-Universe-and-Queen-of-all-She-Surveys), She loves Christmas, and she intends to be ready when it arrives. Do not stand in her way.

Dixie came into my life as an unloved, four-month-old stray, and quickly became my first real pet. In childhood, I received a small painted turtle which met a most unfortunate end and a small black birthday puppy, but the pup lasted only hours.  Tiny but exceedingly enthusiastic, he terrified me and was sent packing. Later, I raised a fox squirrel and laughed my way through four years with a prairie dog, but my relationship with Dixie Rose is of a different order entirely. Like a favored first child or grandchild, I believe her to be the most beautiful and most clever creature on four paws. I don’t think she’s the most spoiled creature in the world, but we’re working on it – diligently.

A Season of Singing Hearts

Thirty-three years after I stood transfixed before a photograph of Russian tanks moving into the streets of Budapest, quelling the popular uprising there with determined brutality, true revolution and an overthrow of communist government came to Czechoslovakia.

British historian and political writer  Timothy Garton Ash, noting the series of revolutions cascading through Eastern Europe in 1989,  reminds us that “in Poland the transition [from communism to democracy] lasted ten years, in Hungary ten months, and in Czechoslovakia ten days”. Those ten event-filled days between November 17th and 27th, known to Czechs as the “Velvet Revolution” and to Slovaks as the ”Gentle Revolution”, were in fact a remarkable, non-violent resistance whose effects reverberated throughout the world and still are celebrated today.

The Advent of Wisdom

The key sits loosely in its lock, unturned, unnecessary.  In a neighborhood where children drift from one house to the next with the freedom of wind-tossed leaves and women freely borrow milk or sugar from unattended kitchens, no one locks a closet.

In this neighborhood, closets hold no treasure – no jewels, no gold, no banded stacks of bills.  They overflow with life’s necessities: shoes tidied into original boxes, purses and shirts, a wardrobe of ties. Now and then, two closets nestle side by side. Hers is obvious, all ajumble with boxes of quilting scraps, extra pillows, photographs and report cards. His, more intentional, arranged with more precision, is a purposeful array of hunting vests, stamp paraphernalia, drafting tools and gun cases. It’s a perfect marriage of closets.

Dimly lit and cave-like, the closets are mysterious, compelling and sancrosanct.  Few children dare enter them without permission, but in these weeks before Christmas a child might be tempted to cross the bounds of caution by the merest whisper of possibility: “There might be presents…”  

It’s a special kind of hide-and-seek, this business of children seeking out what parents have hidden  -  under the bed, in the basement, on those out-of-the-way shelves behind the washer.  And always, the list of potential gift caches is crowned by the best hiding-place of all -  a parent’s bedroom closet.

This Most Modest of Seasons

Christmas comes differently to the country.

Threaded around and through twin pieces of rusted rebar that serve as mailbox supports, the shabbiness of the plastic pine garland is apparent only to the mail carrier, or to the woman who trudges in slippers up the lane from her house, hoping against hope to find greetings in her box.  From the road the garland appears perfect, full and fresh.  From a distance, even plastic communicates the woman’s message: in this house, we celebrate. We mark the season. We share our joy with you, the passer-by.

Farther down the road,  a wreath made of vines adorns a gate closed across a cattle guard.  Its ribbon flutters in the wind, attracting attention, drawing the eye through the gate and into a pasture.  There’s a brush pile and some uncleared mesquite. A few trees, pushed over and left to die, wait to be added to the pile.  Despite the cattle guard, no livestock roam. There’s no stock tank, no house or pond - not even a pile of rusted, broken-down machinery.  Only a despondent wind sighs through the fence and across the field.