The Further Adventures of mmm

Trip journal, musings, updates on my life

Friday, December 31, 2010


Here it is, the week after Christmas, and I'm sitting in my cozy little condo in Sacramento. A fire is burning in the fireplace, the Christmas tree is decorated and lit up, stockings are hanging from the mantle, and the place is littered with Christmas tchotchkes collected over the years. I'm taking a break from an almost endless stream of Christmas music (I have more than 100 Christmas CDs that I need to fit in between Thanksgiving and January 6) and am about to play the DVD I just found of the Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol. I've always thought it was the best of all movie versions, but I have to confess that A Muppet Christmas Carol either ties for first place or is a close second. Kermit as Bob Cratchit and Miss Piggy as Mrs. Cratchit? Too wonderful for words.

The last year has had some joys and some sorrows. I moved to Sacramento and immediately plugged into a life filled with family, adopted family, and old friends. I'm very happy to be back in Sacramento, a town I lived in in the 70s while I was going to school. I rented a really sweet condo that looks out on a duck pond and has a huge maple tree shading my patio. My neighbors are friendly, and I'm centrally located. Sacramento has an exciting restaurant scene these days, especially downtown. Downtown is also a great resource of live music, theater, and art, and I'm only minutes away from all of this. I'm a couple of hours away from San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Napa/Sonoma, and the Monterey Peninsula. The Sacramento Airport can get me just about any place I need to fly, even if connections are sometimes involved. Despite its rising cosmopolitan cachet, Sacramento still has the casual friendliness of a small town.

One of the best things about being here is not having to drive five hours to attend the (almost) monthly Street family birthday parties. The Streets are what I call my "family of choice." Patty Street Smith has been my dear friend since 1977 or so, and we were roommates for a while when I was attending UC Davis. Her family adopted me, and I have spent many holidays over the years with this lively, loud, and lovable group.

Last year, the Streets lost Bob, Patty's oldest son, who was like a brother to me. Bob had survived a heart transplant a few years back but finally lost the battle to failed kidneys. Bob was wise and heroic and one of the funniest people I have ever known. His wit was wicked sharp, and no one was safe from it. Being teased by Bob was usually a sign that you'd moved into his inner circle, unless you were a complete asshole, in which case he just let it rip. About six months after Bob passed, Bob's brother Rick died of cancer. Bob was my age, and Rick was only a few years younger. Way too young for either of them to go.

A few weeks ago, Patty's husband, Lou, died, also of cancer, at 86. While Lou had had a long and interesting life, it's still hard to lose him, especially for Patty, who has already suffered such devastating losses recently.

Lou was a wonderful guy, a retired Air Force Colonel and an old-school gentleman. He treated Patty like a queen, and because I was a part of Patty's inner circle, I got the royal treatment too. Lou was the kind of person who, upon learning that you liked something, would always try to provide it for you. One time I remarked on how nice the Raymond Chardonnay was that he served me. From then on, whenever I visited, he would make sure he had Raymond Chardonnay. Same with my fondness for Lemon Grass, a wonderful Vietnamese restaurant in Sacramento—every time I came to town, he would make sure we worked in a trip to Lemon Grass. And he never, ever let me pay for a darn thing. Lou insisted on picking up the tab, and that was that.

Why all this talk about loss when we're all supposed to be jolly and joyously celebrating Christmas and the new year? Well, I need to remember the people I've lost, but I also want to celebrate the role they've played in my life. My mother died a year and a half ago, and I still miss her very much, but the grief at losing her has, over time, made room for a lot more happy memories of what she was like and how she influenced me.

Mom was Christmas personified. She loved this time of year! For her, every day of advent was about happy anticipation, as if the excitement of Christmas Eve was spread out across four weeks, knowing the payoff was going to be joyous beyond words.

Tonight I was wearing a necklace of Christmas bulbs that my mother used to wear. I'm not talking high-end jewelry here. Mom wore fun costume jewelry to celebrate the season, along with festive socks. When they first started requiring passengers to remove their shoes for airport security, Mom wasn't inconvenienced; she was pleased for the chance to show off her seasonal footwear whenever she flew over the holidays. The necklace is made of green string with little plastic colored bulbs on it. You can even see the knot where it's been tied. Nonetheless, the necklace is a precious heirloom that reminds me of what a kick in the pants my mom was, not the least bit afraid to be silly and have fun. That part of her character caused me much embarrassment when I was a kid, but as an adult I learned to value it as good parental behavior modeling.

Before this turns into the saddest seasonal greeting ever, let me say this: As I face the new year, I'm taking a page from my mother's book and trying to focus on the things in my life that make me smile, sustain me, make getting up in the morning (well, OK, the afternoon) easier and staying up for rest of the day well worth it, those things my mother would call blessings. Here are just a few.

I feel lucky to be an animal lover because having pets gives me such enormous pleasure. My cats, Shiloh, Mason, and Truman, make me laugh unexpectedly, keep me cozy as I sleep, and, despite their being cats, make me feel very loved and important. I have moved into an animal paradise, a condo development that is extremely pet friendly, so every time I walk out my door, there are cats and dogs to say hello to, which helps curb my desire to increase my own menagerie (that and the friends who are ready to do an intervention if I even think of getting another animal).

While I don't have children of my own (no regrets on that one), I have the best nieces, nephews, great-nieces, and great-nephews imaginable. I don't get to see them very often, but when I do, they always make me feel special. Nothing can beat that feeling of having their eyes light up when they see me. I wish I could bottle it. They are all beautiful, talented, and smart, of course, but what I treasure the most is how each one has evolved and is evolving into such an interesting and enjoyable person. It's particularly delightful to see my nieces and nephews navigate the tricky waters of parenthood. They have wonderful partners/spouses, and they all work very hard at being such great parents. It's just beautiful to see.

I have fantastic friends. No doubt about it, despite my moving all over the place and being somewhat careless at times about staying in touch, I have accumulated some awesome and mighty friendships. These are the people who know and love me for who I am and accept my quirks, laugh at my craziness, and want to hear all about my latest adventures. It makes me feel like the "richest [woman] in town," just like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. These are the people I care about, whose every success makes me want to dance and whose every trouble makes me want to hold them until it's "all better." I value my most recent friendships because I know that some day they'll grow into the priceless relationships I have with the people I have known for twenty, thirty, and forty-plus years. I'm especially grateful to have reconnected recently with friends I had lost contact with over the years. God bless Google and Facebook!

I love my brothers. I have three of them, and they are all smart, funny, impossible, stubborn, and loving. Their lives are truly interesting because they've "made something of themselves." I don't mean they've accumulated riches. (Why not, guys? Would it have hurt to become just a bit wealthy, you know, the kind of wealth that makes you want to send your sister on an exotic all-expenses-paid trip to Bora Bora or something?) Instead, they've used their talents to make a difference in other people's lives, and I admire them for it. They have also married wonderful women who are like sisters to me and have raised amazing children (see above).

I get to write for a living. It's not always what I want to write, but I've wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl, and now I am one. I would love to spend more time writing my own stuff, and maybe this is the year that I really do that instead of just talking about it. In the meantime, I'm grateful for the projects like the one I've been on this year, in which I get to use a fair amount of creativity and draw on years of working on educational materials. Plus I get to work in my slippers! Not bad.

Traveling is certainly one of my great loves, although I'm coming to loathe flying more and more. I'm not a fearful flyer, just a grouchy one. By the time I've schlepped my luggage into the terminal, past security, and down to the gate (why is it always the one farthest away?), I'm crabby. Once I'm airborne, and someone leans his seat back, making it almost impossible to use the tray table for eating or computing, I'm a full-blown grouch. Still, how awesome is it to be able to travel halfway around the world in half a day? My trip last spring to China was one of the most memorable travel experiences I've ever had. It made me hungry for more travel to places in the world that are still unknown to me.

Life is full of possibilities. I can't begin to explore them all, but I certainly plan on looking into as many as I can. In the meantime, here are my wishes for you all:

May you treasure the family and friends in your life, and may they treasure you. Spend time together. Listen to each other. If you're mad at them, forgive them, even if you're right. Tell them how wonderful they are. Life is short, and there's no substitute the people who know you best and still love you.

May you spend your time doing work you love, where you are valued for your talents, not criticized for your shortcomings. Remember, though, that your job does not define you. The people in your life are what make it worth living, so don't let your job suck the soul out of you. Unless you are literally saving lives on the job, the crises can usually wait. If you are literally saving lives on the job, God bless you, and I hope you figure out a way to have some balance in your life.

Happy holidays to one and all! If you are reading this, you are special to me, and I wish you a happy and healthy new year.

Love,
mmm

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