The week before Christmas I was struck with a deadly attack of needing to play a piano. I took lessons from the age of nine to nineteen, and after quitting lessons (due to the demands of schoolwork) my daily practice ground to an eventual halt with my move last year to piano-less South Bend. (Not that there are no pianos in South Bend, but there were none to which I had access, having had to leave my own upright at home for lack of storage space and the inallowability of playing it in an apartment complex.)
So just before Christmas, when job stress became unbearable and sleep came with a fight, I felt the muscles in my arms and torso and hands and fingers aching to pour their energy into cool smooth keys. My body longed to engage in music. So I took the piano books I'd brought from home, just in case, and after work one day slipped up to the Community Room on the third floor, a vast open room which when not in use lies empty and boasts a piano. I dragged up a chair, opened a Grieg sonata, and attempted for the first time in more than a year to play something besides the simple melody I'd written in high school.
It was, of course, a disaster. Like trying to dredge your memory for fragments of a forgotten language when suddenly faced with a native Spanish-speaker in a half-emergency situation. Music I had once nearly memorized (or, in the case of Debussy, had completely memorized so that even when I couldn't find my place on the page my body remembered to play) I had to sight read. I picked over the songs for half an hour in frustration, then finally hit some sort of stride and ended in a decent tone. Roger the maintenance man came upon me playing, encouraged me, then sensitively left me alone to my struggles. I left slightly disheartened but resolved to continue relearning to ride the bicycle, as it were.
Then tonight I sat down to play my own piano, the piano that knew my fingers and my feet on the pedals from the time I was a child. It went almost like a dream. There were still rough spots that I had to stop and squint at, but the difference playing my own piano was astonishing. And when I played "Claire de Lune," my favorite piece, it was how I imagine old lovers who parted under necessary circumstances coming back together...cautiously, a little warily, with a longing and a touch of sweetness and remembered love. There were spaces where I'd never really gotten it right and had to work over with careful attention, and other places where the music and I had meshed so completely that I couldn't ever forget it. Overall it was a little clumsy, a little halting here and there, but still beautiful.
And complementarily enough, my sister's half-grown cat fell asleep next to the piano, listening.
It's been long enough that I've gone without music. I can't afford more lessons, but I can practice what I once learned. It'll have to be in the Community Room until I get my first house and can transport my childhood piano out to South Bend.
I have missed music.
Friday, December 30, 2005
Thursday, December 29, 2005
the necessity of poetry
You can see what I've indulged in from my Borders gift card: the complete (well, it says "complete" but we all know it isn't) poems of James Wright, and A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far by Adrienne Rich.
I like James Wright because he could be categorized as "confessional" (a term which I despise anyway, misapplied as it is to woman poets honest about their lives and their worlds and the world, making it sound as if they had something to be ashamed of, telling their lives in strands of burning words, holding language accountable for its glossed persecution of the experience of women rendered to silence) -- Wright writes with a tenderness and self-awareness and sensitivity that I appreciate. He has a good strong use of metaphor and a consciousness of the natural world that, very simply, work. An emptiness comes through in his poetry that is at times almost Japanese. So I like him.
Adrienne Rich I love. More than any other poet, she inspires me to write.
So I'm sitting in a quiet house for once -- my parents gone (to work? on errands? they left no note), my sister sleeping, the menagerie of animals for once at peace. It's nice, to be alone and quiet in the house. I'm used to living alone, I'm accustomed to cherishing my space, to waking up and breathing and knowing that mine is the only breath in the rooms that are my own. Living alone is a sort of wild dream, something I can't always believe, that makes me glow with happiness.
It has its funny aspects. I've largely stopped reacting at all when I drop something or hurt myself through moments of uncoordinated stupidity. The other week I spent a few minutes putting a huge stack of CDs back into their enormous CD carrier, then when I went to stand up to put it away the carrier ricocheted off my knees and bounced into my face and cut my lip. I put the carrier down, reached for a tissue, and pressed it to the cut until the bleeding had mostly stopped. Then I put the carrier away. Throughout the whole incident I didn't make a sound. Why would I? There was no one to hear.
Then last week I was cleaning up the kitchen and set a clean glass on the edge of the counter and turned toward the living room to fetch a tissue because I felt a sneeze coming on. In the process of turning I bumped the glass and heard it drop to the floor behind me and shatter. I turned around, looked at the mess, then went to get the tissue. After mopping up my nose, I returned to the kitchen and got out the broom and swept up the shards of glass lying all over the floor. No swearing. No anger. No reaction even. Something that once was highly unusual and is becoming more of a norm.
Maybe it will change when I get a cat. Part of the lack of reaction, as I mentioned, is the lack of audience. It seems far more functional just to clean up the mess than to get mad about it. But then all the reactions I don't indulge get packed in somewhere inside me and periodically I have a sort of insane meltdown to let it all out (and those are times when I'm glad there is no audience). But all of it takes place in the emptiness of my own rooms and although it would sometimes be nice to have someone there to say, "Sarah. It's no big deal. Calm down," or to laugh at the humor of the situation, or to put a pair of reassuring arms around me and let me fall apart if I want, there's a joy in taking responsibility for my actions, all of them, and a joy in knowing that I can live on no one's initiative but my own.
This does not excuse me from a need for community. One of my New Year's resolutions is to attend church three Sundays of every month, to build community. And I'm starting to build community at work. Man is a social being, and I can't deny my place in society among other human beings. But it is wonderful, so deliciously wonderful, to have my own tower to retreat to. Mike at work says that being an extrovert or introvert has nothing to do with being outgoing or shy and everything to do with what energizes you: people or solitude. So while I'm outgoing and engaging and love being around people, I am energized by solitude. I need to back out of society quite often, actually, to recharge my batteries and reorient myself to life.
So living alone is perfect for what I need, and emerging from my tower is necessary as well.
And so is reading poetry.
I like James Wright because he could be categorized as "confessional" (a term which I despise anyway, misapplied as it is to woman poets honest about their lives and their worlds and the world, making it sound as if they had something to be ashamed of, telling their lives in strands of burning words, holding language accountable for its glossed persecution of the experience of women rendered to silence) -- Wright writes with a tenderness and self-awareness and sensitivity that I appreciate. He has a good strong use of metaphor and a consciousness of the natural world that, very simply, work. An emptiness comes through in his poetry that is at times almost Japanese. So I like him.
Adrienne Rich I love. More than any other poet, she inspires me to write.
So I'm sitting in a quiet house for once -- my parents gone (to work? on errands? they left no note), my sister sleeping, the menagerie of animals for once at peace. It's nice, to be alone and quiet in the house. I'm used to living alone, I'm accustomed to cherishing my space, to waking up and breathing and knowing that mine is the only breath in the rooms that are my own. Living alone is a sort of wild dream, something I can't always believe, that makes me glow with happiness.
It has its funny aspects. I've largely stopped reacting at all when I drop something or hurt myself through moments of uncoordinated stupidity. The other week I spent a few minutes putting a huge stack of CDs back into their enormous CD carrier, then when I went to stand up to put it away the carrier ricocheted off my knees and bounced into my face and cut my lip. I put the carrier down, reached for a tissue, and pressed it to the cut until the bleeding had mostly stopped. Then I put the carrier away. Throughout the whole incident I didn't make a sound. Why would I? There was no one to hear.
Then last week I was cleaning up the kitchen and set a clean glass on the edge of the counter and turned toward the living room to fetch a tissue because I felt a sneeze coming on. In the process of turning I bumped the glass and heard it drop to the floor behind me and shatter. I turned around, looked at the mess, then went to get the tissue. After mopping up my nose, I returned to the kitchen and got out the broom and swept up the shards of glass lying all over the floor. No swearing. No anger. No reaction even. Something that once was highly unusual and is becoming more of a norm.
Maybe it will change when I get a cat. Part of the lack of reaction, as I mentioned, is the lack of audience. It seems far more functional just to clean up the mess than to get mad about it. But then all the reactions I don't indulge get packed in somewhere inside me and periodically I have a sort of insane meltdown to let it all out (and those are times when I'm glad there is no audience). But all of it takes place in the emptiness of my own rooms and although it would sometimes be nice to have someone there to say, "Sarah. It's no big deal. Calm down," or to laugh at the humor of the situation, or to put a pair of reassuring arms around me and let me fall apart if I want, there's a joy in taking responsibility for my actions, all of them, and a joy in knowing that I can live on no one's initiative but my own.
This does not excuse me from a need for community. One of my New Year's resolutions is to attend church three Sundays of every month, to build community. And I'm starting to build community at work. Man is a social being, and I can't deny my place in society among other human beings. But it is wonderful, so deliciously wonderful, to have my own tower to retreat to. Mike at work says that being an extrovert or introvert has nothing to do with being outgoing or shy and everything to do with what energizes you: people or solitude. So while I'm outgoing and engaging and love being around people, I am energized by solitude. I need to back out of society quite often, actually, to recharge my batteries and reorient myself to life.
So living alone is perfect for what I need, and emerging from my tower is necessary as well.
And so is reading poetry.
Integrity
the quality or state of being complete; unbroken condition; entirety --Webster
A wild patience has taken me this far
as if I had to bring to shore
a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor
old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books
tossed in the prow
some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades.
Splashing the oarlocks. Burning through.
Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain
in a sun blotted like unspoken anger
behind a casual mist.
This length of daylight
this far north, in this
forty-ninth year of my life
is critical.
The light is critical: of me, of this
long-dreamed, involuntary landing
on the arm of an inland sea.
The glitter of the shoal
depleting into shadow
I recognize: the stand of pines
violet-black really, green in the old postcard
but really I have nothing but myself
to go by; nothing
stands in the realm of pure necessity
except what my hands can hold.
Nothing but myself?...My selves.
After so long, this answer.
As if I had always known
I steer the boat in, simply.
The motor dying on the pebbles
cicadas taking up the hum
dropped in the silence.
Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere--
even from a broken web.
The cabin in the stand of pines
is still for sale. I know this. Know the print
of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked that door,
then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis
back on the trellis
for no one's sake except its own.
I know the chart nailed to the wallboards
the icy kettle squatting on the burner.
The hands that hammered in those nails
emptied that kettle one last time
are these two hands
and they have caught the baby leaping
from between trembling legs
and they have worked the vacuum aspirator
and stroked the sweated temples
and steered the boat here through this hot
misblotted sunlight, critical light
imperceptibly scalding
the skin these hands will also salve.
~Adrienne Rich, 1978
A wild patience has taken me this far
as if I had to bring to shore
a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor
old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books
tossed in the prow
some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades.
Splashing the oarlocks. Burning through.
Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain
in a sun blotted like unspoken anger
behind a casual mist.
This length of daylight
this far north, in this
forty-ninth year of my life
is critical.
The light is critical: of me, of this
long-dreamed, involuntary landing
on the arm of an inland sea.
The glitter of the shoal
depleting into shadow
I recognize: the stand of pines
violet-black really, green in the old postcard
but really I have nothing but myself
to go by; nothing
stands in the realm of pure necessity
except what my hands can hold.
Nothing but myself?...My selves.
After so long, this answer.
As if I had always known
I steer the boat in, simply.
The motor dying on the pebbles
cicadas taking up the hum
dropped in the silence.
Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere--
even from a broken web.
The cabin in the stand of pines
is still for sale. I know this. Know the print
of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked that door,
then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis
back on the trellis
for no one's sake except its own.
I know the chart nailed to the wallboards
the icy kettle squatting on the burner.
The hands that hammered in those nails
emptied that kettle one last time
are these two hands
and they have caught the baby leaping
from between trembling legs
and they have worked the vacuum aspirator
and stroked the sweated temples
and steered the boat here through this hot
misblotted sunlight, critical light
imperceptibly scalding
the skin these hands will also salve.
~Adrienne Rich, 1978
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Trying to Pray
This time, I have left my body behind me, crying
In its dark thorns.
Still,
There are good things in this world.
It is dusk.
It is the good darkness
Of women's hands that touch loaves.
The spirit of a tree begins to move.
I touch leaves.
I close my eyes, and think of water.
~James Wright
In its dark thorns.
Still,
There are good things in this world.
It is dusk.
It is the good darkness
Of women's hands that touch loaves.
The spirit of a tree begins to move.
I touch leaves.
I close my eyes, and think of water.
~James Wright
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
post-Christmas craziness
I love Christmas. While it didn't feel quite fair to have Christmas on a Sunday, we more than made do (Mom and Dad went to church while I shamelessly stayed home with Laura and Keith to catch a late-morning nap -- very necessary to make up for the two and a half hours of sleep caught the night before due to present-wrapping and early rising to look at the tree). I asked for a number of intensely practical things that I never feel justified in putting into my budget -- new towels, cloth showercurtains, a Swiffer duster -- and I got them all, plus some (a new phone with a working answering machine! and a nice 3-qt saucepan, and jersey knit sheets, mmmmm). Laura gave me a GORGEOUS coat from her place of employ, Banana Republic, Keith gave me a scrumptious gift card to Borders (which I am going to spend today, the hole has burned through my pocket and into my skin), and Boss Meg gave me a FABULOUS monthly/weekly planner which will be absolutely indispensible as I move on to my new job.
I visited with church people and friends yesterday, and today am spending time with my beloved Eigh Ann after my post-Christmas shopping spree. Among the things I need (aside from the eight or so books that I do not yet own, imagine!) are gloves and a scarf to match the new coat, and new jeans.
It's so nice to be at home, taking a break from work. Since Christmas and New Year's fall on a Sunday, we get to take two weekdays off of our choice, and I took in addition three personal days (personal days! how adult! how career-oriented!) so that I get the whole week to myself to spend on my native soil with friends and family. So so good.
Even though I'm having dreams about cute guys who select other girls over me. Meh.
Oo but yesterday I saw a preview for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and those views of Johnny Depp more than sustained me.
I visited with church people and friends yesterday, and today am spending time with my beloved Eigh Ann after my post-Christmas shopping spree. Among the things I need (aside from the eight or so books that I do not yet own, imagine!) are gloves and a scarf to match the new coat, and new jeans.
It's so nice to be at home, taking a break from work. Since Christmas and New Year's fall on a Sunday, we get to take two weekdays off of our choice, and I took in addition three personal days (personal days! how adult! how career-oriented!) so that I get the whole week to myself to spend on my native soil with friends and family. So so good.
Even though I'm having dreams about cute guys who select other girls over me. Meh.
Oo but yesterday I saw a preview for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and those views of Johnny Depp more than sustained me.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
who's surprised?
| Your Reputation Is: Maneater |
 |
Saturday, December 17, 2005
nevertheless, hello
Holy smokies, it's been awhile since I've updated.
The reason for this is simple: My life has been turned into some ghastly sort of one-dimensional hell where I drift in the-ghost-of-Marley fashion with my jaw bandaged shut in order to stifle the moans of despair. I have kept myself at a level of near-complete exhaustion in order to deaden myself, with the result that I have no brain cells left for blogging.
And it's all because of work. Work has become as difficult as it could imaginably be at every facet.
Now, lest you think I am about to launch into a barrage of complaints, allow me to say that I am not in true despair. I just have to hang in there. I know that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"; but boy howdy, I'm tired. And I wish to explain to my beloved readers why.
The Center for the Homeless in South Bend is a sort of national phenomenon. It's not a soup kitchen, or a shelter; it seeks to end homelessness for its guests by giving them all classes and programs to address and fix why they're homeless. People can get their GEDs, acquire sponsored internships and externships around the community, pay off debt, learn about themselves, and find homes, all while having their basic needs met and their basic bills paid by living for free at the Center.
In its fifteen-ish years of existence, the Center has expanded a great deal, rather beyond its original vision, and so it is in the process of hashing out what its current vision and purpose are supposed to be. So there's been a lot of turnover as various people have left, and as a new leadership is establishing itself; and overall, as with all revolutions, things are in a state of temporary chaos as the new order begins to gain its balance.
This puts a lot of burdens of adjustment on all the staff, and the PEDS program where Meg and I work is no exception. We're undergoing a lot of changes anyway -- changes to the curriculum, changes in our supervisor, changes in the enrollees to the program, changes in the number of volunteers (on whom we rely -- a day with five toddlers and three infants and without help is almost impossible) and now changes in the program assistant, as Meg looks for a replacement for me in preparation for my move to the administrative branch.
As other children have left, Meg and I have taken on five new children, all very young and very needy. Two of the infants do not sleep when the older children do, so now there is no point in the day wherein Meg and I get a break. We have no lunchbreak, and with the vanishing of the volunteers (mostly college students) for their long Christmas breaks, we have had to beg for help from the already overworked staff in order to be able to put all the children down for a nap in under an hour and a half. Meg and I agreed yesterday that we are so busy taking care of kids all day long that we don't have time to run to the bathroom or even put on chapstick. We're desperately overworked and overwrought just trying to get through each day.
So I've pretty much shut down into survival mode. No emotional response to anything, no deep thinking. I come home deadpan from work every day and shuffle around the apartment putting off going to bed, then get up so tired I see flashes of light as I stagger to the bathroom to shower, and drag myself to work.
At least I can say there's a light at the end of the tunnel -- I get to start my new job once my replacement in PEDS has been found. It's much worse for Meg as she tries to keep the program running by herself. Hopefully the new hire will have more energy and boundless enthusiasm.
I do love the Center. I love working there and I love the people who work there and live there. Last week I sang a duet with one of the case managers at the Center's holiday talent show and it went over extremely well, and it was nice to come out of the woodwork and be part of the community there. Last week also some of the staff got together after work at the Fiddler's for fun and socialization, making me fall in love even more with the staff. I am optimistic about everything working out in the end for everyone else's benefit. It's just a roughish road getting to where we need to be.
So simple exhaustion is the reason for my long silence. Today I took an entire Saturday to go nowhere and do nothing but relax and clean. Tomorrow Meg and I are getting together to bake cookies, and when I come home I will finish wrapping presents for the people for whom I can afford to buy presents. It's going to be a lovely Christmas, I think -- not because of lavish gifts (tons of bills for various things -- hopitalization, car tax, car rental -- have just arrived, tightening the screws down on my already squeaking budget) but because this year I can spend Christmas at home with my family. That in itself is comfort and joy.
The reason for this is simple: My life has been turned into some ghastly sort of one-dimensional hell where I drift in the-ghost-of-Marley fashion with my jaw bandaged shut in order to stifle the moans of despair. I have kept myself at a level of near-complete exhaustion in order to deaden myself, with the result that I have no brain cells left for blogging.
And it's all because of work. Work has become as difficult as it could imaginably be at every facet.
Now, lest you think I am about to launch into a barrage of complaints, allow me to say that I am not in true despair. I just have to hang in there. I know that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"; but boy howdy, I'm tired. And I wish to explain to my beloved readers why.
The Center for the Homeless in South Bend is a sort of national phenomenon. It's not a soup kitchen, or a shelter; it seeks to end homelessness for its guests by giving them all classes and programs to address and fix why they're homeless. People can get their GEDs, acquire sponsored internships and externships around the community, pay off debt, learn about themselves, and find homes, all while having their basic needs met and their basic bills paid by living for free at the Center.
In its fifteen-ish years of existence, the Center has expanded a great deal, rather beyond its original vision, and so it is in the process of hashing out what its current vision and purpose are supposed to be. So there's been a lot of turnover as various people have left, and as a new leadership is establishing itself; and overall, as with all revolutions, things are in a state of temporary chaos as the new order begins to gain its balance.
This puts a lot of burdens of adjustment on all the staff, and the PEDS program where Meg and I work is no exception. We're undergoing a lot of changes anyway -- changes to the curriculum, changes in our supervisor, changes in the enrollees to the program, changes in the number of volunteers (on whom we rely -- a day with five toddlers and three infants and without help is almost impossible) and now changes in the program assistant, as Meg looks for a replacement for me in preparation for my move to the administrative branch.
As other children have left, Meg and I have taken on five new children, all very young and very needy. Two of the infants do not sleep when the older children do, so now there is no point in the day wherein Meg and I get a break. We have no lunchbreak, and with the vanishing of the volunteers (mostly college students) for their long Christmas breaks, we have had to beg for help from the already overworked staff in order to be able to put all the children down for a nap in under an hour and a half. Meg and I agreed yesterday that we are so busy taking care of kids all day long that we don't have time to run to the bathroom or even put on chapstick. We're desperately overworked and overwrought just trying to get through each day.
So I've pretty much shut down into survival mode. No emotional response to anything, no deep thinking. I come home deadpan from work every day and shuffle around the apartment putting off going to bed, then get up so tired I see flashes of light as I stagger to the bathroom to shower, and drag myself to work.
At least I can say there's a light at the end of the tunnel -- I get to start my new job once my replacement in PEDS has been found. It's much worse for Meg as she tries to keep the program running by herself. Hopefully the new hire will have more energy and boundless enthusiasm.
I do love the Center. I love working there and I love the people who work there and live there. Last week I sang a duet with one of the case managers at the Center's holiday talent show and it went over extremely well, and it was nice to come out of the woodwork and be part of the community there. Last week also some of the staff got together after work at the Fiddler's for fun and socialization, making me fall in love even more with the staff. I am optimistic about everything working out in the end for everyone else's benefit. It's just a roughish road getting to where we need to be.
So simple exhaustion is the reason for my long silence. Today I took an entire Saturday to go nowhere and do nothing but relax and clean. Tomorrow Meg and I are getting together to bake cookies, and when I come home I will finish wrapping presents for the people for whom I can afford to buy presents. It's going to be a lovely Christmas, I think -- not because of lavish gifts (tons of bills for various things -- hopitalization, car tax, car rental -- have just arrived, tightening the screws down on my already squeaking budget) but because this year I can spend Christmas at home with my family. That in itself is comfort and joy.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
o tannenbaum
Yesterday I pulled sturdy jeans over a pair of old nylons, layered up in sweaters, donned the only hat that becomes me, and headed up to Michigan to fetch myself a fine-lookin' tree with Boss Meg and her husband Phillip.
Christmas tree selection, transportation, and installation is possibly a greater difficulty to the modern single woman than the pointlessness of hanging mistletoe. A dear friend (an attached young man) once asked, "Why do all these TV shows and movies make a big deal out of single women having to drag Christmas trees into their apartments through their windows?" Because it's the starkest thing about the single life. A woman can be content, even satisfied, with her life as a Singleton; but managing a Christmas tree by herself throws into sharp relief the inherent wrongness of having to navigate life alone. There should be someone to help her with the damn tree. When there isn't, it goes beyond a feeling of cosmic mockery and violates the sensibility that lies at the marrow of Christmas: connection. Divine connection to humanity, human connection to humanity. A woman falling back on her own resources to set up her isolated celebration of connection is a terribly ironic tragedy.
I've been blessed so far by not having to set up makeshift pulleys out my living room window. Last year when I couldn't go home for any of the holidays because of the demands of retail, my parents visited for Thanksgiving and brought with them a Scotch pine to set up in my living room. (One of these days I'll post on the necessity of having parents, even and especially as an adult, and how glad I am that my parents maintain an active involvement in my life, or I might be lost.) They helped me purchase the lights, the ornaments, the tinsel. I decorated it alone, but even though I cried as I did it, I did not feel abandoned.
This year I could not have done it without Meg and Phillip. And I had a wonderful time. We drove to a Christmas tree farm in the middle of nowhere, which supplies its customers with saws and hayrides (horse- or tractor-drawn) to the tree fields, where you can wander at will and select your very own tree. Phillip cut mine down for me (a tall, full Douglas fir -- I'm drawn to triangular trees the way some people are drawn to certain body types), and we hauled our trees back to meet the next hayride and headed to the home base where our trees were mechanically shaken free of dead needles, measured, priced, and bundled. Then we went into a log-cabin style general store for complimentary hot cocoa and to pay for the trees. Phillip strapped the trees to the top of their SUV and we returned to their place for chili and tree decoration, after which they drove my tree to my apartment, carried it upstairs, and went about the messy business of setting it up in my living room.
I had already rearranged all the furniture to accomodate the beautiful annual intruder, but we hadn't factored on the difficulty of forcing the tree into my ancient tree stand. In the end my living room carpet was littered with branches, bark, sawdust, pinesap, needles, and twigs as Meg and Phillip hacked away at interfering tree limbs. (At one point Phillip was doing the sawing while Meg and I straddled the still-bundled tree to keep it still, and I laughed and said, "Meg, we're having a treesome!")
So now I have armfuls of fir boughs to adorn the apartment, a clean carpet, and a fully decorated tree. Every family decorates differently; mine favors large colored lights, some of which randomly blink (and the first half-hour or forty-five minutes of tree decoration involves unscrewing and moving bulbs around to eliminate clusters of one color throughout the branches) and no particular theme to the ornaments. The tree is a hodgepodge of homemade, inherited, bought, and acquired ornaments placed to fill its spaces, some hung as far back as possible, layered over with silver tinsel icicles (no garland for me!) and topped with an angel. The overall effect is friendly, warm, and delightful; my favorite evening advent activity is to turn off all lights in the house except the tree just before bed, and sit listening to Christmas music or in silence, watching the tree and the needly patterns of colored light it throws against the white walls and ceiling.
It's still odd, decorating by myself and for myself, but this year I feel I have friends with which to share it. Next weekend sometime Meg and I are getting together for a Christmas cookie-baking bonanza (such fun, to swap recipes), and she'll be stopping by during the week to see what I've done with the tree. I'll have Colette over soon, and I'm pretty sure I can drag MP over for some insane Christmas cheer.
This is a new and glowing facet to celebrating Christmas: sharing and experiencing the traditions of fully grown friends. Everyone has a different story, and story, as Leigh Ann and I enthusiastically discuss, is life.
So I'm single. So I'm living alone. But I didn't have to wrestle my tree in place by myself, and I am beginning to feel more and more connected where I am.
And my tree is fragrant and gorgeous.
Christmas tree selection, transportation, and installation is possibly a greater difficulty to the modern single woman than the pointlessness of hanging mistletoe. A dear friend (an attached young man) once asked, "Why do all these TV shows and movies make a big deal out of single women having to drag Christmas trees into their apartments through their windows?" Because it's the starkest thing about the single life. A woman can be content, even satisfied, with her life as a Singleton; but managing a Christmas tree by herself throws into sharp relief the inherent wrongness of having to navigate life alone. There should be someone to help her with the damn tree. When there isn't, it goes beyond a feeling of cosmic mockery and violates the sensibility that lies at the marrow of Christmas: connection. Divine connection to humanity, human connection to humanity. A woman falling back on her own resources to set up her isolated celebration of connection is a terribly ironic tragedy.
I've been blessed so far by not having to set up makeshift pulleys out my living room window. Last year when I couldn't go home for any of the holidays because of the demands of retail, my parents visited for Thanksgiving and brought with them a Scotch pine to set up in my living room. (One of these days I'll post on the necessity of having parents, even and especially as an adult, and how glad I am that my parents maintain an active involvement in my life, or I might be lost.) They helped me purchase the lights, the ornaments, the tinsel. I decorated it alone, but even though I cried as I did it, I did not feel abandoned.
This year I could not have done it without Meg and Phillip. And I had a wonderful time. We drove to a Christmas tree farm in the middle of nowhere, which supplies its customers with saws and hayrides (horse- or tractor-drawn) to the tree fields, where you can wander at will and select your very own tree. Phillip cut mine down for me (a tall, full Douglas fir -- I'm drawn to triangular trees the way some people are drawn to certain body types), and we hauled our trees back to meet the next hayride and headed to the home base where our trees were mechanically shaken free of dead needles, measured, priced, and bundled. Then we went into a log-cabin style general store for complimentary hot cocoa and to pay for the trees. Phillip strapped the trees to the top of their SUV and we returned to their place for chili and tree decoration, after which they drove my tree to my apartment, carried it upstairs, and went about the messy business of setting it up in my living room.
I had already rearranged all the furniture to accomodate the beautiful annual intruder, but we hadn't factored on the difficulty of forcing the tree into my ancient tree stand. In the end my living room carpet was littered with branches, bark, sawdust, pinesap, needles, and twigs as Meg and Phillip hacked away at interfering tree limbs. (At one point Phillip was doing the sawing while Meg and I straddled the still-bundled tree to keep it still, and I laughed and said, "Meg, we're having a treesome!")
So now I have armfuls of fir boughs to adorn the apartment, a clean carpet, and a fully decorated tree. Every family decorates differently; mine favors large colored lights, some of which randomly blink (and the first half-hour or forty-five minutes of tree decoration involves unscrewing and moving bulbs around to eliminate clusters of one color throughout the branches) and no particular theme to the ornaments. The tree is a hodgepodge of homemade, inherited, bought, and acquired ornaments placed to fill its spaces, some hung as far back as possible, layered over with silver tinsel icicles (no garland for me!) and topped with an angel. The overall effect is friendly, warm, and delightful; my favorite evening advent activity is to turn off all lights in the house except the tree just before bed, and sit listening to Christmas music or in silence, watching the tree and the needly patterns of colored light it throws against the white walls and ceiling.
It's still odd, decorating by myself and for myself, but this year I feel I have friends with which to share it. Next weekend sometime Meg and I are getting together for a Christmas cookie-baking bonanza (such fun, to swap recipes), and she'll be stopping by during the week to see what I've done with the tree. I'll have Colette over soon, and I'm pretty sure I can drag MP over for some insane Christmas cheer.
This is a new and glowing facet to celebrating Christmas: sharing and experiencing the traditions of fully grown friends. Everyone has a different story, and story, as Leigh Ann and I enthusiastically discuss, is life.
So I'm single. So I'm living alone. But I didn't have to wrestle my tree in place by myself, and I am beginning to feel more and more connected where I am.
And my tree is fragrant and gorgeous.
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