An imaginary conversation with my dying self

An old acquaintance whom I respect mightily recently included me on a mass email inviting her friends to think about their "bucket list." She didn't use that made for Hollywood phrase, but instead couched the invitation within the context of dying without regrets.

So, I imagined myself lying at home in cozy jammies with a glass of wine at my side, knowing that my life is shortly ending. "What," I thought, "DON'T I want to hear pass through my brain or my heart at this time?" I don't want to say,
"I wish I had hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro,"
"I'm sorry I never made it to Hawaii or the Caribbean,"
"I don't know why I never bought a house,"
"I wish I had taken each of the kids - nieces and nephews - on a special trip,"
"I would have liked to have lived in New York City, even for a short period of time,"
"I could kick myself for never having tried to live in Paris or somewhere else overseas."

If I listen just a little more closely, I might hear the following:
"I'm sorry I didn't have a bigger wedding,"
"It would have been cool to work for the National Park Service,"
"Not going into the Peace Corps when I had the chance was mistake I'll never forget,"
"I regret I didn't give more to ease the ache in my heart over homelessness,"
"It would have been fun to enter a giant pumpkin - or something - into a county fair,"
"Why didn't I apply myself more as a biker (or a kayaker or a hiker or a xc skiier)?"
"I wish I had seen my daddy one more time."

These are some of the imaginary conversations I'm having with my imaginary, dying self. The timing couldn't be more perfect as I prepare to start the second 40 years of my life. Turning 40, for me, means embracing my adult decisions, lifestyle, attitudes and values with confidence and enthusiasm and purpose. As I head into the final six months of my thirties, I will ask my real self, "How do I prevent as many of these imaginary conversations from happening in real life?"

Are you willing to have imaginary conversations with your dying self? What would might they sound like?

If you don't get presents does this mean you aren't good?

The legend of Santa says that "He knows if you've been bad or good." We have songs about this. Parents in Christmas-celebrating households use this liberally as a threat throughout December. Every visit to Santa's mall helpers includes a question about whether or not you have been good this year. The net effect is to create a culture in which children believe they get presents from Santa only if they have been good.

So what is the effect on poor children in Christmas celebrating who have been good, but don't get presents? If I apply MY kid logic I'd believe that I wasn't good enough to deserve a present. What is the emotional impact of this?

The national unemployment rate is 10.2%. Nearly 60% of the 308 million Americans are of working age, which means as many as 31 million adults who previously were working for pay now are not working for pay. Which means there are a whole lot of children who may end up believing they weren't good enough to get presents from Santa this year.

The magnitude and implications of the recession hit me in a new way while I was shopping at a local discount retailer earlier today. I encountered at least half a dozen adults considering what Christmas decorations to buy, what toys they could afford for their children, what grocery items were too far out-of-date to be safe to eat. I overheard children wistfully talking about the toys they wanted, adult daughters and their mothers talking about how they could possibly get x and y for the little ones in their families, and husbands and wives trying to figure out how they could possibly give as much to their extended families as they had last year. Overhearing all of these conversations made my heart sad. These conversations reminded me that this year is different. That this year children - and adults - won't get as much as they hope for, as much as they believe they deserve as recognition of their efforts to be the best they can be.

My shopping experience also created an enormous feeling of guilty gratitude. I don't have to find a way to try to fulfill my child's wish list while managing unemployment or other forms of public assistance. I don't have to tell my child mommy's unemployment makes our house invisible on Santa's map, so he might not find us this year. I have the privilege of giving myself almost everything I want (and my wants are small, so this is easier for me than for some). I have the privilege of consciously making choices on what to buy and what not to buy to give to my sweetheart, my family, friends and colleagues, service professionals who make my life easier, and even strangers. I have the privilege of not having to worry about whether a lack of presents under my tree is evidence of my inherent unlovable or badness.

I wish I had the power to change our cultural messaging about the meaning of Christmas and the role of Santa. If I did I would encourage families to tell children that Christmas is a season of love, and we share love with each other in many different ways - by sharing a hug, reading stories together, and sometimes, when we are lucky, giving and receiving gifts.

However you celebrate the holidays, I hope you can find love in small gestures, kind touches, AND simple gift giving this year. Merry Christmas.

"Do you ever miss Santa"

My nine year-old niece asked me this earlier today when I was telling her that I was at the mall to buy my brother a gift for his Christmas stocking.

"Wait a minute!" she declared after half a beat. "Why are YOU filling Uncle TK's stocking. Doesn't Santa do that?"
"Santa only fills the stockings of kids. He has his hands pretty full taking care of children all over the world, so at a certain age he stops giving people presents."
"How old were you when Santa stopped bringing you presents?" she asked in a quiet voice.
"Twenty-one or twenty-two," I swiftly replied. (I hope Santa reads this so he knows how long he is on the hook with the present giving.)
"Do you ever miss Santa?" she asked, in an even quieter voice.

Of course I miss Santa! I'm also grateful that the spirit of gratitude, surprise, and fulfillment can be experienced through buying gifts for my family, populating my online registry with things I've found online, and quietly contemplating Christmas lights that bathe the front of my home, the homes of neighbors, town centers, and many businesses.

Where do you find the spirit of the season - whether you observe Christmas or Hanukkah, Kwaanza, Solstice, or New Year?

The more things change...

..the more they stay the same. And nowhere is this aphorism more apt than on Facebook.

An old acquaintance from high school and I recently reconnected through the ubiquitous social networking app. This friend looked fantastic in her profile picture. In the 21 years since we had last seen one another she had transformed from a pudgy, needy, and nerdy type to a fit, tanned, confident-looking woman. I was so curious to poke around her profile and learn more about her journey to her present place in this world.

The first time I get a status update from the long lost acquaintance in my Facebook Feed she sounds EXACTLY the same way she did in high school. Whiny, accusing and complaining.

I laughed out loud when I read the update. I was amazed that someone who had obviously done something over the last twenty years to radically transform her exterior appearance had made almost no evident change to her interior self.

How funny we people are.

Memories of Halloween

"Halloween was always a struggle for me," my mom said to me on the telephone earlier today. "364 days a year I taught you NOT to take candy from strangers, and then, on one night I was supposed to dress you up so you were unrecognizable and send you out to beg for candy from strangers. I never understood it."

To her credit, or perhaps in homage to my naivete, I had no idea my mom had such anti-Halloween feelings. I have very fond memories of the creative costumes she made; and our costumes were always homemade, never store-bought. One year she made me a bumble-bee costume, with the body made of poster board hung sandwich-board style on my body with and styrofoam wings. I remember the bubblegum machine costume she made for my brother - a clear garbage filled with small colored balloons and a little hat with a fake nickel coming out of it. As a kid I loved the creativity involved in thinking up a costume and finding a way to construct it. I remember being an angel, a zombie, and a fisherman.

I also loved trick-or-treating. We went out for what felt like hours, unsupervised. (I learned today the unsupervised part was because my mother refused to go candy begging with us.) We lived in a densely packed community filled with children, the bustle of kids and lights and doorbells was intoxicating. Mr. Schenk, one of the 6th grade teachers at my elementary school, lived about a mile from us, up through tony Twin Hills, and we'd strive to make it to his house before he ran out of the full-sized candy bars he and his wife allegedly gave away to the kids who legitimately lived in their neighborhood. I remember an old woman who lived in a pink and strangely foreboding house at the start of the fancy street that bordered the local park. She always gave away creamy Life Saver pops, but only after you did a trick like recite the alphabet backwards or sang Yankee Doodle. Every year we'd draw tiny strips of paper out of a glass bowl to discover the trick we needed to do to earn our treats. My siblings, and, as I got older, my friends, and I would wander the streets for hours, careful not to miss a house with the lights on as we weaved from one street to the next for blocks. There was never a clear line of demarcation that told us we needed to stop and go home. We walked and rang and laughed for as long as we possibly could. I remember being out so late that many neighbors would leave their candy buckets out on the front porch so they didn't have to answer the door anymore.

When there were no more houses with lights on, my five siblings and I would troop home and eagerly dump our plastic pumpkin-shaped collection buckets on the floor. And then we would sort the candy into piles for favorites, piles for things we'd be willing to trade, and always, one or two Snickers bars for mom. And then we'd start trading. I'd give away Good and Plenty, boxes of Dots with two or three of those faux jujubes in them, Tootsie Roll midgies, Butterfingers, and hard candy. Chocolate caramels, Twizzlers, Peanut Butter Cups, and Baby Ruth were among the candy bars I eagerly sought. When we were done sorting and trading and counting, the candy would go back into our buckets and I'd carefully dole out one or two or ten pieces a day for my lunch bag or snacks I'd try to sneak at school.

As an adult, I actually have no great fondness for Halloween. While I enjoy the sweetness of seeing young children excited by their costumes and the novelty of getting candy, I generally find this holiday to be disconcerting. I feel unnerved by, and disingenuous around adults in costumes. I've dressed up only once in the last 15 years, at a Halloween party hosted at the commune where I once lived. (I felt like an idiot in my rented green sequined mermaid outfit carrying a tinfoil covered pitchfork intended to look like a trident.) I don't understand why some people want to trick out their houses in order to seem spooky or dangerous or pagan. And the greediness that I embraced as a child is now a little gross to me. I was at the mall earlier today during the "trick or treat" hours, and the place was teeming with kids and their parents trying to angle for the best treats. "Let's hurry up and get to Godiva. They better be giving out something good," was a frequently heard exclamation as I dodged and weaved to avoid the crowds.

We do have a jack-o-lantern on our porch, carved with enthusiasm by me. And a plastic cauldron, courtesy of the neighborhood "Phantom", sits by the front door filled with white chocolate Kit-Kat bars (dyed orange), boxes of Nerds, and those hateful Midgies. It is 5:15 now. And I imagine in the next 30 minutes or so we'll start to see the dozen or so neighborhood children begin to trickle through the neighborhood, nervously prodded by their parents onto strangers' porches, to ask for candy. And BMG and I will "oooh" and "aaah" over the costumes and make a big show out of the generous handfuls of candy we toss into the brightly colored receptacles carried by the princesses, robots, and medieval knights who roam our suburban street. I do this because I remember how much fun this was when I was a kid and I want to do my part to offer this same delight to the little people who creating their Halloween memories tonight.

This body is not mine to own

I read an explanation of the Easter story of the crucifixtion that, for the first time ever, made sense to me. It is in the book Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo. Given to me by BMG for Christmas last year, I have been trying to read this short novel for nearly 10 months. It is the kind of book I've read eagerly and then had to put down to reflect on what I was experiencing through the author's words. I have repeatedly lost my place and unintentionally re-read several chapters as a result.

I came upon a passage I had not yet read this morning, while reading at the dining room table as I munched a leftover salad. In it, the Buddha incarnate, is trying to explain the process and the rationale behind reincarnation. Or maybe he is responding to our protagonist's question about the existence of evil. Regardless, the Buddha character, Volya Rinpoche (which I've learned is pronounced "Rin-poh-chay"), explains that Jesus was nailed to a cross to remind us that our bodies do not belong to us, that they are temporary vessels that house our spirits.

This makes more sense to me than any Christian explanation of the Easter story I have ever heard. And as someone who has struggled with loving and taking care of her body, it is one of the move moving and profound "aha"s I've had in a long time. Who cares what my body looks like? What is important is the cultivation of my soul, the love I feel for the essence I bring into the universe. Now and forever after.

That crazy sawdust smell

I had an olfactory experience today that reminded me of one of my childhood fears. The fear of being "that kid" who threw up at school and caused a chain of event that resulted in that VERY distinct smell of puke mixed with sawdust permeating the classroom. I can remember classmates throwing up in class fewer than a handful of times, and I still remember the intense fear that I'd do it someday, and everyone would be mad at me for making the classroom smell terrible. And how about those poor teachers, who had to content with the smell and the riled up students? Or the custodiam who had to clean up our childhood sickness. Ugh all around.

What were your childhood fears? Did you ever throw up at school? What do you remember of it? Are you a teacher? Have you ever had a kid throw up in your class? What was that like?