December is the giving month. We search for things we hope our loved ones will need and like and wrap them up in shiny paper. Many people also make charitable gifts this time of year, to help make changes in lives beyond their own.
Condolences on a death are hard, both to offer and to receive. After my sister died two years ago, I heard a lot of awkward silences and attempts to hurry the conversation along. When my mother died last year, I at least had a useful way of making the whole thing easier.
My childhood history of driving west is layered with every book or story, every myth ever told about this country’s history. Can’t help starting off with a “gone to look for America” vibe. Good fried dinner at Stroud’s in Kansas City, where they claim they “choke our own chicken.” Neil bought the T-shirt.
I’ve never been to jail. I’ve never bailed anyone out of jail. I don’t know anyone in prison. If I wanted to, I could ignore the entire American criminal justice system and all its problems. But I can’t ignore it, because it makes me angry.
“How do you get new seedless watermelons if they don’t have seeds?” “Why don’t the people in Australia fall off the earth?” “Why did that woman in the store call you ‘hon’? She doesn’t even know you.” “What did Billy Joe McAllister throw off the Tallahatchie Bridge?”
Sometimes I just get so tired of the things I do all the time. Fortunately there are antidotes to conformity and the virtual. Like the farmers market. That’s retail therapy that actually works. A farmers market offers something real, made by human hands.
My husband and I are grandchild-less by choice. Oh, not our choice. This is the ultimate paradox of parenthood. We raise our children so they can live their own lives by their own principles. I can be simultaneously disappointed for myself and proud of them for knowing what they want.
We’d go out and picnic, follow the creek, find geodes and wildflowers. We’d swing out over the creek on a grapevine and sled down a hill that took a 90-degree turn just before a steep dropoff. If we left late, Dad might stop the car on the gravel road so we could hear the whippoorwills.
My mother was the daughter of Italian immigrants. Reading was everything to her. She placed a high priority on not only pronouncing the words, but on understanding their significance and consequence. And losing yourself in them, when possible.
I try not to be judgmental when it’s not called for. I think of that effort as a life journey, something that comes eventually with age. I may never be old enough. Not when it comes to judging people who use words wrong. People “pouring” over books, for example.
