River Jordan || Author, Speaker, Radio Personality

Okay -- I thought I'd show you the said Christmas tree (see former blog) as in before and after but the after looks so much like the before I'm afraid that you would laugh so hard that coffee would come out of your nose all over your keyboard and short circuit your computer and then you'd be frozen in cyberspace - unable to communicate with the human race OR read this blog space so - maybe I should just forgo that part but TRUST ME when I say - Charlie Brown has got nothing on me.

I've been thinking of some of my favorite Christmas snapshots of late. The ones that are permanently scarred, I mean burned into my conscious eye. You know, it's just that time to reminisce, to take that little trip through time via the holidays, to roll around like a fat goose stuffing yourself with things made of sugar and more sugar.

The night my Daddy came was home on leave from the Army and had been partaking of a little special celebrating and the next thing we know he has a the great idea to pile us into the Volkswagen bug (we were one of the first families to jump on the VW - great on gas zip, zip thing - and it was the first car I learned to drive) and we are off on some sort of holiday experiment to drive the VW back up in the woods around the rural area my Daddy was from at midnight, and honk the horn screaming things like Jingle Bells and Merry Christmas as loud as we could.

Now in retrospect, Dad might have been a little over the edge tipsy, but my Mother just seemed to be happy that he had FINALLY gotten in the Christmas spirit and she wasn't so bullish about exactly HOW this little miracle had occurred. But what I remember most about the night is that sister and I, stuck together in the cozy backseat of the BUG were deliriously over the top drunk. Not with the same stuff Dad had been into but drunk only in that, OH MY GOSH, is this like the best fun we've ever had a Christmas or what?!!!

WE were there with our parents, and they were happy, NO wait, they were downright JOLLY and we were all singing Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells at the top of our lungs all the way up the road through the woods, in the backwoods pine trees to Mema's House. What fantastic freeing fun was this? It was glorious and grand, the smell of the woodsmoke rising from all those backwoods little houses, the lawns quiet, the plastic Wise Men standing out in a few front yards the only ones to bear witness to our shenanigans. We were so full of the SPIRIT that even when we did Donuts (VW bugs are great at doing donuts!) in Uncle Willie's front yard screaming Jingle Bells and Shotgun Shells and Merry Christmas and Uncle Willie actually came out on the porch in his long johns with his SHOTGUN and was aiming to fire as we pulled off into the night screaming, Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night! even the flying bullets couldn't quench our laughter and our merriment as we tore on off down that long, dark road to the Creek where we would wake my Mema in the middle of the night and she'd step out on the back porch saying, Good Lord, What in the world are ya'll up to? And my Daddy still grinning and singing Hohoho and Jingle Bells, Jingle bells.

Sometimes Christmas, or any memory worth hanging onto, doesn't happen in a Kodak moment. It's not always the forced family dinner sitting around the table carving the roast beast. That's predictable and would be delovely but it's not always that nice and easy. Sometimes the memory worth keeping during this season just like any other, is that one that sneaks up on you sideways, from nowhere, unexpected. The heartfelt laugh of a family member a little on the right side of age where maybe this might be their last holiday spin. The tiniest, messy, handmade gift from a child. The kindness of a stranger.

You know, bell ringer bliss, HOHOHO, mistletoe.

I've been down in the back lately. Doc says slipped bulgy disk. What that translates to me is slow to no-go. Which makes me CRAZY! Don't you know the Queen of Chaos (insiders future blog reference)has THINGS TO DO. You know places to go, worlds to create, a life to live. Okay, so suddenly I have a huge amount of empathy for everyone that has or has ever had a back problem. And considering I have the metabolism of something that is a cross between a snail and a Koala bear, not being able to do any kind of exercise has left me a little like, well does the Stay-puff Marshmallow man bring anything to mind.

And in the midst of all this I thought - oh Christmas - fee-fi-fo-forgetaboutit!!! I won't even put up a tree, string a light, light a candle. I'll just skip it this year. And then two days ago I catch myself in the middle of driving, no radio on, record high temps and balmy, rainy weather and I'm suddenly humming aloud, "It's starting to look a lot like Christmas," like an involuntary, uncontrolable hiccup. So here I am humming, head bopping along, and I realize Christmas happens on the inside of me no matter what is happening on the outside. It just pops up, comes slipping out, around a corner when I least expect it. It can happen as early as the first Salvation Army drop in the bucket. Or it can be as late as the bells for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. But somewhere between the busy, between the commercial #%*(, between the theological/political/social discussion between is it PC to wish people Merry Christmas anymore - it happens to me.

I think it's for this reason.

In season's past and throughout the years there were pages of dark history in the family album. Seasons and years where everything was less than perfect, bright, shiny, and all Leave It to Beaver Cleaver. But then Christmas came. And whatever had assailed us, whatever dark cloud had threatened to crack and destroy our territory or steal our Peace, threatened our very existence, was pulled back, blown away by the Advent Season.

Something strange happened. My mother began to hum and from the hum rose a lightness, a fresh breath of hope and possibility. The Tree was shopped for. (Think Christmas Story. Just like that but totally different.) A big, huge, green monster that could never fit through the door but would anyway after my father had wrestled with it like the beast that it was. Then the lights going on (my father mumbling and cussing about the last time, and not needing a tree that big, and getting a fake one and being done with it once and for all, and my mother carefully unwrapping glass Christmas ornaments one by one saying, "Remember this one? See this? This is one of my favorites. No, no, wait, this is my favorite. They're all my favorites."

The manger scene being displayed one wise man at a time, with the final touch being placing the angel carefully over the manager. The sparkly, silver tree being put up in the 'living room' (that no one lived in) complete with a rotating colored light so that our front window looked like a Macy's store window on display. But I assure you, a child full of wonder with not one but TWO trees, and one full of pink, blue, green, purple lights - I was the envy of my friends and cousins. Rich with Christmas bounty if that bounty was nothing more than the promise of a temporary opulence. A richness wrapped in all things that could be strung and hung from every corner and height. There were miniature reindeer's in the kitchen, Santa's in the bathroom, snowflakes on the windows, Poinsettia's on the porch, and my mothers pride and joy - a plethora of Christmas cactus (cacti?) that bloomed in profusion for the season.

We were, if for only a few weeks, rich beyond our dreams, rich in goodwill, caught suddenly in the reflection of all those lights so that everything dark that might be waiting in the shadows was so recessed it was out of sight.

And in spite of my father's bah humbugs, of his griping about the lights, about his complaining about the money and trouble of Christmas, we buzzed, danced and hummed around him. Taped Christmas Cards to the mantle, strung fake ivy, more white lights and little house villages saying, "Oh, Daddy!" knowing that by Christmas Eve he'd be whistling, and happy for the trouble, for the transformation.

Now, down in the back, treeless until this weekend, I happened to hear of a tree farm, and Mr. Wonderful who has taken the Scroogy, Bah humbug, grumble-butt place of my father at Christmas, suddenly brightens and says, - "OH, that sounds like fun. Let's get a live tree, dig it up, keep the root and plant it for next year." 1) He's into trees and outdoor stuff to the Alaskan extreme and 2) He has great memories of doing this during his childhood where the trees were BIGGER and FULLER and GREENER.

Okay - fine. HoHoHo through the woods we go. What we find waiting are "Virginia Pines" which translates to, "Boy, this is going to be so interesting to decorate."

Okay, so right now, the daughter of Mrs. Wonderland where the tree is the thing - THE THING I TELL YOU - has a Dr. Suess tree stuck in a five gallon bucket surrounded by dirt. And it's waiting on me to somehow string a few lights, toss a few decorations on, and help it transform itself into something glorious and grand. I have to be honest (whispering here) I don't see that happening. I see Charlie Brown's Christmas to the 2nd power squared. (And I'm fully aware by now that my sister has decorated every minute corner with sparklies and candy-canes and gumdrops or something. I'm talking no room is safe from Santa. We're a little like Will Ferrel in Elf only it doesn't last and it's not in our control. It takes us by force and then lets us go somewhere between December 26th and January 20th like Frosty tracking a quick hike to the North Pole.)

But what the hey. There's a hum on my lips, it's seventy degrees outside, and it's starting to look at lot like Christmas. At least from the inside! Afterall, Christmas is about the impossible, implausible, possibility of a miracle.

People are often asking me for a little writerly advice here and there and everywhere. So, from time to time, I'll try to drop a tidbit on the blog. Today's advice? The Muse wins. Hands down. When the words are hot and rushing through your veins, be it 2 am or the backseat of a cab rushing down 37th Street know this, they won't be back. When they rush, they are full of demand. Full of life and longing. Full of a commanding presence that requires you, that crazy, writer person to fulfill them. Get them to the page.

Yes, yes, I know. There is a discipline to writing. And if you wait for the blessed muse to write your page count might drip below the output of your Aunt Aggie's diary. So, sure you have to sit down on a regular or semi-regular spot/rug/desk/hole in the wall and carve out a few sentences. Some of them, hopefully most of them will stick, those are the ones that generate themselves from your expertise and experience, your mind and the inspiration of your life.

But those other ones? The ones that wake you up in the silence of the night, the ones that begin rushing through you mind JUST AS YOU WERE FALLING ASLEEP don't think you'll so easily wake at any of the more civilized hours and FIND YOUR WAY back to them. Oh, perhaps, in someway. The memory of what they were ABOUT. The memory of a dream, the color of pewter in a cold room with a snow falling outside, the smell of a fire burning low, the smoke blowing back into the room from the gusts rushing down the chimney. Oh, no. Those words and that space, that place, that story, those people, will be as elusive as capturing wild cats behind the barn. And like Alice, you'll spend more time searching for the right door to get back there than carving the story.

The deal is, in the land of the writer's life, the words rule. And when they come to you, regardless of the time or the hour, the space or the place, baby, you just gotta give them their due. Wake and rustle yourself, pull over out of traffic, open wide your arms to embrace them because like the youth of your children, they'll never come back again, never come rushing in and around the synapses of your brain the same way. Never paint and pull, pleasure and purpose, like they do when they come blowing in like a South wind of surprise.

After all these years I'm still learning, when the muse calls to answer the line. Without question. Everytime.