Merry Christmas!

 Wishing everyone here the most wonderful of holiday seasons!

On Friendship

I'm not very social, outside of a very small circle of friends with a shared past, some here in Chicago and Indiana, some out West, one in Pennsylvania, and several in South Carolina.  I tend to hole up and write in my spare time; my hobbies are singular.  I'm perfectly happy being by myself for days on end.  But it's always interesting when you meet someone in person that you'd only encountered peripherally, seeing them but not really talking to them.  Then you meet and feel like you have been friends for years. 

I met Partner in Grime after we'd been the best of friends online, having met through family and mutual friends.  That switched to lots of long phone calls for a couple of years. One day, I met him in person. However, I would have never, with my scientist's brain, said "love at first sight." But as I waved to him under the fierce August sun, it was as if the earth had released some secret store of its fiery heart, and I think we both knew. Two years later, we were married.

But there is always that bit of uncertainty when you meet someone where you finally have time to exchange more than pleasant banter.  Sometimes, you find you don't have much in common, and part on a kind note, knowing you likely won't talk much again.  Still, there's some sadness there, as you wanted a connection, yet in meeting them, you felt they had such wonderful things in their heart to say, but you couldn’t decipher the words.

And then, sometimes, you are blessed to discover someone whose life stories mirror your own, not just in some shared deeds and events but in how those things made us into the souls we are today. When you have a moment, between family, rescue dogs, and careers, to sit down and share a meal with them, you realize how truly blessed you are.  

As I sat here last night, watching the moonglow seep like liquid into the newly fallen snow and the spreading crowns of trees outside slowly withdraw into the night, I realized that even if I'm alone this week before Christmas, I’m not alone. I have old and new friends who enrich me in ways I can’t articulate, offering with their kindness a tremendous healing balm to those wounds that a lifetime can lay down and a single year can reopen.  

As people who have lived life fully, sometimes recklessly, sometimes isolated by our own accord, we all have had our hearts broken at one time, sometimes more than once. In that brokenness, so many things can enter our hearts - fear, shame, betrayal, anger, hope, faith.  But when gathered in friendship in a room or at a table and saying our prayer of gratitude, there is only acceptance of those bits of those elements of light and dark that find a home in a human heart.  That is our blessing at our own table, just as it's our forgiveness at the Lord's. 

Holiday Kitchen Failures

A few of my girlfriends were sharing "cooking disaster" stories recently.  None of my personal stories ever matched the one of my childhood. Mom had read somewhere that cooking the holiday turkey in a bag would render the turkey very juicy (this was in the 60s, long before they sold bags specially made for roasting). Except she missed the part about low temperature and the type of bag. So Mr. Turkey went into the oven in a Safeway paper shopping bag, pop-out timer side down.

As the turkey roasted, the juice and grease pooled in the bottom of the bag. When the timer popped, "turkey's done" it popped THROUGH the bag, releasing all the hot grease onto the hot burner.

WHOOSH!

My brother calmly said, "Mom, the turkey blew up!"

It was the first and only time I heard my Mom say a four-letter cuss word. Dad told her to leave the door closed and the oven off until it ceased burning. He then just stood in the corner of the kitchen, muttering "Oh, the Humanity", like the narrator of the Hindenburg disaster, tears rolling down his face as he was laughing so hard. We had KFC that year as the remains were removed in a bucket.

When Mom was fighting cancer and sick from the chemo, there was another memory that stayed with me. A time at the vacation cabin on the Oregon Coast where Dad cooked pancakes. I'm unsure how he did it, but you could hardly cut through them. He gave one to our dachshund Pepper, who took it outside and buried it in the sand along the shore. My brother threw another one in the fire. It didn't burn.

I can picture that as if it were happening now, the splash of sunlight on cedar, the memory of the smell of wet dog, and the taste of laughter, of where people have lived and will always. Good times.  

The Dogfather

While working on her training, Sunny learned "trade" - when she picked up something she shouldn't have, she would drop it in exchange for a toy.  Wise to it now, she grabbed a good shoe and wouldn't trade it for a toy.  No, she had to have a toy AND a treat.  That's not trade - that's paying for "protection." 

WELCOME TO THE DOGFATHER:

Me: “Come on, Sunny, give me the magazine.”

Sunny: “That was going to be 1 treat; it’s 2 treats now.”

Me: “No, I already paid you.”

Sunny: “Dem's some nice-looking slippers - be a shame if something were to happen to them." 

Me: (sigh) hands over treats.

When Waste Baskets Attack!

Snow Daze

 

Frosty Snoot.

Incoming Human Frosty Snoot