It's Christmas Eve

I wake up at 5AM and I know... it's Christmas Eve. Chills of excitement course through my 47 year-old body. I love this day.

I have awoken in the grooves of childhood when, on this day, I lived anticipation. First we would stomp out into the woods and spend hours debating over and wearing circles around contenders for the family tree. When we reached a consensus, it was turns with a saw and an axe to fell the thing. Then each kid would grab their portion, blue spruce needles poking through knit mittens, and drag it through the snow.

At home, Mom would be a blaze in the kitchen. She'd have every burner going with sauces, sautéing meatballs, and boiling potatoes. The oven could not fit another item. She made batches of rum cakes, candies, and bagels. She was a fury in the kitchen. Yet, while we were out, she had dragged down the boxes of tree ornaments and lights. The tree stand options awaited us in the garage: the green one if we'd gotten a big tree, the white one if a littler one.

We kids dragged the tree into the garage and gave it a prodding glance: "The time to look good is now." Mom would step out of the kitchen and give the tree an appraising look. All that circling the tree and debating was for her. We waited. We watched her face. She would either say, "Oh, that's a nice, full one," or "You'll have to make sure that bare spot is toward the wall," and the first person to have spotted the tree would either own their pick proudly or snap their head toward the tree, scanning for the bare spot.

Ornaments and lights came next. It took the whole afternoon - with breaks to nip into the kitchen for hot chocolate with milk straight from our cows and stirred with Nestle's on a burner that could be spared for five minutes.

Then came chore time, more onerous than ever with Christmas Eve so close. But as I got older, I got smarter and would dress quickly to get out and get chores started. Once chores were done, we were that much closer to presents. Milking the cows took two hours and felt like two days. Peter and I would run to the barn doors to see if we could spy Santa flying through the air, landing on our roof, by our chimney. Sarah would say, "You know he doesn't come if you're looking," causing a conflict that still twists my heart. Do I look and see the Santa of a lifetime, but risk not getting any presents, or do I fight that urge and miss my chance at seeing him?

When the last cow was milked and bedded for the night, we were released. Peter and I raced to the house and straight to the tree. We'd stand on the threshold to the living room and be dazzled by the lights, the pretty wrapping, and the sheer size of the mound of presents. I remember thinking it was a pile of presents on presents and it stopped me, just to gaze in awe, jaw dropped.

Showering was a fast affair, and then Mom's buffet - 18-plus dishes that she'd arrange around the kitchen and that Peter and I struggled to taste, every part of us being tugged toward that tree. The older kids and Mom and Dad tasted their food and talked. Sometimes, if Peter and I were good, we were dismissed and could go sit in front of the tree, but "Don't touch anything until we get there."

And then it came. The family would assemble around the living room and Peter and I could look at the tags and give the receiver their package. We each opened one gift first, so everyone got a chance to see at least one gift another person had received. Then the careful order dissolved as the present unwrapping proved irresistible and paper was ripped in every corner of the room and cries of, "Peter, look what I got!" and "Thank you, Santa!" filled the air.

We played then, driving toy tractors around the linoleum, trying and trading flavors in our LifeSavers books, playing the new family game. At some point, Peter and I might remember our tummies and go back into the kitchen to graze on the buffet that we could now taste. We stayed up late that night. Till our bellies hurt with tiredness and our eyelids grew heavy. But we wanted to stay up, to stretch the day, to make it last forever. When a preponderance of us were crabbing or rubbing our eyes or who-knows-how-they-knew, Dad and Mom hugged us and turned out the lights, allowing one more glimpse of that lighted tree, before sending us to bed.

We dragged heavy feet up the steps and poured heavy bodies into our beds, sated and grateful, having lived every moment of that day.

"Christmas was always a lean time," my dad now tells me. "Mom and I tried to use good judgement about the presents, but sometimes we got carried away." I need to tell him; I never sensed any of that fretting. He and my mom made Christmas fat and fulfilling and wonderful. And I'm grateful. Even at 47, their enchantment remains, singing through my veins when I awaken at 5AM. It's Christmas Eve.

Open Letter to My Father

Because of my recent breakup, I have been subjected to my father's judgments and prognostications. I, apparently, am having trouble "moving on" since my divorce. I have done nothing! I have not been happy in the least, just a weeping pile of misery. What an ass. To judge me and my life like that. The presumption is that he knows what's best for me and that he and mom have to "worry" about me because I'm not married with 2.2 kids living in some big house, going to dance recitals, and sending pictures of his grandkids to all our relatives. He wants to see me married off and taken care of. Or some such thing. Well, I would like a mate, Dad, but I'm not going to saddle myself with some man who has no initiative -- even if you like him. He drank too much, worked too much, and intuited too little. Get off my back.

Open your eyes and see the good I have in my life. That's what I do every day. I have sadness and loneliness, but you did not raise me to moan about my woes.

Open your eyes and see the good I have done in my life. I give as deeply as I know how. I talk with kids about ideas, read their writing, and read their faces. I intuit what they need next. I care about their education, I care about their hearts. I am driven. I touch their lives and those of my colleagues. What I possess is what I give. My knowledge, my resourcefulness and problem-solving, my humor, my smile. These strengths are in demand. I give them.

Dad, acknowledge that I am a round character and quit trying to flatten me out with your notions of what happiness has to look like for every person. Really love ME, not your idea of what I should be as your daughter, as a woman in this society.

Dad, I am a mountain climber. I scale rocks for fun. I ski in blizzards. I laugh while cornering on curvy hills. I am not a mommy. I am not a cook. I am an athlete and a go-getter. I am a thinker and a feeler. I am a friend, sister and aunt. I am a good daughter.

Hello, Dad, meet me.

Ink for my Dad

I have given my mom lots of verbage. My dad I haven't as much. Yet he was the parent who was present when we were kids. He is warm, both in anger and in affection, and has provided a clear moral compass my whole life. Yet he has gotten less press on this blog - probably because he wasn't as hard to win as my mom. I only felt her affection and understanding in my adulthood. His unconditional love has been ever-present.

He is the Superman to her Wonder Woman. He is the patriarch to her matriarch. And he is aging the way I want to age.

He's still energetic and learning every day. He...

Okay, gig's up. I struggle to write this. He's so good he's boring to write about. He's so steady, so predictable, so rock solid that I can barely bring myself to blather on about his perfections! The man continues to indulge his curiosity. He wanted to be a deacon at church but found out he needed a Bachelor's degree to do so. Was he deterred on his quest to give more to the church and expanding his mind though? No. He's taking classes on liturgical matters just for kicks.

Last year, at SEVENTY years old, he went on his first ever trail restoration trip. Granted, his 39 year-old daughter toted his tent and most of his clothes, but the man got it done! We hiked 6.5 miles in high elevation and he sucked up all the oxygen his sleep-apneaed self could and slept in a tent for five days. He swung a Pulaski, dug water bars, and hauled rocks with the men 20+ years younger. The man sucks it up.

He has taken on the project of rehabilitating my aunt, his sister-in-law, who suffered from a stroke two years ago. He drives 30 miles each day to her nursing home to get her out of bed and walk her and talk to her. She has improved more than thought possible. He takes Eucharist to the shut-ins and nursing home residents three times a week. He has a group of 85+ year old men, affectionately dubbed his "Geezer Group," who he weekly rounds up for breakfasts and flea markets.

You see, the man's a bleeding saint!

And he's always been that way. So good. So steady. So solid and reliably Christian. A communicator and people person.

Yet I don't take him seriously. Perhaps because of another of his best traits. The man can laugh at himself. He begs laughter and invites teasing. Even when he is taking himself too seriously, I have to laugh at him because there is passion in that too. He stomps and rages and tells his persecutors (read: my mom and me) in no uncertain terms that we are the problem. It is his passionate delivery that becomes a parody of anger and makes me giggle. He is always real, always readable, transparent in love and war.

That's my dad. And here, at last, is his ink. And a smile.

The Guatemala Nod

One afternoon Rosary praying
circled together in the chapel
She looked up from the depths of her Catholicism,
found this atheist daughter's eyes
and winked.

I took it as her endorsement
her blessing
to close my eyes
and recommence
my sinful daydreaming.

Rosary chanting faded to a buzz
as I left them there
and found myself stretched
for him
half-turned

His hands
long, tapered, and skillful
met me there
playing my unsaintly parts
I dreamed climbing mountains and
sweet summits.

I took it that way.

She is Everything

She is everything.

We are just back from a humanitarian trip to Guatemala where the green greets you before your plane even lands. Coerced into going, she landed in a paradise of bougainvillea, mango orchards, and jacaranda trees. The fruits of that volcanic ash soil first nourished her soul. The week kept wrapping itself around her and she met it - at first with the tentative tread of a reserved person but then with the full power of her quiet personality. I saw her.

I saw her best at the hospital. We walked into a Franciscan-run institution where the outcasts of Guatemala land. Babies are left on the steps. Adults with any stripe of disability are granted sanctuary and clean care. Slack jaws and drool and deformed limbs sent me cowering inside myself. She, on the other hand, met it. With that warm, crinkly-eyed smile and her arthritic hands, she reached out to them and said in her English, "Hello." It was universal. They turned their faces up to her and smiled.

I saw the strong woman of my youth insisting on doing the dirtiest work, the thankless tasks, throughout the week. She wore her frilly green blouse, donned an apron, and was on the rusty school desks before anyone else could find sandpaper. She grabbed the stickiest pots, chiseled away at dried wood putty, and climbed to the back of the van.

I saw the empathetic woman I've come to know as an adult. Only she could sustain Aunt Penny's elbow with just the right touch. Not of pity, not of support, but of quiet presence. She cried in the market. This woman of reserve broke down when we bought sets of school clothes for our sponsored children. She then recovered and laughed along with the tickling and storytelling on the van-ride home. She showed up in Guatemala and was present. She has done so forever.

She is wonder woman. She is Unstinting Giving. She is my mom.

Thirty-Eight Years Young

You would think I had never dressed myself
for manual labor before

Go get the knobby gloves from your mother

You can't wear your jeans
She throws sweat pants down the stairs
I only wear them for gardening
they can get ripped

I said to get the knobby gloves
He sits waiting on the tractor
waiting lest I...
have forgotten how to drive?
don't know how to signal
for the one left turn in our journey?

I think it is this

Stay behind me
He ahead of me
gesticulates madly
indicating left, Left, LEFT already
all of you hordes of people driving
rural dirt Wisconsin roads

I come home to Wisconsin
and
am
38 years young.
Ensconced.

Strength: My Mom

The air was thick
The barn aisles slick
My 13 year-old body coated with sweat.

The cow-stink of manure
weighed heavy in my nostrils
humid air with assault power.

The manure-producers
sagged under their heavy garb
of surcingle and milker.

I watched the milk first gush
out of their bodies,
then trickle as their bags drained dry.
Then I'd switch the milker to the next bossie
and she'd have her gush-to-trickle moment to shine.

Alone in a barn of 73 females - milking.
Peter played go between,
catching up on the dipping if I needed him,
feeding the cows, and checking on Sarah.

Sarah was manning the shooter.
Wagons pulled in,
Sarah switched on the hydraulics
to shoot the fresh-chopped sileage up
up into the 70 foot silos.

Empty wagon out
Full wagon in
Repeat.

But wet and heavy was the sileage
blocked arteries often needed unclogging
and Sarah would have to ascend
to beat at them with desperate fists
to comb at it with a fork
to poke it, prod it, move it along.

Then the clouds unleashed.
The torrents began
The black sky gave birth to sheets
to pound down and soak her
and block out her view
Her 10 foot leap to the ground

I, in the barn, felt relief at last
the humidity condensing to cleansing rain.

To my ears came sounds of wild laughter
between the thunderous peals.
They're laughing at me again
was all I could think.
When Peter burst into the barn.

Sarah has a fork through her foot!
Sarah jumped onto a fork and it's through her foot!
We need to get Mom! We need to get Mom!

Out to be vigilant I went
To stand by my sister
who dragged herself
out of the way of the rocking wagon.
With a fork hoe stuck through her foot.

Red-scarved, sunburned, halo-auraed Mom came
and saw Sarah
She gritted her teeth
They were field work dusty brown.

Go into the barn.
She didn't waste words
We didn't waste time

She grasped that fork and pulled it right out.
She grasped that fork and pulled it right out.

Sarah has the scar.
I have the wonder.