Nevertheless … how I love our Christmas tree …
Update …
Note – Re: Some of the references that I made in the video include: Two Buttons (for the Buddha Face over the fireplace, and the creamy colored marble urn in the dining room); Ten Thousand Villages (for the two nativity scenes on the fireplace mantel); and UNICEF (for the wooden, African nativity scene).
Quote of the day:
"A lot of it has to do with the environmental effect of having canned Christmas music in the speakers every time I go to the grocery store, for months at a time," said Ragan, a.k.a. Arun Once-Was-Zygoat. "Of all the 10,000 holidays that can be celebrated in this heterogeneous country, we have one particular version of this one holiday shoved down our throats all the time. In the most saccharin form." Krampus in Philadelphia
I heard this article on the radio yesterday, and looked up for more information about Krampus - to my horror and dismay. The idea of terrorizing children into being good at Christmas time was simply too much for my poor early childhood educator's soul to bear! I have never liked the idea of threatening children (even in a playful way) with coal instead of gifts. But terrorizing them with this Krampus tradition seemed too cruel for words. On the other hand, I understood Ragan in the quote above, because I must admit that I also feel at times that Christmas is shoved down our throats in a saccharin form.
I have learned about the rituals and habits of Christmas from life partner and his family members, movies, books, television commercials, and American culture as a whole. After all, I came to the USA from Israel, where I celebrated Hanukkah in a secular and traditional manner, mainly for my son's sake as he was growing up. I was happy to take on different holidays and rituals from the dominant culture in America so that I could feel part of the country I had adopted for my future life. After all, holidays, for me, are times when family and friends get together to shed light on winter bleakness, and traditions and cultures seem for the most part to have good will and compassion in mind. So who cares if it is about hope and light in the form of the birth of a beautiful new baby, or an oil lamp that miraculously shines for eight days!
Lately, however, I have been wondering why I do not make an effort or take the time to recognize the holidays that I celebrated for twenty years while living in Israel. I regularly make excuses: my son does not come home for the holidays so why celebrate them; or I do not know enough Jewish people with whom to celebrate [and yet I am not Christian and am willing to completely take on Christian holidays for the non-Jewish people around me … so why wouldn't they … ?]; and so on and so forth …
I know am not seeking out any type of deity in my celebration of holidays. More likely I am trying to find my place or feel included. In the process of learning about my self, more and more, I have discovered that my greatest fear, since I was a very young child, is that I am "excludable," "unlovable," or "undesirable," for who I am. And so I guess that I happily take on the "other's" culture without expecting (or even allowing myself to want) anyone to embrace mine … in order not to anticipate even the slightest discomfort from being rejected.
The other night at their final class of the semester, I shared my tradition of Hanukkah with the early childhood students. Each student received one clementine, one Hanukkah candle, and one Hershey's Kiss. Let me explain why I chose these three gifts: When I lived in Israel twenty years ago, in the winter we used to eat a lot of citrus fruits, especially clementines. And so for me, clementines symbolize the celebration of Hanukkah – even as latkes or sufganiyot have meaning for others. Each night for eight nights, we would light small, colorful candles in a Hanukkiyah by the window so that others could see the light shining from our homes. Chocolate coins were given to the children as a symbol of Hanukkah gelt (or money) at this holiday time. I gave out Hershey's Kisses instead, because I was unable to find the chocolate coins in time for class. Stores in our area were not selling them yet – Hanukkah must be too far off (less than three weeks hence) and most stores are intensely focused on Christmas right now. And so I chose dark chocolates to be off-set by the light of the candle – just for the fun of playing with symbolism. After all – isn't that what it is all about – symbolism?
I noticed that the students' faces lit up as I shared my holiday traditions with them – indeed, as I shared a piece of myself with them. It felt good to me – warm and inclusive.
So, now that I am no longer a child with ancient fears and painful emotional memories - perhaps I can make a conscious choice, and become includable by sharing all the diverse parts of myself while, at the same time embracing the other. We are surrounded by complexity. It seems that Christmas time holds cruel and dark memories for some – see Krumpus – being good and bad – deserving and undeserving of Christ's, or parent's love. Just as Hanukkah rises up out of a time of war and bloodshed, breaking down and building up a nation's heritage through temples and coins. For me, celebrations and the coming together of family and friends is tangled up in feelings of excludable-ness and being wanted for who I am.
I go downstairs and place small, colorful candles in the Hanukkiyah that stands next to our twinkling Christmas tree on the front porch. That way, when I share the candles on December 20th evening, people from the street might enjoy light from the Hannukiyah, together with the gentle, twinkling lights emanating from our Christmas tree.
This video is made for Neil Kramer: Citizen of the Month!
Here's to you and all your devoted readers, Neil! Happy Holidays!
A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Silent on the outside
Quote of the day:
Memories are moments that refuse to be ordinary. [Uncle Mary … My old friend, dancing and tennis partner way back when …]
Yesterday afernoon I spent an hour or so going through old photographs. As is always the case when I venture back in time, I become quite nostalgic, and find myself longing for those good old days. This time, though, I observed that when I was young I was really quite pleasant to look at! And yet, as I pored over the pictures one by one, I realized that during those moments that each photograph was being taken, I was feeling anything but pleasant to look at. Indeed, at those times, I was feeling more like I was too fat, clumsy, my clothes were weird or inappropriate, or, even, that I was plain old ugly.
I sat with my legs crossed on the carpet in my study, glued to those old photographs – mesmerized – as I thought back to how I perceived my appearance. I remembered how some members of my family used to call me a femme fatale, and I gasped. For the way I viewed myself back then was that I was lucky if anyone liked me or found me attractive at all. In fact, I was searching for love with a pathetic type of desperation, doing, thinking and feeling – being - anything people would have me be, just so they would like me. I certainly did not view myself as "attractive," or "a catch." I noticed, too, that I was even dressed in clothes that the people I was involved with at different times in my life, preferred me to wear!
I was stunned. Of course, none of this is really new to me. I have known these things forever. These feelings are at the very core of my being. I developed them to survive as a child. I understand all of this. And yet, yesterday afternoon, surrounded by the photographs of 60 years passed, I saw my Self in a clearer light.
After looking at the photographs, I was feeling a little bewildered and disoriented. I donned a new dress I bought recently to attend a Thanksgiving dinner with a group of old friends – people who had taken me into their home and hearts when I first arrived in America 23 years ago. I felt awkward. It was not the type of dress I usually buy for myself, and it was a little shorter than I am usually comfortable with. "in fact," I thought, "I hardly ever buy dresses for myself." As I gazed at my reflection in the mirror, I understood that I am constantly trying to dispel the femme fatale myth – the shame I feel about my feminity or sexuality within myself. This dress accentuated my curves, had a soft silky texture. I felt like a woman in it. Not exceptionally good looking – but somewhat attractive for a woman my age – 62. Still struggling with feeling awkward and confused, I arrived at the dinner.
Before long, the friends' love and warmth enveloped me, and soon I even felt comfortable enough to sing out loud when it was time for the share-our-talents section of the evening. First, they begged me to sing a song they had remembered me singing over twenty years ago in their living room in Buffalo. I sang a little shakily at first trying to remember the words, but at the end they burst into thunderous applause, and I looked around at their glowing, smiling faces in amazement. Emotionally overwhelmed, I had difficulty singing the next song because tears were rising into my throat.
It is a different time for me as I seek my own sense of who I am – not as scary or challenging as it used to be when I was young. I am older now, a little wiser, and so much stronger emotionally. And in this Thanksgiving season this year, I feel most grateful for the years I still have left, for me to unlearn old messages, and dispel worn-out myths and perceptions of my Self.
Quotes for my day:
These words have stayed with me for days, reinforcing my own beliefs and knowledge about writing, speaking, teaching, diversity acceptance, and so forth. Indeed, they have given me comfort for the work I do each day.
Today I am grateful for those who shed light when the way seems dark.
A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Exercising my writes, & Abundantly
Walking in the crisp, fall afternoon, looking up at the rust colored leaves against a clear, blue sky, I could not help but feel gratitude for that beautiful day. My feet seemed to fly across the pavement and through piles of leaves raked to the side of the road. I carried two letters to post as soon as I came across a mailbox on my way. Suddenly a postal van drew up slowly next to me and the mailman reached out his window. "Ma'am," he said, "Can I take those for you?" he pointed down to the letters dangling in my hand by the side of my body. I beamed at him. "Oh!" I exclaimed, surprised at his noticing me, while driving by on his busy afternoon, postal rounds."Thank you so much," I said, smiling widely as I handed him the letters. He smiled back, and drove off into the distance, his little, white van personally harboring my mail. I started to jog a little down the road, Annie Lennox singing, "Hallelujah," through my earphones at exactly the right moment.
I returned home breathing deeply, sweating from the exercise as the sun stretched across the sky, and a chill returned to the coming-of-evening air. I had thought that I was not going to do a Thanksgiving, gratitude, count-down this year.
But after yesterday afternoon, I think I have already started it!
A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Coffee and tea
Quote of the day:
To have a Self is hell …
… for me.
I can't believe I said that out loud. [Me, in therapy yesterday]
I especially love it when reflection leads to revelation. Because that often leads to the unfolding of even more awareness.
This morning, for example, I am remembering how, many years ago, when I had first arrived in Buffalo a-now-old friend told me that I was like every body's shadow. It was an insightful observation, although at the time I did not understand it.
Now I do.
Having a Self, is more than just "independent thinking," although that is a major part of it. For it includes validating my feelings, or, more importantly, even being able to acknowledge I have the feeling in the first place – that I have a right to think and feel the way I do.
Indeed, I am amazed at how difficult it is – being freed of the prison of having no Self …
… for I might have to take a stand for me from now on …
Quote of the day:
"Can you imagine the desperation of a child who chooses to believe that it was all his fault just so he doesn't have to consider the idea that his mother did it? Or that his parents did it? Because, Terry, I'll tell you something, I don't know anything about you, but I think it's completely barbaric to shake hands with and seek help from the person who caused your injury. That will make you sick." Darrell Hammond
I just cannot get over the interview I heard yesterday on NPR on my drive home from work last night.
It has struck a chord that bears deeper reflection …
A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Gratitude reflections
Scrambling to find self worth. Is that what we all do as children? At first trying to find it in the eyes of significant adults in our lives or through the comments they make about us, around us, to us, with us. What about their actions? Do those affect how we perceive our own importance or worth while-ness? These are some of the questions I consider about how I have come to be who I am right now at age 62. For, after all, I am not the same person I was even ten years ago. I am surely a culmination of the tweaking of my self perceptions of me over the years.
At times I mourn the time I wasted on believing other people's realities. Was I so needy of their acknowledgement that I readily and willingly gave up the truth of who I was, succumbing to reinforcing their stereotypes of me in order that they love me? Do we all do that?
Even as I think about this stuff or write it down so that I can see it in black and white in front of my eyes, I know that unlearning early emotional memory – early childhood brain washing – is almost an impossibility. And yet, I barrel forward receiving gifts of validation along the way that help as I stumble and scramble to discover a different, kinder, gentler reality of my self: that I am just a regular human being like anyone else, with flaws and failings, as well as strengths and accomplishments. With all kinds of feelings that all human beings have: anger, jealousy, love, and longing … on and on. And that, at the same time as feelings and flaws are so universal to all humankind, mine are perfectly unique to me – my genetics, early childhood experiences, and interpretations of others beliefs about me.
As I read memoir after memoir I discover traces of my self in all of them somehow. I cannot imagine that mine would be unique. Are any of them? For most of them tell tales of overcoming challenging early childhoods, resiliency and courage to understand, forgive and move on. They buoy us forward in our own quests for self actualization. I think about the purpose of my memoir. Indeed, part of the challenge of writing one is in the definition of its purpose.
Is that what I want to do? Give others strength and courage through my own life stories? Do I want to write to understand me more? Or do I feel the need to tell my story so that I no longer feel invisible, unheard – an individual with a mind of her own?
The complexity of it all is awesome, overwhelming even, and in this early morn I mourn for the young girl I once thought I was.
A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Therapy reflections
This morning I sat at my desk thinking about the bewildered and hopeful faces of young freshmen wandering through the campus, and faculty rested and refueled after a summer of travels, family time or, perhaps, research and writings. I suppose it should not seem strange at the end of a busy summer, as the skies cloud up and a hint of fall is in the air, that I should feel a sense of renewal. After all, that should come with the spring, surely? Having hibernated and drawn oneself within, there is such a blossoming outwards and upwards in those glorious spring months of April and May. And yet, renewal is in the air for me these days. Not just because a new semester and academic year has begun.
The renewal seems within me at a deep, personal level. The external features or characteristics of my life have not changed in any significant way. We are settled in our new home, the garden is flourishing, and work is pretty much the same as it has been these past few years as head of a teacher education department. Professional aspirations and ambitions seem to have balanced out to an even, comfortable keel, and I quite enjoy what I do.
The change is felt as a shift within me. A slightly different way of perceiving myself. More peaceful, accepting, less fearful, less needy for external acknowledgement or validation. Mostly, though, I am feeling less to blame for everything and everyone. It is as though I have climbed out of an abyss and reaching towards the top there is a gentle light – compassionate and soft – that beckons and welcomes me to a different world, a kinder reality about my Self.
It manifests itself in different ways. For example, feeling more comfortable in certain people's presence- especially those with whom I felt anxiety in the past. Or, observing more keenly – becoming more aware about how other people's behaviors are not about me, and that I am not the cause for them to react in the ways they do. At times I have more ease knowing what I desire or need. Being alone does not feel lonely any more. And, I must admit, I am embracing my age more graciously – no longer starting with fright at my older self reflection in the mirror – even smiling at the odd aches and pains that rise up unexpectedly to greet me.
It is a strange sensation, unknown territory for me. I navigate it carefully cherishing each moment as I become more aware of the changes in me, for I have no idea where they will lead me. That in itself is a shift too. For, I do not feel as anxious to know where I will end up.
I think I will just hobble along as the shifts change and changes shift, and hope that when I arrive, I will know that place – almost – for the first time …
tamarjacobson 