My Family - Putting the Fun Back in Dysfunctional

The dashboard clock read 9:l6 p.m.when we shoved the last gift into the car and took off for Atlanta. My daughter drove and I road shotgun.  My job was to keep her awake when the extra large cup of coffee failed to be effective.  We had stopped just before heading up the I-85 ramp at a Racetrack where we locked the doors and prayed we wouldn't see a real shotgun.  My mother used to tell me Montgomery was more dangerous than Atlanta and the filling station looked as if it would prove it.   We left  Montgomery and my family's Christmas Eve Party, tired, with higher cholesterol and full of memories and a need to talk.  Most of our conversation began with "Did you know?" and "Did you see?"  The questions and answers were enough to keep anyone awake.  Since I was a young girl my family has gotten together on Christmas Eve to exchange presents.  Polaroid shots recorded the first gatherings where my brother and I were flanked by our older siblings and a couple of their kids.  Eight millimeter films showed that our family had grown and prospered.  Nicer house, nicer gifts. Cam recorders saw marriages and babies added to the ranks.  My older brothers became grandparents and my parents passed away.  I changed husbands like the others changed hairstyles.  My brothers became great-grandparents and I became a grandmother.   Despite it all, or because of it, still we gathered at Christmas Eve.   Now ipods and camera phones catch a few memories but most of the images will only linger in our minds and hearts.  As our numbers increased, gift giving began to change also.   There was a time when everyone gave everyone a gift.  The value of the gifts under the tree in the 80s was about that of the economy of a small third world country. The US retail business flourished.  I sometimes think our family's decision to play Dirty Santa has singlehandedly caused the recession.   Now over 40 adults played the game and over a  dozen others watched and laughed at the winners and losers.  Eleven children were considered  too young to be subjected to the terror of having a $50 Bass Pro Shop gift card stolen from them.  My father used to tell me "spend time with the people who will cry at your funeral".  These are the people I hope will cry. They are my siblings and my nieces and nephews, great and great-great. In-laws and out-laws. They may only see me at Christmas, funerals and weddings; but they know me by name and I love them on sight. They are funny and smart and gifted and not-so-gifted and I am proud of them and proud to be a part of them. My daughter and I talked about "healthy relationships" and "being well-adjusted and emotionally happy" on the trip home.  We talked about "rational and reasonable" families and we decided we would rather be in this one!

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

I loved my Christmas Party.  I really had a wonderful time.  My trees were rockin' and got rave reviews and my mantel was praised and I didn't have to brag 'cause everyone else did it for me.  I thought about what to write and I decided that  I could write something mushy about women finding their way alone.  Or about the beauty of friendship filling the gaps of loneliness.   I could write about the power of the human spirit as it struggles to right itself and find its place in an unfriendly and dangerous world.  But the truth is, I just had a really good time with a bunch of people I enjoyed.  I drank my Vodka Punch and ate my overcooked meatballs and my brown sugar ham and went to bed with a feeling that I was beginning to be me again.  I could talk about feeling overwhelmed by life and swallowed by an enormous male ego to the point that I didn't exist.  But the truth is,  I  made it through another year with all those feelings.  I made it through.   Even overwhelmed and complaining and broke.  I can't say that its easy to be alone.  Its not.  You wish that at this time of year there was someone who loved you and cared about you.  But if you stop long enough to think about it, you see that you are.  It may not be the way you expected it to be, nor the way that others think it should be.  But you can know within yourself that you are a good person, a person that others like, that your life matters and more importantly that others matter to you.  If you get nothing else this Christmas.  If you don't get a new car or even a gallon of gas.  If  your gift is to know that you have love in your life;  you have received the gift of the Magi, the gift foretold by the Angels, the gift given by the Father and laid in a manager, the gift of true Grace.  Merry Christmas to you all.

Decked Out and Decking the Halls

For the last few years I have found it difficult to plan a party.  There was a  time when I could think of a million reasons to have a party, get folks over, cook out, whatever. In south Alabama, my life revolved around parties and friends.  The weather in Baldwin County is pleasant most of the winter (unlike North Georgia) and conducive to entertaining.  Even the dreaded months of January and February are made liveable with Mardi Gras and parades and public drunkenness.  My good, but sadly dead, second husband genuinely liked people and loved an audience.  He could always find an excuse to have a good time.  My not so good, last and final husband did not especially enjoy entertaining.  He traveled and when home, wanted down time.  Even before we left South Alabama, he found entertaining to be an invasion of his private time. He preferred his time at home to be on the sofa with me and the dogs. Now I have all the down time I can stand and no dogs on the sofa, so I am having a party.  If you are reading this, you are invited.  I have put lights on everything.  If it could be lit up, it is.  Including me last night.  I have decked the halls, the back porch, the back yard, the garage door.  I am not completely sure why I have so much "spirit" but I have it and I want to share it.  My house is small and I have no doubt that I have invited too many people. In fact, I just invited all of you, so yes, I'm over shooting.  In order to accommodate what I hope to be an over-flowing crowd,  I have wrapped my screened porch in heavy duty plastic sheeting.  I spent several hours up on a ladder yesterday doing this and the entire time I had shades of the l970s when some fine Christian woman suggested to us other, fine Christian women, in her course "Total Woman", that we greet our husbands at the door wearing nothing but a smile and a box of Saran Wrap. Which explains why I was lit.  When young women today watch "Fried Green Tomatoes" they think Fannie Flagg is just being funny.  The 70s almost killed femininity and me.   I hope I get better results with the porch than I did with that wrap.  That was the first disastrous divorce.  Even as I write this, I hear the winds of North Georgia slapping my wrap around.  But in the mist of all this sadness, desperation and financial mayhem,  I am excited over twinkling lights and candy canes and the hope of Christmas.  Even the Bubba Santas of Jasper can not wreck my belief that this will be one of the best Christmases ever.  So if you don't have plans on the l7th and happen by Jasper, which would only occur if you were heading up 515 to Ellijay or Blueridge cause we aren't on the way to anywhere else, please stop in for a cup of eggnog and a holiday cookie and a hug and a wish for the Merriest of Christmases and the Happiest of New Years.  If you can't stop, honk.

Pickens Animal Rescue - Saving Lives, Including Mine

Squeezed between the marching bands, convertibles carrying local beauty queens, and homemade floats, a small group of PAR volunteers walked dogs that were available for adoption. It was the night of the Jasper Christmas Parade and although Georgia was playing LSU for the SEC Championship, the whole town turned out to watch the parade.  Pickens Animal Rescue is a non kill ranch which houses sometimes as many as 80 dogs and a whole house full of cats.  Dogs are neutered/spayed, given their shots and identity chips and can live on the ranch until a home is found for them.  I was a walker for the PAR group.  I held the leash for Sugar who is a medium size Georgia Black dog.  But she was in charge.  Sugar would make a wonderful dog for a family with boys.  She had natural curiosity and wonderful energy.  She was not afraid of the bands and only mildly interested in the firetruck sirens.  She loved each group of children that I allowed her to speak with.  We walked up main street in Jasper with Lilly a small, scared terrier mix who seemed to need a lot of reassurance and a loving home, Charlie, a black Pomeranian who has sight difficulties but doesn't suffer for personality, and Shiloh, a basset, who stole the show by deciding not to walk and sitting down in the middle of the parade right on the center yellow line. When the parade was over and we took the dogs back to the van to be crated and sent back to the ranch, I had a moment of sadness.  I thought about the dogs and how sad it was that they didn't have a home.  But then I realized, these are the lucky dogs. They do have a home.  They are loved and cared for and fed and given medical treatment.  For as long as they need it.  I am so glad that I stumbled into the PAR Thrift Store two years ago when I was at such a low point in my life. I am so fortunate that they had a place for me. A place where I have friends and where I am cared about. And a place where I know that I make a difference. If this Christmas you find that you are feeling a little let down, a little disappointed,  find a place where you can volunteer, where you can give of yourself.  A place where you can make a difference in someone's life, even if that someone is a dog or a cat. Sometimes the best things in life come from knowing that you are part of something bigger than yourself, bigger than your problems.  Sometimes we all need to be rescued.

Red Mud and Green Grass Stains, Its a Jasper Christmas

What's red and green, fully bearded,  and can be located on any street corner in Jasper, Georgia, but can not be seen?  No, its not Santa's special helpers.  Its just all the local guys in town for  the Jasper Christmas Night of Lights, and they are wearing their camo.  I had hoped for more Christmas and less Jasper but you get what you get.  I know that there are more hunters in North Georgia than there are people in Alabama.  To these guys, dressy casual is camo without red mud on it.  Everywhere you look there's a pick up truck up to its bumper in red, dried Georgia clay.  All the men go all camo, all the time.   I am not a fan of hunting, especially since I have managed to name and tame all the deer in my yard.  But the Hillbillies have taken it to a new level.  There are more dead deer in the back of trucks in downtown Jasper than there are along Interstate 85 from Atlanta to Montgomery.  We used to have the cutest little health food store that served homemade jellies and organic lunches.  Birdseed and vitamins. I loved it.  This past year due to the economy the lady who rented it, moved.   Now its a taxidermy/deer cooler place.  Five rusted out pickup trucks and an 18 Wheeler have taken the place of the beamers and convertibles that used to buy their vitamins and vegetables at that location.  Since Thanksgiving large black birds have been circling the parking lot. The guys stand around down there getting a Pepsi from the neon lighted machine,  on what was a cute and classy front porch, shooting the bull (better than the deer), sitting on plastic yard furniture and throwing cigarette butts into what's left of the herb garden.  I've recently noticed a beautiful l0 pointer in my neighborhood.  I think he's smelled the fire at the taxidermy place and decided to winter with the does of my subdivision.  I will pray he makes it until Christmas without chasing some misguided young doe out the gate and toward his doom.   In the meantime, you all understand more and more why I don't have a date for New Year's.  More on the Christmas parade later.