The Movie

Over Christmas break I played the old Trivial Pursuit game with my son.  He answered questions from a pack of cards from the BBC show “Doctor Who,” and I had him question me from the original pack of Trivia cards from the 1980s.  I purchased the game back then and that decade might well be the last time I played it.  We won’t even go to the place that has to explain why I still own something I haven’t used for over thirty years. 

What was funny though, is that during the game, I found myself digging up a few memories from the 80s that had somehow slipped past me the last few decades.  One question reminded me that I was in a movie once – as an extra.  It was a made for TV movie that was filmed on my college campus in Southern California.  I got paid thirty bucks for pretty much standing around all day, waiting for the scene to be shot.  The scene was very brief, but enough to land me a date.

As it turned out, the New Year’s Eve after the movie was filmed, but before it was released, I was invited to sail to Catalina Island with some friends.  After we drank champagne and the bottle was empty, I put a note in it and threw it overboard.  I don’t remember what I wrote, but it was pretty witty, I’m sure.

A few months later, I got a call from a guy that had rented an island to go wild boar hunting up in the Santa Barbara Island chain and that’s where he found my bottle.  He was intrigued by what I’d written.  We chatted a long time and he finally asked me to send him a photo of myself.  As it turned out, the movie I was in was going to be on TV the next day so I told him the scene I was in and what I was wearing and he could just turn on the TV and check me out, thus saving me a postage stamp and a selfie.  It was pretty incredible timing.

No sooner had the scene aired than my phone rang and he asked me out.  We met at the fanciest restaurant in town and enjoyed a wonderful evening.  He was a bit old for me, and way too rich for my blood, so that ended that, but it was a fun experience just the same.

As I relived those memories, I realized I’d never actually seen the entire movie I was in because I got a call in the middle of it.  Thanks to Amazon, I found a VHS copy and bought it.

I was with my little buddy that lived with us for a few months, when the movie arrived a few days ago.  I opened the package in front of him and told him I was in that movie.  “You were in a movie?” he said, “Well that explains why you have so much stuff.” 

                      

I didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t the whopping thirty bucks I earned that day that filled my house with things, but more like the thirty years of stuff I just haven’t gotten rid of.

Christmas

This Christmas season we were forced into simplicity because we had a family of four living in our house for nearly three months.  It changed everything for us, but surprisingly, for the better.

Instead of all our usual traditions, which add a lot of busyness to the holiday season, we had to adapt a little and eliminate a lot of things.  Turned out, it was one of the best Christmases we’ve enjoyed in a long time.

What I want every year for Christmas is just to spend time with those I love.  This year, I was elated.  I had way more time than usual because of our shift in priorities.  I even had time to sit, undisturbed, for several minutes one day, listening to a CD of Andy Williams’ Christmas songs. I visualized each and every word of the lyrics and I found myself wiping away a few tears at the incredible joy I felt in that moment.  My world was full of delightful peace and life couldn’t have been any better - all just from a little downtime.  Who knew?

I’ve had the tradition, for over thirty years now, of writing a rather lengthy Christmas newsletter.  I’ve heard it referred to as an “epistle” and it’s become part of a few friend’s Christmas tradition to sit down with a cup of coffee and “read all about it.”  My husband also hand draws our Christmas cards each year, which we duplicate 250 times and send out with the newsletters.  But neither of those things happened this year.  The time I would have spent crafting my annual piece of literary genius, was used instead to spend with our houseguests, both in conversing with them when they were at our home, and in helping them launch into their new house right before Christmas.  It involved a lot of unpacking, hanging pictures and overall moral support and encouragement, but it was a gift of time they needed and we were happy to give.  It felt good, in the midst of what would have otherwise been a hectic few weeks, to just stop everything and focus on someone else’s needs and how we could make their lives a little better, even if it meant missing out on a few events ourselves.  I think that’s the real spirit of Christmas anyway – just doing something nice for someone else.

In addition to helping our friends move, the grandson of a friend of ours called to ask if he could borrow some money to get his car repaired.  He just got a new job and needs reliable transportation.  I was more than happy to float him the loan, and afterwards, it felt like I’d given myself a Christmas gift, just by doing that.   It was nice to have a few hundred bucks I could do without for a few months, in order to help someone strapped for cash.  I’ve been there.  I know the feeling.  It was total bliss for me to be able to say “yes,” when he asked for help.

This shift in our Christmas priorities taught me a lot this year, so I’m thinking next Christmas might have even less traditions, and a lot more downtime.

Kory

My husband is the kind of guy who wears socks with holes in them.  When I try to toss them out, he grabs them back and tells me he can rotate them and wear them a few more times before they are ready for the trash.  He looks at it as a way of getting more for his money.  As if he’s earning interest on the money he would spend buying new socks, and that interest percent increases each time he gets an extra wear out of them.  I understand his logic, but it still drives me crazy.  Because it’s not just his socks where he applies this line of thinking. 

So imagine trying to buy a Christmas gift for someone like that.  He doesn’t think he needs anything, not even new socks.   If something breaks, he fixes it. If something new comes on the market, he convinces himself he doesn’t need it.  His goal in life is to not spend money.  He leaves that up to me.  Personally, I think he wants to believe life is free and if he doesn’t see how much I shell out on groceries or paying utility bills, he lives in a happy little utopia where the money never leaves our house.  

Each month I give him a hundred dollar bill to put in his wallet in case he needs anything and I’m not around to pay for it.  Often, that hundred will stay in his wallet for months on end.

Lucky for him, I’m pretty tight with a buck, too, or we might have some serious issues.  One time, when we were particularly low on cash, we had a contest to see who could go the longest without spending a dime – outside of the obvious bills that had to be paid.  I got very creative with my dinner menus and in the end I won because he needed to buy gas for the car to go somewhere.  But the challenge went on for weeks and it was kinda fun while it lasted.  Turns out we don’t need as much stuff as we think we do.

If I buy Kory any kind of clothing item for Christmas, he takes it back, telling me his closet is full and he already has more clothes than he can possibly wear.  The fact he’s been wearing some of them since the 1970s is a moot point for him.  If they still fit, he wears them.  Thank goodness he had some decent clothes back then and I’m not stuck looking at polyester sage green leisure suits with cream pick stitch.

If I buy Kory any kind of tool, he takes it back because he has enough tools and he’s figured out how to do everything he needs to do with the tools he already has.  He’s a great improviser, that way.  He often makes me gifts with just scrap material he has lying around.  He’s extremely proud of himself if he doesn’t have to buy a thing to complete it.  One year for Christmas I got a rock.  It was cool though because he’d drilled a hole halfway through it and cut the bottom off so it sat flat and works great as a vase.   I think that idea might have come from his socks.

Joan

My neighbor often invites her grown children over to her place.  She sets up the lawn chairs in a circle around her fire pit under a canopy of tall cedar trees overlooking the valley below, and that’s where they sit and chat, rain or shine.  It’s a scene I’ve driven by many times over the years, and such was the scene on Sunday night as we drove down our driveway after being gone for the weekend.

That family sits around that fire pit for hours on end, usually with food and beverages nearby, enjoying the conversation and just being together.  We’ve been invited to join their “fire circle” on a few occasions and I’ve always felt honored to be included in this special family time of theirs.  But now, it will be no more. 

Our dear, sweet neighbor, Joan Gebhardt, died peacefully at home on Saturday night, with her family by her side.  Her boys and their significant others gathered together on Sunday to have a final farewell around the fire – their mother’s chair sitting empty in the circle - except for a bouquet of flowers brought over by our other dear neighbor, Priscilla Torseth.  Our little neighborhood will never be the same.

It’s not just sad to lose a woman we love, but it’s sad to lose traditions.  Joan’s children will miss many family traditions they’ve kept over the years, but we have a few we’ll miss, too. 

For years, Joan came over in the fall and winter on Saturday nights to have a bowl of soup with us and to play cribbage.  She and Kaleb would team up against Kory and I.  She was a pro, and even though she taught us well, it was rare we could beat her.  I’ll never be able to play that game again without hearing her voice in my head, as she laid down her cards saying, “15 two, 15 four, and the rest don’t score.”

So many traditions die when a loved one leaves us. It’s hard sometimes, to adjust to the new normal.  We had Thanksgiving traditions for years, always inviting up the same two families from Seattle to spend the day with us.  One of the families stayed the night and we’d go hiking together the next day.  Forget Black Friday, we had pumpkin pie to work off.  Then the mom got cancer and died.  The dad remarried and his new wife came with her own set of traditions and it didn’t include coming to our house.  It was a tough adjustment, especially for our son who likes traditions that don’t get altered.  But life is all about adapting to our changing circumstances, so we found another family to invite over who for years had been spending Thanksgiving alone.  It was good to have a full house again this year.

Our neighbor, Joan, also had a long standing tradition of setting up a Christmas tree on her porch and whoever came by for a visit during the holiday season got to take home an ornament off her tree.  I love the sentiment behind it because the only theme our tree has, is that of memories - ornaments bought on trips, Kaleb’s handmade ones, and ones we’ve gotten from visits to Joan’s.

While our traditions may have to change as the years go by, at least our memories of them are steadfast and can last as lifetime.  We’ll miss you, Joan.

Christmas Music

I can’t find our Christmas CDs.  I usually keep them out all year, but last year I inadvertently packed them away with all the other decorations and this year I did not get out my plethora of boxes because half our house is being occupied by friends and all their stuff, and there just isn’t room for my abundance of holiday decor, so the CDs are somewhere in the attic in a box that probably will not be retrieved for another year.   Lord, help me.

One of the highlights of the month of December for our entire family is listening to Christmas music.  There is not another holiday or event all year long that invokes musical interludes like the Christmas season, so it is certainly something we cannot miss.  We each have our favorite CDs, which get played repeatedly until someone else in the house puts a stop to it and switches it with their favorite.

When I was a kid I listened incessantly to my mom’s favorites - the likes of Bing Crosby, Andy Williams and Elvis Presley – each with their own special 33rpm Christmas albums that were stacked up on the turntable and played throughout the month.  I don’t ever remember my mom dancing at any other time of the year, but when Elvis’ Blue Christmas song came blasting out of those stereo speakers, she’d start to dance and grab whatever kid was near to twirl them around the living room and join her in that little holiday thrill. Music does that to a person.  I must admit, Elvis’ Blue Christmas is one of my favorites, too, but listening to Clay Aiken singing Mary Did You Know brings me to tears each and every time I hear it, so it’s a close second.  Both songs are good ones in their own unique ways.

When Kaleb was a preschooler he used to love the song, Feliz Navidad. He had a little guitar he’d strum and run around the house singing “Feliz Na-bi-da” over and over again.  He kinda sounded like Elvis when he was doing it and I’m ever so thankful I captured those moments on video, but like the Christmas CDs, who knows where that is.

Currently, Kaleb loves a group called “Go Fish” and his all time favorite song of theirs is Christmas with a Capital C.  That song gets us both up dancing in the living room, singing at the top of our lungs right along with them.  It’s good to have such joy in the house.

I recently bought a retro Andy Williams Christmas CD to add to my now missing holiday collection. That’s all that’s going to be playing in our house this year unless I succumb and finally try to figure out how to download music off the Internet.   I usually resist technological advances but if they somehow figure out how to project holographic Christmas decorations so I don’t have to unpack any more