Happy Birthday America

In addition to being a national holiday, the Fourth of July is my birthday. For years I thought all the fireworks and picnics and parades were just for me, and, boy, did I feel important. Then I found out that 99.99 percent of the American public was celebrating Independence Day, and just my family cared about my birthday.

When I matured, just last year, I got over the disappointment and was thrilled to share my birthday with America. I get tingly all over when I hear "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." Sometimes I even sing it at the top of my lungs, which makes my kids want to run and hide.

As with so many other events since September, this is another one without my husband, and it has been hard to think about having fun without him. But life does go on. That is what we try to get our minds and hearts around when we are grieving. So the kids are coming to party with me, and we will do some things differently this year. That way maybe we won't all miss him so much.

Monday Morning Musings

Today we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Some people don't think any more of the day other than the fact that it is a holiday and a day off work. Other people are irritated that there is yet another holiday to inconvenience them by closing banks, the postal service, and other government offices. Thank goodness, there are many more who recognize the importance of what he did and the need to celebrate and honor that.

And thank goodness that we teach our children and grandchildren the legacy that King left us. Here in my small town there is an annual celebration that draws close to two hundred people, which is good since the population is just over 3,000. The majority of those people are African-American, but more and more people of other colors and cultures show up each year. There are, of course, the obligatory speeches by city and church leaders, but there is also a wide variety of entertainment, singing and dancing and dramatic readings of some of King's most memorable speeches. It is always a good reminder of what Dr. King stood for.

I was proud to be active in the Civil Rights Movement, and we have made strides in acceptance and equality since the early 60s, yet prejudice and bigotry still impact our society way too much. Dr. King's mission will not be complete until that no longer happens.

Dr. King left quite a list of inspirational quotes, and this is one of my favorites, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Wonderful words, but only wonderful if we take them to heart and act on them.

On the opposite side of the "love/peace" coin is the increasing danger students face when they go to school. According to a report in The Beast by Brandy Zadrozny, there have been 24 school shootings since the Newtown tragedy two years ago, the most recent in Philadelphia. While this latest one appears not to be the same as incidents of anger-motivated mass shootings, it still causes great concern. In a more recent article in The Guardian Liberty Voice,  giving more details about the shooting at Delaware Valley Charter High School  Michele Wessel questions how a young man was able to get a weapon into the school that was equipped with metal detectors. 

Good question, but perhaps a better one - how did the kid manage to leave home with a gun?

On another note, as we look ahead to February and Valentine's Day, Untreed Reads is having a special sale on romance novels - 30% off - from now through February 14th. I'm happy that my romance, Play it Again, Sam will be included in that sale along with other romance titles published by Uncial Press. They publish everything from sweet romance to hot, hot, hot, so there is something for everyone's taste in a love story. Visit the Untreed Reads Store to see all the titles in the sale.

A Holiday Gift

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

As we get caught up in the hustle and bustle of preparing for the holidays, it is easy to forget what the season is all about.

After my husband and I moved to Texas from Michigan, we rarely made it back to our home state for holidays, and my mother always sent handmade gifts for Christmas. The necessity of counting pennies has ruled her entire life, and we became accustomed to not expecting gifts of any great monetary value. Even so, the arrival of her annual box always sparked an eagerness in me that I never fully understood. The gifts were either hand made or just a small trinket, and sometimes there were even gifts for ‘we-don’t-know-who’.  There were also times we didn’t even know what the gift was or what it was for; usually something she knitted or crocheted that could be a small afghan or a large lap blanket.

When the kids were young, they never understood my excitement over mother’s box, either, but I couldn’t fault them for that. It's easy for a simple gift to be diminished when stacked up next to one larger and more expensive, and like the kids, I often saw my mother's efforts as a mere gesture.
But the year that necessity forced me to make gifts, was the year that I finally understood what a gift really is, whether handmade or purchased.

A gift is not just a thing. It's a connection between the person giving and the person receiving that says something special about the relationship between the two. And a gift should never be rushed. The longer you think about it, plan it, and work on it, the stronger the connection.

That's the special, intangible ingredient my mother wrapped up and sent to us for all those years.


So that is the intangible ingredient I wrapped up in this short story that is my gift to you this Christmas. It was written a number of years ago with a dear friend, and every year since when I read it again at Christmas, I can't help but think of the magic of this season.

The story will be free through December 17th, so you can get a copy for KINDLE or read it on my WEBSITE     ENJOY!

Post-Holiday Thoughts

Perhaps you have had enough of holiday related blogs and are just ready to put the whole holiday experience to rest and forge ahead with everything you have to do in 2010. On one level, I'm ready to do that, too. I have some plans for my writing that entail setting some goals and working toward them, so I need to focus on that.

However, there is still a part of me that is a little sad to see it all go away -- all the fun and frivolity and excitement that seems to surround us from Thanksgiving until New Years.

Yesterday, I took my tree down and put all the decorations away. I did that with mixed emotions. On one hand, it was good to have that major chore over and done with, but on the other hand I will miss the lights and the glitter of tinsel. And the hand-crocheted tablecloth I received from my sister this year does not look nearly as nice with a spring centerpiece as it did with the reds and golds of the Christmas centerpiece.

One thing that will remain, however, is the wonderful feelings that the holidays evoked. We had such a good time with family visiting. We had great leisurely meals, sharing the latest news from everyone; walks down the road on a crisp sunny afternoon to meet the neighbor's donkeys; card games that went on and on in a tournament fashion; and lots of goodies.

We also exchanged gifts, and there were some wonderful things given and received, but for me, the greatest gift was the time spent together. Things will wear out, but this will never lose its magic.

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What about you? What are your best memories from this year?

After the Fun

In keeping with the Holiday season, here is another excerpt from A Dead Tomato Plant and a Paycheck. Enjoy.....


The day after Christmas was usually one of the best and one of the worst days of the year for our family. If that doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, I'm not sure it does to me either. But let me try to explain.

It was the best because:

There were now 364 more shopping days until Christmas.

It was the one day of the year when perhaps the kids were just as tired as we were, and they’d sleep off and on all day.

All the build up for the Big Day was finally over, and the noise level in the house had dropped about 20 decibels.

I didn’t have to cook since we had all those leftovers from Christmas dinner. (If we didn't have a big Christmas dinner, I was in trouble on that score.)

The kids would decide they liked each other after all, and we could go the whole day without a fight – maybe.

The kids would invite me to color with them, or play a game, and we could share some really good times together - as long as they let me win now and then.

But every coin has its flip side, and the other side of this day was:

After the glitter and tinsel of Christmas, after the giving and receiving, the celebrating, singing and eating, we could all sit back, unbutton the waistband of our pants and try to decide who would clean up the mess.

Who would get to spend the next four days sorting through the thousand-and-one little pieces of games, toys, and puzzles that in less than one day managed to get tossed together from one end of the house to another?

On Christmas day, nobody seemed to care, but the day after nobody was being nice anymore, and the house was filled with moaning and wailing and the sounds of blood-letting and bones breaking ...

"Find that Stratego piece or I'll break your arm off and beat you over the head with it!"

"I never touched your Stratego game! Mommeee!!"

I guess four days out of my life wasn't too much to ask.

Who would dig through the 22 bags of trash to find the instructions for assembling the model airplane, because, for once in his life, a kid cleaned up after himself and threw them away with the wrapping paper? (Since that same kid would think nothing of digging through the neighbors' trash to see if they threw away anything he could put to good use, maybe I could pawn that job off on him. )

Who would accept the challenge of figuring out what to do with all the unidentifiable things we received as gifts, such as the strange looking thing from Aunt Mildred that could either be a doily or a dishrag.

The gadget from Uncle Willie that favors a Chinese puzzle, but could actually be his eccentric approach to the can opener.

The game that takes an IQ of at least 300 just to open the box.

The funny little knitted things from Aunt Lucy that are either thumb-less mittens or toe warmers.

I could have called them all personally to thank them for the gifts, and hope that somewhere in the conversation they will mention what they are. But that would have taken some of the fun out of lazy summer afternoons when we’d drag this stuff out again and play a new game called “What on Earth is It?”

Holiday Wishes

At this time of celebrating winter Holidays, I want to wish everyone the happiest of times with family and friends, and all the best for the New Year. I celebrate Christmas, and our cat, John, has decided he wants to be a Christmas present. Either that, or he is waiting to see what Santa is bringing him.

The following is an excerpt from my new book A Dead Tomato Plant and a Paycheck. Please accept it as a small gift to you.

The Christmas Season was always a source of great excitement at our house. It was also a time of great panic. Every year I found the Christmas Season closing in fast with me panting to cross the finish line before Santa Claus.

I’d immediately start my “Holiday Hustle” working non-stop for three weeks to get everything done. There were gifts to send out of state, and cards to mail. Since I didn’t start early enough on that task, I had to decide if I would write one let­ter and copy it for all our friends, or try to find the time to write individual letters. This was before the birth of The Holiday Letter, which has now become a standard way for friends to stay in touch. Some people don’t like them, but, you know, if the alternative means not keeping up with friends, I’m all for it.

Maybe instead of getting angry at the stores that were putting out their Christmas stuff before Halloween, I should have taken their reminder seriously. Then I wouldn't have let Thanksgiving slip by without a thought of the next holiday.

My basic problem was, and still is, the fact that I don't get in the Christmas spirit until a couple of weeks before The Day, and then the frantic juggling act begins. If I could just bring myself to think about Christmas in October I wouldn't be faced with the necessity of regimenting my time down to the last second to get everything done -- structure and discipline being the closest thing to medieval torture I can think of.

However, I knew that I must have some structure, so sometimes I made a calendar with Things to Do. Monday was slotted for shopping. No giving in to the urge to sing carols with the kids or start making decorations. Friday was slotted for singing, and decorating would start the following week. Tuesday was the day to finish the Christmas cards. No fair claiming writer's cramp as an excuse to quit for a while and play with the dog.

Wednesday of that week started out easy. That was the day to write my column, and I didn’t have to stress over what I would write about as I had all this great material to work from. But the strangest thing happened as I wrote about all the things I hadn’t done yet. I had to fight the urge to quit working and dash out to the store when I thought of the perfect gift to get Uncle Barney. Not to mention all the other things I’d forgotten on Monday.

While fighting down that urge, another distraction popped up. The Girl Scout caroling party. I still hadn't called the leader to tell her what songs I'd planned for the girls.

Then I remembered someone else I should have mailed a card to.

Then I remembered I was supposed to get soda for a neighborhood holiday party.

I don’t even remember the rest of that week.

Blogging at Friend's Blog

Today I have a post up on Sandra Sookoo's blog Believing is Seeing. She is running a special series leading up to Christmas featuring different authors with different stories about the Holidays.

At the blog today I wrote about Christmas traditions and how different they are in different parts of the country. When I moved to Texas from Michigan, I was in for big surprise.

If you have time hop over to her blog and visit often in the next ten days. She has a lot of fun topics lines up.

Merry Christmas

I know the politically correct thing to say at this time is Happy Holidays, lest we offend someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas, but I feel like being a rebel today. Besides that, I don't get the least bit offended when someone says Happy Hanukka or Happy Kwanzaa.

Those wishes mean something special to the folks who celebrate those holidays, the same way Merry Christmas means something special to me, and it doesn't take anything away from me for people to express their good wishes the way they want to.

If we all spent more time living up to the inherent meaning in all these holidays and expressions of good will, there could be no offense taken at how people express them. There wouldn't be a "we" and "them" mentality that makes us more protective of our rights.

So my hope for all of us is to have a season of peace and a sense of inclusion instead of exclusion.