The Magic Christmas Tree

Yesterday, I hauled my little Christmas tree up from the basement and decided to trim it. I haven’t had a large tree for a few years because I don’t have room in my little cottage. I have always liked putting up my tree early because December is a special month to me.  My birthday, my wedding anniversary and Christmas all fall in December.   

This year I was feeling frustrated because I plugged the tree in and part of a light strand refused to work .  I have never had the patience to figure out why a strand of lights isn’t working, so I decided to take all of them off and buy a couple of new ones.  It took two hours to unwind all of the tangled wires.  By the time I finished I was disheartened and really wondering why I bothered to put up a tree at all.  I don’t have holiday gatherings anymore because the family has grown too large to have all of them at my cottage, so my children host them now.  Not many people really get to see my decorations anyway.  I had forgotten the point of it, but I had already started and grudgingly decided to finish.  Once again, the magic begins.

As I unwrap each ornament and place it on the little tree, the memories come flooding back.  Time compresses.  All of the years and all of love are contained in that moment.  I am a small child in my blue dress hiding with excitement in the little knotty pine den of our home with my brother.  We can hear Santa stomping around in our living room leaving gifts and never guess that it is our grandpa.

Then I am a young woman singing my heart out with my dear husband in the choir at that long ago lovely church on Christmas Eve.  The beauty of those soaring voices brings me to tears.  In this perfect time warp, my husband and I never lose sight of the importance of our love. We don’t allow the years to diminish our ability to understand what really matters.

I see my children at all ages, their happy faces glowing by the lights of so many Christmas trees, opening gifts and sharing holiday feasts and handmade cookies in candlelit rooms filled with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.  I play Christmas carols on the piano while my sweet family sings and for those few moments all is so very perfect in my world.  

The snow is softly falling deep and silent outside our window and we see Santa walk across the front yard in the moonlight.  He slowly leans over and leaves a big bag of candy and gifts on the ground.  He waves through the window and trudges on out of sight.  My little children are thrilled beyond belief to have seen him.  Then suddenly Santa is there in my oldest son’s living room and my grandchildren are dancing around him with excitement and I am Nana to 5 grandchildren.

My dear mom, dad and brother all long gone, are here with me again.  They are meeting my grandchildren and I am child, mother and grandmother, all at the same time.  All of my beloved dogs are also there.  Belle, Kenya, Raven and Baxter are all happily unwrapping a present with their teeth that they each hold in their paws as they spread bits of paper on the floor. 

All of the reasons for sadness and misunderstanding over all of the many years have been forgotten and the room glows with love as my family and extended family of all ages and all times are impossibly here together for one magical moment. 

I hang the ornaments on the tree as they gather around me.  Ornaments my children made for me when they were small, hang next to the ones my grandchildren painted last year.  There are several special ornaments from old friends and neighbors who came and went in my life and as I look up, I see that they are here as well.  I don’t know how this little cottage can contain all of these people, places, years and love, but somehow for a brief moment in time.  It does.  And that is the very real magic of my little Christmas tree.


This happens to be my favorite Christmas song for trimming my tree.  Enjoy, Dear Friends!

Nameless Faces

Last fall I received and email from a man in Florida who wanted me to paint a series of women's faces for him.  He asked me to look through my stash of reference photos and come up with some faces that he might like.  He had previously contacted me and purchased an original painting that I had for sale on Fine Art America.  It is a very popular site for artists to download images of their artwork in order for people to purchase prints and originals.  He seemed to know my artwork well and suggested that I do a close up of a face that I had done in a previous painting that he had seen on my webpage.

 

Enigma

I thought it was a little odd that someone would want a collection of faces of people they didn’t know, but he sent me the full amount of money for each painting in advance, plus extra for shipping.  I was happy to have the commissions.

After the first face was finished and sent, he seemed frustrated that I didn’t have any other faces that he liked in my collection of photographs.  Not wanting to lose another commission, I found a stock photo site on the internet and directed him to look at it.  He loved the site and made a long list of the faces he found interesting.  It was an odd assortment of ordinary to beautiful women.  He had made an orderly list of the ones he wanted and which one I was to start with. 

Amber

Phil was a retired actor and school teacher in his 70’s.  He shared that he had been married briefly and unhappily many years ago.  He had spent some time in the theater, but had felt that he was not good enough to make a career out of it.  So for many years, he had taught acting and english.  He confessed that his life had become very limited because of his age and health but that he loved collecting art.  He felt that it was all he had to look forward to, since he had no children, no close relatives and rarely left the house.  He seemed to have given up on life in many ways.

I understood his love of faces because of his involvement in the theater, and we collaborated over the winter as I painted each one and sent it to him.  Some of them I really liked and others not as much, but I put everything I had into each painting, because I could feel that it brought him some happiness.  I made up names for each of them because it felt wrong to send them out into the world without some identity.

Grandma's Hat

We spoke on the phone several times and emailed each other often to discuss the next painting and just to talk about life.  I found him to be interesting and intelligent and kept nudging him to find something that he could do to reawaken his interest in life.  Phil and I both loved to read, and he often sent me books that he had finished and thought I would enjoy.  I made suggestions of activities that I thought he might enjoy, but nothing seemed to interest him except the anticipation of a new painting.  I knew eventually he would run out of wall space.

After a winter of working together with Phil on 10 paintings, our project came to an end.  I had tried to renew his enthusiasm in life with my artwork and encouragement.  He was a lonely man and strongly needed to connect more with people, but that had to be his decision.

Several months passed before his next email.  He was extremely excited that he had decided to try something that had been a passion of his many years ago.  He had gone to an archery range and found that he could still do it.  Over the next several months I received emails that sounded fun and full of life from him as he ordered all new archery equipment and got better and stronger at something he loved. 

The latest email from Phil told me how much fun he was having getting up early every morning and going to the archery range and how well he was doing.  I am happy for him and his renewed interest in life.  Now he has some real faces in his world that have names and it makes me smile.

My Dad and The Papillon

My dad loved to fish more than anything.  When I was a young girl, he often took me fishing, and I vividly remember those quiet summer days spent together with him so long ago.  I can still feel the gentle rocking of the boat, the lap of the waves and hear our quiet conversation as I watched my little red bobber with anticipation.  How I wish I could spend just one more day with him in that boat to tell him how much I love him.  He was the anchor in my world and when he left too soon, I felt like my boat was set adrift at the mercy of the winds of fate.

My Dad

Dad had a calm, kind and generous nature and was loved by everyone.  He owned a successful heating and plumbing contracting business and a hardware store that had been started by his father.  He ran off and married my beautiful and troubled mother, who came from the wrong side of the tracks…as the saying goes, much to the disapproval of his family. 

 

Me and Mom

Over time they accepted her and she learned to play the part of a woman of means very well.  My brother was born first and six years later, I came home on Christmas Day.

Over the years our lives were filled with lovely homes, nice cars and dinners at the Country Club.  I truly had a fairy tale childhood in most respects.  But there was an underlying sense of unease in our house that became more obvious as the years went by.  My mom was often fun and full of adventurous plans and ideas, but more and more seemed to find life overwhelming.  She often struggled with depression and hypochondria as she battled with her own personal demons.  As far as I know, she never shared her dark secrets with anyone, but I sensed that darkness the few times she spoke of her own father.  My brother was wild and fun but also became  more out of control as time went by.  No matter what though, I always felt a sense of safety and security because of my dad.  His unfailingly, quiet, steady and supportive presence seemed to keep our world in balance.

When my first son, David was 6 years old, my dad started taking him fishing.  By then he had his dream boat moored at a marina on Lake Michigan and his greatest joy was to take off from work for the afternoon and go fishing.  My mom loved butterflies and so the boat was named Papillon, which is French for butterfly.

 

David and Dad

Davids' First Big Catch!

David and my dad had a special relationship and spent many happy hours fishing together until my dad became ill.  He developed heart problems and then leukemia.  I guess we all thought he was invincible and that his steady presence would be with us much longer.  He left us at the age of 65, when I was 36 years old and David was 14.  In many ways, he was the glue that held us all together and the great unraveling of my world began then.  But that story will have to wait for another time.

David is 43 years old now, has a family of his own and still loves to fish.  They were all on their way up north last summer where he planned to take his two boys fishing for the first time.  Much to his shock and joy, they passed a very familiar boat on the highway and there was no mistaking that it was my dads’ Papillon.  What were the chances of his boat still being seaworthy so many years later and of my son seeing it on his special trip?  I can’t even begin to guess.  I’d like to believe that it was my dads’ way of sending his love and letting us know that he is still our anchor.

 

Dads' Papillon Still Catching Fish!

Moments in Camelot

I came across this photo of myself and my firstborn the other day.  It happens to be one of my favorites.  I always smile at my barely adult self in a little hippie style dress, looking so happy.  I was 22 years old when my son, David was born, and I was over the moon at being a mom, even though at first I didn’t have a clue about how to care for a baby.  Probably the cause for his serious little face! :)

In retrospect it seems strange that I would have wanted kids so much.  It wasn’t something I remember consciously thinking about while growing up. Being a quiet, introspective and shy child, I was content to play by myself much of the time, drawing and painting, playing the piano, reading and exploring outdoors.  I had one much older brother who was off in his own busy world.  I never babysat and I don’t remember playing with any younger cousins as a child.

I recall a special trip on the train to Chicago with my mom for my birthday.  I have a December birthday and it was around Christmas that she took me to Marshall Field’s to pick out "any doll I wanted."  I must have been 4 or 5 years old.  I remember being very excited by the train ride and gazing at the incredible assortment of dolls in the big glass case at the department store.  I also remember that I really wanted a baby doll but that my mom wanted me to have a fashion doll.  We came home with the doll of her choice, and I still have that fancy doll that I rarely played with. 

Why I didn’t go to college remains something of a mystery and at times a disappointment since learning came easily to me.  My parents retained the old fashioned idea that higher education was not as important for a girl (translated "pretty girl") and it never occurred to me to disagree, since all of my interests were pursued outside of the structure of a classroom.  I loved to paint and was provided with all the time and materials to pursue it in my own fashion.  I learned to downhill ski at a young age and winters were spent flying down snow covered slopes.  I had a passion for playing the piano and happily took 10 years of private lessons.   I simply assumed that everything would magically fall into place and it did for quite some time.  It rarely crossed my mind that I might have to actually support myself someday.

I married my childhood love two days after I turned 20.   Soon after, our new home became a gathering place for an endless stream of neighborhood kids and extended family.  For the first time in my life, I felt like the center of the universe rather than someone who hung out on the fringes.  I felt like I truly belonged.

The family owned hardware business where my husband worked, provided us with a comfortable life that enabled me to be a stay at home mom.  Many of the other moms in the neighborhood stayed home and we developed a network of homes where our kids could be found at any given moment.  It was truly a unique little community where we all mothered and nurtured and fed each other’s children.  I dearly loved these wonderful families and spent many happy hours with them sharing recipes, laughter, food and great conversations.

Over the years I have often felt guilty that I had never developed a “real career.”  But when I look back over the years and the memories that come flooding back, I can’t even come close to describing the simple beauty of it. The images have become a huge and colorful collage of my children and their friends at different ages with their faces glowing in wonder at the lights on Christmas trees, telling stories around campfires, their eyes sparkling as they make wishes before blowing out the candles on so many birthday cakes and the long summer evenings where they ran in packs until dark and we knew that they were safe.  I had all the time in the world to devote to them and of course painted them at all ages as they grew.  I was never bored and went on countless little adventures with them over the years. What more could I have wished for?  My heart overflows at the gifts my life provided. 

As in all stories of Camelot, its perfection never lasts forever and perhaps therein lies its heartbreaking beauty.  The trick is to know that and never take a moment for granted.  My marriage came to an end after 31 years, but my former husband and I,  after some rough years of healing, have remained good friends.  I have no wish to share the details of its demise and my own subsequent run to the mountains here.  I am often accused of being a Pollyanna and have purposefully not shared the many hard and sad moments that happened in my Camelot.  This is a story of the beauty and joy of that time, that I wish to celebrate. As the final song from Camelot says,

Don’t let it be forgot

That once there was a spot

For one brief shining moment that was known

As Camelot.

I have a little slice of Camelot on Golden Lake now, and I am blessed to have my children and grandchildren gather often in this special place.  I have spent my life, for the most part, doing what I wanted to do and what I felt I was meant to do.  I have made some huge mistakes along the way, but without them I would not have come to appreciate what I have.  Did I make the right choices?  I have stopped trying to guess because all I have is this brief shining moment at any given time.

It can be hard to remain fearless at the age of 65 when you still feel like you don’t have a “real career” and the future is a mystery.  I don't think any of us wants to contemplate that we will one day be a senior citizen.  Jon Katz and his writings have helped me take a new outlook on aging gracefully, staying creative and recognizing the beauty that surrounds me every day.  I am deeply grateful for that!  It’s enough to wake up with hope everyday and believe that life still holds moments in Camelot.  

"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."  Henry David Thoreau