One type of poem I’ve been writing this year is a gift basket poem – – what would I give a recipient in any given month of the year? For December, the choice is clear: it’ll be filled with seasonal snowy white wonderland things.
If I were giving you a gift basket I’d go with winter white!
you’d receive a sherpa lounge throw, electric and soft ~ three settings to warm the winter chill
a Paperwhite Kindle, Signature edition with stories your heart to fill
and a candle, glowing bright in the darkest night, a flame for the windowsill
Our host for Spiritual Journey Thursday for December is Jone MacCulloch, who shares a quote by Thomas Merton to inspire reflection and writing: The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Jone invites us to share what we are doing in these days of December to promote periods of silence and reflection. You can read her full post here at this link.
I had lunch with a couple of friends this week who are looking more forward to the holidays this year than ever before. They’ve cut out a toxic personality from their lives, and they say life has never been better. I celebrate them and share, with permission and in poetic form, their sentiments from our conversation. Sometimes holidays require us to consider our own mental health, and this year is that year for them. They’ve cut all ties and have moved on with their lives in healthier ways. I couldn’t be happier for them.
They say they don’t miss a dozen iterations of a
salad not even on the menu or
the barely audible low talk with fake
victim eyes, polished nails tapping a
coffee mug
they don’t miss
making plans they never wanted in the
first place or the never-ending reach for
attention or the Bible whippings from
a pious mouth-hole
or her.
They don’t miss
her.
They don’t miss all the presumptions or her
sickening fundie baby voice or the conclusive
expressions of the Dunning-Kruger con artist
or the mission that something needs to be
fixed and she’s the sole savior to do it.
No one misses her.
No one wants to fix her broken world.
They mostly see her as a mosaic of
toxic personalities, there
in a heap of jagged
edges just waiting to cut her next victim
this narcissistic it’s-all-about-me princess of her
For the first few years of being grandparents, we overdid it a little with Christmas. Let me rephrase that the way my husband would say it happened: for the first few years of being a grandparent, I (me, singular) became Santa with a full sleigh at Christmas. My heart grew too many sizes to contain all the joy, and it flooded the living room in presents for our grandson.
My second, forever, current, and final (in that order, and all the same) husband is still taken aback at times with the flurry of people and number of gifts under the tree at Christmas. He grew up the eldest of three siblings, and the age span took him out into the working world and out of the home while they were still growing up. He was married for a short time, and he and his first wife have one son. If he remembers ripping wrapping paper and other Christmas chaos, those sensory elements of sounds, pitches, and squeals of laughter have evaded him up until he is reminded once again of the reality of noise when he is in the midst of multiple children.
I was married for the first time on this very day forty years ago when it fell on Thanksgiving Day, at 11:00 a.m., before anyone sat down for a turkey dinner as we slipped out on our honeymoon. The best thing to ever come of that marriage that lasted 19 years – other than the lessons learned and my former mother-in-law’s amazing recipe for cranberry orange relish – are three children, their mates, and their seven children, along with the hope of generations to come. The second best thing was that I learned to play a mean hand of euchre, a popular card game played widely up in the northern part of New York State.
By the time my second, forever, current, and final husband and I married, our blended family of four children were practically grown, except for two still finishing high school. They wanted mostly clothes, electronics, and cash for Christmas, and they knew by this time how to sleep late on Christmas morning. Our lives were mostly quiet until grandchildren came along, and suddenly the wonder and surprise of young children returned. And so did all the festivity of Christmas!
When the second grandchild came along, I had to cut back on the Christmas shopping. When the third came, even more. By the time the fourth was born, we needed a system and some ground rules to try to avoid breaking the bank. With the fifth, we tried the first system that worked, but by the sixth it had already changed. With the seventh grandchild’s arrival and plans to retire someday, we think the current system will work but have an alternate plan for retirement when it happens.
So many of my friends ask how we do it, even pre-retirement, with seven grandchildren. And through trial and error over these past 15 years, I’ll spare the journey and share what works for us. It all began when my paternal grandparents used to give each of their grandchildren cash on Thanksgiving Day. My grandfather, who had lived through the Great Depression, served as a pastor, and made his fortune in railroad stock but who had always lived as if he’d had nothing, had kept cash envelopes in his shirt pocket, and as the opportunity presented itself, he’d spent time with each of us to tell us how proud he was of us and to give us Christmas money. As a teenager, it meant the gift went further with the sales – we could pick exactly what we’d wanted from them and could get something better, marked down (the year of the Sony Walkman comes to mind). But as a young parent, that Christmas money was a total game changer. For so many years, that check meant my own children had a visit from Santa. I learned from my paternal grandparents that giving money is not impersonal at Christmas, as many folks may believe. I learned that in the ultimate spirit of giving, sometimes the gift of greenery makes the difference in the way others are able to focus on giving and not merely receiving.
That’s why our adult children get greenery at Christmas, before Black Friday. Cash. I’d been too proud to tell my grandfather all those years ago that it made the difference in my own children’s Christmas, but fast forward to this past week: one of our four said to me what I wish I’d said to my own grandfather – – this makes all the difference, and now Santa can get busy. Because adulting is real, and parenting somehow makes it real-er.
That’s half of the system that works. The other part is in a fun jingle I heard somewhere along the way, and we’ve been using it ever since. We asked our children to create an Amazon list for each of their children, with their first name and the year. In that list, they include a selection of items in these four categories: something they want, something they need, something to wear (in the correct size), and something to read. And from there, we are able to use the list either for the exact item or for an idea of something we shop in person to purchase. I’ve given up on coded gift wrap, too, in a different pattern for each child – – now it’s just one of those glorified plastic bags decorated all in Christmas colors, and the four items go all in the same bag, one for each child on the years we are able to get together in person. On years when the children are with other family members and we FaceTime, the Christmas bags make it easier for the parents to organize the gifts and keep them hidden in their homes until Christmas. On years we are together, it means I’m not up wrapping at all hours of the night.
This system may not work for everyone, but it works for us, and when others try to grasp how we “do” Christmas with seven grandchildren and four children all in four different states from Atlantic to Pacific, I tell them: we have a budget and a system, and we stick to it. It does not take away from the Christmas cheer – – it keeps it in perspective! Most of all, it keeps this Nana from trying to outdo Santa, and that’s important to the real Santa.
If we find that in retirement our jingle needs a trim, I’ve thought ahead to the next system. It may sound something like this as the grandchildren reach their teenage years – something you want, plus something you need that’s either something to wear or something to read…..or greenery. We’ll see what the years bring.
On this Black Friday, happy shopping! May you find the perfect gift for everyone on your list, no matter what your system is, even if your system is no system at all. And may you find parking spaces close to every store if you are an in-person shopper.
…above all
no matter the level
of festivity and chaos and noise
may you find moments of
peace and quiet meditation
keeping the real reason for the season
at the heart
of it all
All of us, except for one grandson who did not make the October trip with us
On this day last year, we were waking up in Plymouth, Massachusetts and heading to Plimoth-Patuxet Museum to have Thanksgiving Dinner in the spot where the Pilgrims and Native Americans had it for the first time all those years ago. It was a highlight of our trip through New England on the heels of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Convention, which was held in Boston in 2024.
After the end of the conference, when Ada Limon had delivered the final keynote speech, we’d taken the ferry back across Boston Harbor to the airport and rented a car. We headed up to Kennebunkport, Maine for a night, then across New Hampshire to Woodstock, Vermont for a night, then to West Chesterfield, New Hampshire, and finally to Plymouth each for a night before completing the loop back to Boston, turning in the car, and flying home. We still talk about the fun we had on that trip, just the two of us, seeing New England by car.
Yesterday, true to small town living, we were out at our local Ace Hardware Store buying ten bales of pine straw to go by the shrubs in the front bed when we saw Briar’s brother standing in front of the only grocery store in town, holding his bag of heavy whipping cream and a Coca Cola in a bottle and talking with a friend. He ambled over to the car, where we sat reminiscing on the trip we’d taken down Route 66 a few summers ago. Along with his wife, the four of us had rented a car at Midway Airport just below Chicago and embarked on the journey, completing half of Route 66, which runs from Illinois to California, and flying home from Albuquerque after one full week of a carefully-segmented trip that allowed time for taking in the main sights we’d wanted to see.
We need to finish that trip, his brother said, and we both agreed.
This Thanksgiving is different. We were supposed to be camping on our favorite campground in one of our favorite sites, but vertigo got in the way of being able to pack the camper and keep the reservation. It got in the way of shopping and doing anything other than being still all week. We cancelled our camping plans, and I took to my favorite chair with Audible as the great world spun all week. At least when I’m down and out, I can have some sense of normalcy through story – – and travel, vicariously. This week, I’m at the Maple Sugar Inn spending time with the ladies in the Book Club Hotel. They haven’t read a single page in their book club yet, but these characters do have some interesting lives.
I’ll hit pause on my book around 10:00 to shower and dress, and to meet my husband’s brother and his wife at a Cracker Barrel an hour away from our home deep in rural Georgia. None of us felt like cooking – and even the thought of all the bending involved in cooking and baking sends me spinning in orbit. It’s simply not the year for that.
It’s a year for being home and taking it easy – going nowhere that involves a suitcase, letting others cook, and savoring the simple pleasures of home. A day for sitting next to the fire under the flannel blanket we bought last year at The Vermont Flannel Company in Woodstock, all warm and comfortable, counting my blessings. It’s a day to reflect on the week we spent in October in the mountains of Tennessee with our children and grandchildren, and a day to call and wish them a Happy Thanksgiving as they celebrate this day with other family members.
And it’s a day to remember those who are no longer with us. Mom left us in 2015, but this will be our first Thanksgiving without Dad. It’s a game changer when both parents are gone. I miss all those who taught me how to observe holidays and to be able to appreciate them without the rigid anchors of tradition making them feel any less special. Today’s quiet stillness and Cracker Barrel dinner is every bit as meaningful as last year’s dinner in Plymouth.
I’ve got a bad case of FOMO this week as all my writing friends and fellow English teacher buddies gather at NCTE to share time breathing the most fantastic air ever in Denver, Colorado. Some of them will be giving a presentation on various formats of poetry at a roundtable session, and my fellow authors of Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas will all be at a book signing sponsored by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. I’ll miss my small group of Stafford Challenge writers, my EthicalELA pals, those with whom I’ve collaborated on writing a few other books, and the Slice of Life writers who will be gathering for dinner and rich conversation. I am thrilled for them, but I feel such longing in my heart that I cannot be there this year to celebrate all things Literacy.
My friend Margaret Simon, who blogs at Reflections on the Teche, will be one of those at NCTE, and she will be hosting a roundtable of Zeno Zine writing. Here is the link to her blog, where you can read the format for a Zeno and Margaret’s Zeno. She writes, “. A Zeno poem is one in which the syllable count is 8, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1, 4, 2, 1. The challenge is each one syllable line rhymes.” When I read her blog yesterday morning, it was all the inspiration I needed to write a Zeno. Since yesterday was our annual Friendsgiving feast at work, that will be my topic today.
This month’s Spiritual Journey is hosted by Patricia Franz, who has selected doubt as the theme. You can read her post here. It’s quite inspiring, and I particularly love her insight as she shares her thinking on doubt: I’m convinced that doubt lives in the imperfect space between who we are and who we think we want to be.
Since Patricia’s post last Thursday, I’ve returned again and again to this idea, toying with doubt and how it plays out in my own life in risks not taken and opportunities not seized. Fear and doubt are close friends with deeply intertwining roots. And what is doubt’s opposite? Certainty? Trust? Belief? In Hebrews, the Bible says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So by that definition, faith is the opposite of doubt.
I don’t mean to be a doubting Thomas, but I will be the first to confess that I may score a perfect 10 in Olympic skepticism. My mother’s keen eye for scrutiny and her innate sense of intuition, passed on to her from her mother – and hers before her – ended up in me and my own children. It’s a form of doubt, yes, and on the Myers-Briggs Personality test it’s that gnawing J for judging in the analytics that gets me, where I’d much prefer be a perceiver.
I do some doubting.
But I also do some praying. Nearly a decade ago, I made the decision to turn off the radio and the audiobooks on the way to work and use the drive as my dedicated prayer time each morning. My drive to the office is roughly 8 to 10 minutes, and I pray for each of our children, their mates, and their children. I pray for each side of our extended family and always add “even the ones we don’t like,” because, you know, God already knows about that whole mess.
At the end of Patricia’s post, she shares that she tries to cultivate doubt as a spiritual practice– deepening my capacity to sit with questions; allowing space for the sacred pause; learning to be comfortable living in the mystery. This, too, resonates deeply with me this morning as I write in my favorite green chair in the living room, my Schnoodle Boo Radley draped over the back of my chair near my neck, and his rescued brothers Fitz and Ollie snoozing on the floor at complete peace with the world around them, doubting nothing more than the intentions of every deer and squirrel in the yard.
Like Patricia, I need to embrace my doubts and celebrate them as gutterball rails to be used to discern correct steps where I ask the Lord to illuminate the paths I should take. Just like that concept of Danish hygge that I love so much in the winter – – we can’t have the concept of hygge, or the warmth and comfort within the cozy cabin, without the raging blizzard outside. The feeling of warmth and comfort has to have its opposite somewhere to be appreciated.
Such is doubt. In the tiny cabin of the heart and soul, where the storms of doubt rage outside, faith is the strong assurance that despite the weatherman or his alarmist reports, all will be well as we trust the good Lord and His plan. Faith shines most brightly in the threat of doubt.
The Easter holiday before Dad died, I sent him a Bendable, Poseable Jesus of Nazareth. Back before we knew just how sick he was because he kept preaching and going to book sales and doing all the other things he always did, I thought it looked like just the kind of thing he could use for a children’s sermon or could work into some story he was telling. I must confess that I thought it was a bit funny, too, this Bendable, Poseable Jesus figure- – because the adjectives just seem silly, as if the product might sell on name alone. As if Jesus had ever posed for a selfie or been a contortionist.
Imagine my surprise when I found this gift still unopened in the package in the guest room after Dad died. I was going through all the boxes, and up popped Jesus in his Jesus sandals and robes. I decided to take him back home with me. With the way my year has gone throughout 2025, I need all the Jesus I can get.
As we packed to leave for Tennessee for a week with our children and grandchildren, I gathered colored pencils and games, puzzles, and toys to take for the week. I also grabbed Jesus, still packaged, to come along for the ride.
He spent the first couple of days in the kitchen window just in case I got tempted to say any words that would not be appropriate around children. And to remind me to be kind and patient and all the other fruits of the spirit.
Eventually, one of the grandchildren opened him and took him out of the plastic and cardboard, posing and bending the figure and playing with it. Even the baby of the bunch, Silas, got in on the Jesus action.
Silas, checking out Jesus
They played Peek-a-Boo, which may have reminded my daughter of the way my late parents hid a Waldo figure for each other to find. She began hiding Jesus and challenging all the cousins to find him.
Countless times throughout the days, they would play this game, taking turns hiding and finding. My son came up from the game room and asked what they were doing.
“We’re finding Jesus,” they all shouted, in unison. The look on his face was priceless.
On our last day, Jesus was in the middle of a good hide. We’d not seen him since the day before, and we almost forgot him, when my daughter remembered him and asked, “Where’s Jesus?”
Saylor, the oldest granddaughter who’d been the last to hide him, ran back inside and then returned shortly, carrying him out to the car.
“We can’t leave Jesus in Tennessee,” she exclaimed.
Nope, and we didn’t. Jesus is safely packed back in the bag to be hidden again on our next trip together. He’s a part of our daily lives, yes – – but on vacation, He will come along and play all the games with the children, and abide with the adults in a very chaperoning way.
We need as much of Him as we can get.
We all need Jesus
to remind us to be kind
to seek Him daily
Mallory and Beckham with Bendable, Poseable Jesus
With 6 of our 7 grandchildren – Beckham, Saylor, Magnolia Mae (Noli), Sawyer holding Silas, and River
Kindred Spirits From L-R: Jennifer, me, Martina, Joy, Jill, Janette
Last year, we started a Central Office book club in our rural Georgia school district. This was Janette’s idea, but she graciously allowed me to help organize its inception. We asked another local book club if we could read their books they were not using, and we gave each title another round of reading before placing these in Little Free Libraries according to the grant provisions with which they were originally purchased. This club has become a sisterhood, and much like my writing group friends, our interactions go beyond the daily water station office talk into what goes on in our lives and how we feel about issues that arise in the books we read. We connect on a deeper level this way.
We’re a cross-section of society, which lends to richer discussion. I’m the oldest. Martina is the youngest. All of us are mothers and wives. Two of us are real sisters (Jill and Joy). Four of us are grandmothers. Two of us are preachers’ kids. We’ve all been through some tough times and bring differing perspectives to our conversations. But what’s most important is that we are all readers, we understand that every book is not going to get five stars but that there is something to take from each, and we embrace our collective voice on womanhood and readership. We’re the Kindred Spirits – and we are aptly named.
Last April, I shared a poem with our group each day during National Poetry Month, and while most were written by well-known poets, one or two were poems that I wrote. They know that writing poetry is what keeps me balanced at all times, but particularly in tough times – of which there have been many lately in my life. When my father died in June, I was sad that he would not be here to see the book I’d been working on for so long come out on Labor Day weekend.
Imagine my surprise when my Kindred Spirit sisters knew I was feeling down and threw an after-lunch dessert party for me and presented me with a poem that they had all written to cheer me up and celebrate me. I was moved to tears as they explained that they had each written two lines, and that the lines appeared in alphabetical order according to their names: Janette, Jennifer, Jill, Joy, and Martina.
I framed it and keep it among my greatest treasures; it means so much to me that in a time when I was grieving, my reading sisters built me up and reminded me that we are all in this together – – and that the tears along the journey can be turned into laughter and joy. We feel it in our local coffee shop on our small town square each month as we sip our brews and talk about the characters we have come to love (and dislike). We feel it at work as we deal with our day to day duties, and we will feel it in the movie theater later this week as we watch our monthly novel come to the big screen: Colleen Hoover’s Regretting You.
I’m not sure where I’d be without my reading group – and my writing groups. Today is a day to celebrate all of you (if you’re reading this, it includes you, too) who make a difference in my life. My glass is raised to you, dear friends, for all that you mean to me. You inspire me, and I appreciate each and every one of you!
Poem written for me by my Kindred Spirits book club
Front: Jill, Janette, Martina; Back: me, Joy (Jennifer is missing)
Books We’ve Read in our Club So Far:
The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
The Last Flight by Julie Clark
Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
The Wedding People by Allison Espach
One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury
God of the Woods by Liz Moore
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Regretting You by Colleen Hoover
and
Selected Poems-a-Day for National Poetry Month
Book Club Haiku
we’re always on the
lookout for our next great read
….any suggestions?
Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for hosting Slice of Life
Common Threads 