HOLIDAY SHOPPING LIST

Most every Christmas — okay, *every* Christmas, so far — I have been stressed out and overwhelmed. Every Christmas I vow not to do it. Every Christmas, I do. Oh, I start out with the best of intentions. I make a detailed list, not only for gifts, but also for cards. I study the catalogs as if I were studying for the final exam of my life. I discuss it all calmly and rationally with Art. I make sure to learn the identity of the adult whom I will gift in Art’s family early. Like, right after Thanksgiving dinner. I plan for the lights, the tree, and I buy plenty of Christmas wrapping paper. I brave the madhouse of malls and department stores, driving in endless circles looking for a parking space. I scour the stores for those elusive perfect gifts (which are never right, anyway). Every year the holidays become,”an orgy of excess and waste”, to quote our president-elect. (Anyway, I think I got that quote right).

Every year on December 25th, right after the exchange of our gifts, Art brings in a big black trash bag. Out go the beautiful ribbons and bows, the artful wrappings, the raffia and tissue paper, a couple of rolls of Scotch tape, and the mountains of boxes are, at least, recycled.

The gifts are always thoughtful, lovely, and certainly appreciated. But while we sip our Christmas tea while gazing into the 5,000 watts of electric lights and staring at our beautiful gas-lit fireplace — while the radio brings us “Away in the Manger no room for a bed. . .” or “The Little Drummer Boy”, I think about all of the people whose Christmas will be anything but merry. Then the guilt begins.

On top of the stress of the holidays that everyone talks about ad nauseum, I have a little green Christmas monster. I hear his whiny little ET voice: “You are so lucky and blessed. What have you given to the needy, to promote the cause of peace, to help save the planet. Well???”. I picture this little monster tapping its tiny feet, its green arms crossed over its chest, its mouth scowling as it waits for a reply. (I take it as a rhetorical question so that I don’t have to answer). Usually in the week between Christmas and New Years, I put on a good five pounds trying to stuff down the little critter with pumpkin pie and egg nog. And then I make my one consistent New Year’s resolution: Next year I will make charitable donations instead of buying way too many expensive and unnecessary gifts. Next year I will celebrate in a more responsible and compassionate way.

So yesterday I was staring at the great pile of catalogs on our coffee table. (Never mind that I have been steadily trying to stop them from coming in the mail. They continue at an alarming rate! One catalog company stops sending, but a new one always comes to take its place. One company spawns another company, and now instead of one catalog, I have two). But sandwiched between Land’s End and Plow and Hearth, obscured by Pottery Barn on top and Herrington and LL Bean and Lord knows what else, I found a very slim catalog with a picture of a llama on the front. It proudly announces itself as “The Most Important Gift Catalog In The World”. If I had blinked, I might have missed it. This is the Heifer International catalog.

The idea is simple: This organization provides farm animals, as well as much needed tree seedlings and honeybees, along with education for needy communities around the world. By providing families with such valuable resources, many people can lift themselves out of abject poverty. In turn, for example, if a family’s donated goat gives birth, the new kids can be donated to a neighbor, and so forth. What a wonderful gift! You can buy a “share” of a goat or a “share” of a tree seedling for $10.00. (You can find them on the Web at www.heifer.org/catalog).

There are many other worthy causes that have programs for sending holiday gifts to loved ones. I am especially drawn to Unicef, whose mission is to care for needy children all over the world. Unicef has gift “tribute cards”. Each card costs $25.00, but if your budget is tight, or you have too many people on your list, you can buy a package of five cards for only $75.00, which comes out to $15.00 each. (I did the math — which is saying something for me!). They also have more tangible gifts available on their Web site that help support needy children. You can find Unicef on the Web at www.unicefusa.org.

Oh, don’t get me wrong — There will still be some totally frivolous and unnecessary gifts to friends and family. And I’m not going to stop accepting my husband’s unfailing generosity. There will still be a certain amount of sheer selfish delight. (I’m still a long, long way from sainthood!).

But I always remember the end of “Schindler’s List”. The moment when Oscar Schindler discovers the heavy ornate ring on his finger, and he realizes too late that he could have pawned it to save lives, but that now, the opportunity — and the need — has passed. He shouts in frustration, “I could have done more! I could have done more!” So this is the year I am going to fulfill my long-standing new year’s resolution. Finally. And when you think about it, you’re getting so much “bang for your buck”. While you are helping an anonymous needy person or community somewhere else in the world, you are also giving friends and loved ones the warm glow that is truly in the spirit of Christmas, while finally, finally, getting the very same glow yourself. (And silencing that annoying little gremlin in your head — at least until next Christmas).

Our Little Black Box

About ten years ago at Christmas, back when we lived in Tennessee, I gave Art a radio. Art is not an easy man to gift – Whatever he wants, he simply acquires, and what he desires is usually pretty simple. But he had expressed an interest in a short-wave radio, which delighted me. Finally, a present I could buy that would make Art happy.

I went to Radio Shack at the Bellevue Mall, and there it was: a simple, black radio with an AM, FM and shortwave band. It stood about five inches high, seven inches wide, and maybe one inch deep. It probably didn’t cost much more than $10.00. I brought it home and wrapped it up with two double A batteries. When Art unwrapped it, you would have thought it was the Hope diamond. His whole face lit up. We installed the batteries immediately and found the BBC on the shortwave. So while we unwrapped our gifts, we could hear the lovely strains of a boy’s choir broadcast live from the cathedral in Oxford. It was such fun!

The radio has now become a fixture in our day-to-day lives. We never use the shortwave band – for some reason, I am not able to get anything on it anymore. But the AM and the FM work beautifully. We just feed it a couple of double A’s every six months or so, and it hums along obediently at the touch of an index finger. I turn it on every morning while I make breakfast, listening to “Morning Edition” on NPR. Again, while I’m making dinner, I listen to “All Things Considered”. On the weekends we tune in 790 KABC to hear “Money Talk” with Bob Brinker. Saturday afternoons it’s “Prairie Home Companion” and the news from Lake Wobegone. Sundays while I change the sheets I like to listen to “The Splendid Table” or “Speaking of Faith”. (Of course, we contribute to NPR. The guilt would kill us if we didn’t.)

But the humble little radio. What an instrument of magic! With its three-inch speaker, it brings the world to us. It sits quietly on the kitchen counter in the evening, patiently waiting for us to get through the evening’s entertainment on the bigger, gaudier appliance in the living room. Its little chrome antenna folds in on itself, much in the way that two little hands would be pressed into the prayer position. If it is admonishing us for our fickle behavior, it does so silently. And we do love our Netflix subscription. So we are “equal opportunity” media consumers. The radio knows that and indulges us, nevertheless.

Oh, I know. It’s silly bordering on insane to anthropomorphize a radio. And yet, what a good friend this plain little gizmo has been to us. Sometimes it goes missing when one of us has moved it into the office or the bedroom so that we could listen to it while we do our chores or answer e-mail. Then we shout across the apartment, “Honey, where’s the radio”? But it always shows up, eventually. I actually heard myself tonight declaring, “I don’t know what I’d do without that radio!” Then, before I had time to be embarrassed, I heard the love of my life quietly answer, “I know what you mean!”.

YES, TOGETHER, WE CAN

It was a miracle, plain and simple. The whole world held their breath Tuesday night as the election returns came in, state by state. First, McCain won West Virginia, Obama won Vermont. McCain got Tennessee and Texas, too. Texas was a very large red blob on the TV map. Lots and lots of red down the center of the country, the heartland, as it’s called. Too close to call in Virginia. McCain won Oklahoma. . . and so it went. But when Ohio was announced for Obama, I began to believe that maybe, maybe all the prayers of so many people had not gone unheard.

Art and I were sitting on our sofa when suddenly, there was a full screen with a large picture of Barack Obama and the words, “Barack Obama Elected President of the United States” (or words to that effect, I was frankly in a daze). I got a chill down my spine, and Art choked up. I couldn’t quite take it in, it was that massive. Art couldn’t stop dabbing his eyes. We held hands, spellbound in utter amazement.

Stunned, we listened to John McCain’s heartfelt and gracious concession speech. He did not acknowledge the angry outbursts from his disgruntled supporters. Sarah Palin stood by quietly, visibly shaken. We felt badly for them. It had been a long, hard-fought, hard-scrabble struggle for the soul of this country. But someone must win, and someone must walk away. I felt sad for the defeated McCain team. But I also knew that the best man had won.

Then the images of celebrations began to pop up on our screen. There were tens of thousands of people in Time Square, nearly a quarter of a million people, I have heard, in Grant Park, Illinois.
When Barack Obama and his family took the stage, I had a strange sensation of déja vu. Hadn’t I seen this movie once before? Oh, yes. Now I remember. This picture was superimposed upon a much older picture in my memory bank of a young, vibrant, charismatic man alongside his beautiful, elegant wife and their two sweet children. Of course. It was 1960, and the newly-elected John Kennedy was poised to take the reins of office. The whole country was in a celebratory mood. No one would have guessed a scant year earlier that a Roman Catholic could be elected president of the United States.

Once John Kennedy had been in office just long enough for the initial euphoria to wear off, he was subjected to the same kind of scrutiny all of his predecessors had experienced. His judgment was called into question. He was second-guessed. He was accused of nepotism for appointing his brother, Bobby, as attorney general. There were rumors of indiscretions with mysterious women. He had been brought up as part of the noblesse oblige, so how could he relate to the problems of ordinary citizens? His father had made his fortune running whiskey during prohibition. There were rumors of ties to the Mob.

Before long, we will begin to see all of the usual slings and arrows directed at our newly elected leader. Already, his choice of chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has been called into question. The choice was called “ironic” and some sniff that this is not in the spirit of change and bipartisanship. There are voices heard that criticize Obama’s campaign for the enormous amount of money spent in winning the election.

We must remember that, as Obama himself once quipped, he was not “born in a manger”. He is a human being, just like the rest of us. He loves his wife and his children. He mourns the passing of his grandmother. And he is smart enough to know that he doesn’t know everything, which is why he is assembling a crack team of experts to guide him through the rough waters of economic recession and simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He wisely chose Joe Biden as his right-hand man, and his wife, Michelle, will be his closest adviser and confidante. But he’s going to need more, much more than that.

We, the American people, the people who fought so hard to make Mr. Obama our president, see in him the person we all aspire to be; calm, self-assured, courageous, intelligent, wise, caring, and committed to serving a greater purpose.

So the question now becomes, as John Kennedy so eloquently stated it, “. . .what we can do for our country”. Should we get involved in our local government? Volunteer at a homeless shelter or in a school? Become a mentor to an underprivileged child? Join the Sierra Club or contribute to a food pantry? Or simply wake up every day with the intention of being the best person we can be.

It won’t be easy for some of us. As my sister and I discussed the other day, those of us old enough to remember the Kennedys and Martin Luther King have had to numb ourselves to the pain of losing so many of our cherished leaders in the ’60s. We then had to live through many years in the wilderness under regimes that, more often than not, were insensitive to our concerns. So we are going to have to reawaken slowly to this new dawn, then figure out the most meaningful way to spend the rest of our lives.

I am saying a prayer every day for Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and their families– that they be kept safe and healthy, and that they be blessed with the strength and wisdom they will need in these troubled times. And I am praying the exact same prayer for each and every one of us.

Back To “The Good Old Days”?

I am old enough to remember the “good old days” — before Roe v. Wade. It was not a pretty picture.

I had a friend, let’s call her Henrietta. Henrietta was 17 years-old, a senior in high school, and had a boyfriend, let’s call him Fred, who was 21 and worked in construction. Fred and Henrietta were deeply, passionately in love. They wanted to be married as soon as Henrietta finished high school and Fred could save up enough from his back-breaking work to make a home for them.
Inevitably, Fred and Henrietta couldn’t wait and became intimate. I know that they believed all of the prevalent teen-aged myths about conception: That she couldn’t get pregnant the first time. That if she douched immediately after sex she couldn’t become pregnant. That if Fred used a condom, however imperfectly, they were safe. Well, they weren’t safe. On his day off, Fred wound up driving Henrietta to a “back alley” abortionist out of state. Henrietta had to be home by supper time to avoid the suspicion of her parents, who were both unstable and given to wild fits of temper.

When I went to visit Henrietta that night, I found her in bed, crying, a heating pad on her abdomen, and bleeding profusely. She would not talk about her experience. She was ashamed, frightened, distraught, in pain, and burdened by a secret she could only share sparingly with her closest friends. She had been catapulted into adulthood abruptly, and with no safety net. The abortion had cost thousands of dollars — money Fred had been saving for their future, which was now in doubt, given the complexity of emotions brought on by this harrowing experience.

Some might say that Henrietta lost her innocence when she first decided to have sex with her boyfriend. Some might say that this whole trauma might have been avoided had Henrietta’s parents, or Fred’s parents, given them proper moral guidance or made themselves more emotionally accessible and compassionate. But here is what I take away from this very sad incident: We are all imperfect beings. Young people can not always stem the tide of roiling passion brought on by very real hormonal surges.

Although I did not know any woman personally who was killed or maimed for life by a botched abortion, I know that they existed.

I also remember Mom telling me that one of her affluent friends was going in to the hospital for a “D and C”. When I asked her what that meant she whispered, “A Dusting and Cleaning”, which was the code for “Dilation and Curettage”. I came to find out later that what that meant was that a woman could have a surgery wherein her cervix was dilated and the contents of her uterus were scraped or vacuumed out. Supposedly, this procedure was reserved for women who had suffered a miscarriage. But I came to find out that some women, women of means, who wanted to opt out of a pregnancy could appeal to a sympathetic doctor and, for a reasonable sum, could terminate the pregnancy in the safety and comfort of a reputable hospital or doctor’s office. Of course, this option was only available to the “country club” set, who not only could afford it, but also had the “right connections” to the “right doctors”.

I did know of one young girl who was in my geometry class in the ninth grade. Let’s call her Susie. She was a flirt and a great beauty and was envied by all of the other girls in the class. When her lithe figure began to change and she began wearing over-sized dresses and skirts, there was widespread speculation as to the reason. When she dropped out of school for a year “to live with her grandparents in the country”, the speculation became even more cruel and unrelenting. And when she returned a year later, she was subdued and kept to herself, no longer the vivacious flirt she had once been. And she was an outcast. I don’t know for sure, but I am guessing that I know what had happened to Susie. She had given birth. I will never know the full extent of the consequences in her life but some of them were evident, even to me. But what might have happened if Susie had been given more education, more access to birth control, or another choice should either of those have failed?

Oh, yes. I remember the “good old days”. If the next president happens to choose supreme court justices, which will very likely be the case, they will most likely carefully choose in keeping with their own philosophical views. Right now the balance in the court is such that the issue of a woman’s right to choose is still protected by Roe v. Wade. Just one supreme court justice could tip the balance.

When you vote on Tuesday for a president, you will also be casting a ballot for or against the rights of the already born. We can still make inroads into reducing teen-aged pregnancy with education and compassionate guidance. Still, young people will make mistakes, even in the most conservative and God-fearing families (as we have recently seen in the news), parents will be imperfect, and biology will sometimes trump common sense. The well-to-do and the well-connected will always have ready access to safe abortions, regardless of laws to the contrary. Nobody knows the “right” answer to the abortion question. You must search your own conscience and make your decision based on all you know and all you believe. Will you cast your vote to go back to the “good old days”? Personally, I will not.