tradition

I know it's early, but I put my Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving.

Back in the 70's I began my own holiday practices. My folks still lived up north in Christmas card country, but I was hours away building a life of my own and excitedly started collecting holiday ornaments for my own tree. It was important to me to have rituals and traditions beyond those shared with my folks each year, silently acknowledging the inevitability of there being no family home and hearth to return to one day.

I'd suffered through my father's experiments with artificial trees when I was growing up. Not one to pitch a fit, I nonetheless kept trying to make a case with empassioned pleas for a "real" tree, but failed annually in the face of his fears of a fire. Safety trumped the sensuous.

The most memorable was an aluminum tree sprouting curled silvery explosions at the end of each branch. In hindsight it kind of looked like something from Dr. Seuss. I think we hung royal blue glass ornaments against the silver. Today it would be considered retro or kitsch. I guess my father was being creative and experimental but my adolescent sensibilities were offended.

I never tired of my mother telling us about Christmas when she was growing up in Philadelphia. Her family's tiny living room was cleared of furniture and in its place a platform filled the entire space. Her father would spend Christmas Eve and into the early morning hours constructing a miniature town with a train running through it. No one was allowed to enter before Christmas morning. Later that day friends and neighbors would flock to their home to see his beloved creation. Sadly she didn't know what eventually happened to that magical collection. Years later her parents loved to visit our small New England town and it only occurs to me now that perhaps, in part, it was because it resembled that long ago idyll.

This suddenly calls to mind the lovely three-dimensional showpieces my father created in our picture window for the Christmas season. Like a Mexican retablo they featured a painted background with figures and artifacts in front of the scene creating a diorama effect. Stars twinkled through the tiny pinholes Dad had meticulously scattered across the diminutive night sky. Like the tiny village my mother remembered, my father's craftsmanship also stopped and delighted anyone passing by, and I was enthralled by his talent and imagination.

Meanwhile I spent my own adult Christmas seasons in pursuit of the perfect "real" tree, often enlisting (read: roped) friends in the search. As my collection of ornaments grew so did the size of the trees to accomodate them all. Yet ultimately I began to tire of my own annual ritual: frigid treks between Christmas tree lots, sawing and hacking the trunk down to size, dragging those green behemoths up a flight of stairs spraying needles everywhere, and watching my prize slowly relax and spread until it had engulfed the room displacing furniture and every other function. For a few short weeks I would ignore the loathsome task of dismantling it all at the end of the holidays -- the price to pay for being the "Charlie Browniest" hold-out for authenticity and a once sweet tradition.

Simultaneously I'd watched my folks scale back each year to smaller trees and simpler decorations until, without really noticing, I fell into the habit of taking my folks' faux trees as they pared down over time. Initially I simply let their 4-footer languish in a box in my attic. I would never use it myself, but... Then one day nearly fifteen years ago, I curiously slid it out of its cardboard sarcophagus, fluffed out the squashed branches and gave it a try. Charlie himself would have proclaimed that it wasn't "such a bad little tree."

I shared with friends that it seemed as though as I had matured -- becoming more real -- it became less important to have a real Christmas fir or the perfect tree. I'd like to think that I had become generally more tolerant of imperfection, but that might be a stretch. The real turning point was the year that I purchased what turned out to be my last real tree and was so busy that I never decorated it. So with a concession to smaller being better (for me), I began to divest myself of the many ornaments and decorations that had turned from blessing to burden.

Since then I've made gifts of my collection, carefully selecting ones suited to certain colleagues and friends. I donated many to a battered women's shelter for their own season of hope. Then when I moved a couple of years ago, I kept only those few ornaments which I truly love and that have meaning for me. It is those that I put on my tree last week. What resulted is a luminous sparkly tiny tree that was my mother's last and which now sits on my childhood drop-front desk. I blended some of her ornaments with my own and surrounded it with framed family photos. My grandparents, my mom and dad as children, my father back in the 40's looking jaunty with his pipe, and a happy snapshot of my mom with her sister who died only two days after she did this summer -- all look back at me and make me smile.

This is my holiday ritual this year reflecting the changed landscape of my life. No trains, no painted panorama, no curious passers-by. This is for myself. Who knows what I'll do next year, but right now this meets my need and quiet desire to honor and remember those I've loved and who live on in my memory -- and my heart. It's beautiful.

the last word

There's a book that has survived my serial purges.

"The Verbally Abusive Relationship, How to Recognize It and How to Respond" (Patricia M. Evans) helped me nearly a decade ago as I tried to comprehend a relationship that had ended tragically a few years prior. Since then I can't say how many times I've recommended it to others and tonight I realized that I'd told two women, as it happens, in the past week about it.

One of them just e-mailed me to say that she'd found it at Barnes & Noble, and another by Evans, "Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand and Deal with People Who Try to Control You". I welcome this recent title because it's more mainstream and perhaps not so intimidating to someone who really needs the information between those covers. "Abuse" can be such a loaded word, with good reason, and often never enters the mind or vocabulary -- let alone crosses the lips -- of someone who's being manipulated by another. Speaking of which, Evans has also written for adolescents -- "Teen Torment: Overcoming Verbal Abuse at Home and at School."

Thinking about this caused me to revisit the one time that I'd felt (overtly) accosted by someone with whom I worked. We were on the phone and had we been face-to-face I can't imagine what might have ensued. As it was I was caught flat-footed and speechless by this executive's rage and obviously never forgot it. I didn't have the tools then that I have now nor adequate language to describe his unwarranted, over-the-top behavior.

I felt compelled to come here tonight almost as a public service. Perhaps you or someone you know is in a volatile personal or work situation. Sadly this behavior is often misunderstood, excused and tolerated in families, work settings and in public, allowed to continue if only by witnesses' own discomfort, fear, or stunned silence in the face of it. It becomes even more complicated if the perpetrator is someone in power, and it takes a toll on everyone.

I'm not recommending that we put ourselves in harm's way, but knowledge is power so I'm suggesting Patricia Evans' books for starters. I can only attest to her first from my own experience, but hope that anyone who needs this information will find it. Regardless of what you call it, if what she says rings true...

Meanwhile, if you are in danger, call 911. For more information, contact 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY) or visit the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence web site.

gifts

I met a friend for late day coffee/tea and conversation yesterday and we both realized that we do this far too seldom. We sat together catching up with what seemed to be momentous in our lives right now. I described the meandering route I'd taken to discover my deep need for recovery time and resulting decision to declare the next year for myself. She responded, "Of course!"

Why is it that others can see what we can't? I listened as she substantiated what I'd taken weeks to determine and all I could say was "I have a high threshold." Yeah, and when doing what we need to do women especially don't see the toll that the stress and strain can exact on us. So now I have someone else in my corner urging me to do whatever it is that I most want and need.

My challenge is not to turn this "gift of a year" into work (read: labor). In fact Kirshenbaum recommends that women spend their initial weeks or months resting. That definitely gets my vote and I'll still be working during this time. My biggest concern, however, is that the year just slips by. So my next step is to revisit Mira Kirshenbaum's questions ("The Gift of a Year"), review my initial responses and complete the exercise to gain a clear sense of what I want. Who knows, maybe I'll realize that I actually need to let the days drift by.

I think I've mentioned here that I pull an angel card each day for a word that serves as a totem for that day. Two came up in my hand on Saturday: Surrender and Openness. When I swept them both up on Sunday before pulling that day's card, I discovered Creativity lying unseen beneath them. What seems to be emerging is similar to that which motivated me in the early nineties. I am being drawn back to my own creative process and the need to embrace the unknown. Now that's an adventure and something to look forward to. To ignore that would be to ignore something in myself.