frail gestures

Christmas is wrought with high expectations. As a wide-eyed child, the holiday seemed magical. As an adult, it's memories are impossible to live up to.

I wonder if as adults we add all the glitter and bows to avoid confronting the disappointment of growing up. I think that's why Christmas is so commercialized; it's our attempt to purchase happiness where we can't find it and to recapture the awe that came so naturally as children.

Please don't take me for a "bah humbug" sort, nor a puritan who would like to return to the ancient catacombs of Rome. I just haven't figured out what this holiday is about. I know I'm home and glad of it, and that Christmas without my family would be sad. I know that I like the spirit of giving, the carols, the Nutcracker ballet. And, yes, I like the sales too.

I think, with Christmas preparation starting before Halloween, the holidays might just be too built up by the time it arrives. What can live up to the promise of a new beginning, especially with a holiday that has grown secular? If a person can faithfully turn to God on Christmas and the hope that comes with that, they perhaps it's not so disappointing.

But I don't do that. I don't think like that. I go to church and think, "Gee, the drummer looks a lot like Karl Rove." I think perhaps that I feel peaceful. That's it.

This morning, my mom, dad and I did our annual program at a nursing home near our house in New Jersey. We were at the same facility last year, and several of the residents remembered my father and me; my mom is a regular there. The tradition is an annual reminder that Christmas is in the details; it's in smiles and making eye contact and a firm handshake; it's in singing along to carols with a 97-year-old at the piano and mumbling skillfully when you forget the words. It's the joy of knowing that nobody cares if you don't know the words; they like that you're trying and learning.

That's more what Christmas is to me -- a time to give a little more of myself and to do what I might shy away from selfishly at other times. Perhaps it will become habit. Who knows?

There's nothing like Christmas in Washington, especially this year.

In what proved a dramatic night on Capitol Hill, Senators rejected the defense spending bill, which included Arctic drilling language. Sen. Stevens fumed red to the point of clashing with his Incredible Hulk tie and threatened (again) to resign.

Meanwhile, Christmas is three days away, and the House will be back in session today with the hopes of passing the defense bill. Thankfully, though, my editor negotiated my release out of Washington and I'm off to Jersey in, count them, 11 hours.

Merry Christmas!!!

(Oddly enough, the silver lining of all the chaos on the Hill is that Christmas has sort of snuck up on me; it's impossible to feel premature Noel fatigue when there is so much that is decidedly unfestive going on.)

Today was probably the second-to-last time I'll volunteer with the seniors group; my promotion means that I'll be working days, the one down side of which is that I'll have to give up this daytime activity. And while, on the whole, I'm excited about my new job, I'll be sad to leave the ladies who have become my friends. I look up to them, admire them.

And sometimes I see their limitations, which most often they hide well. Recently, in a group setting, we were doing trivia questions on the holidays. A new staff person came in the room and replaced the person asking the questions. She asked a question we had heard several minutes later, and nobody knew the answer or even seemed to think the question familiar. I don't know if they forgot -- they have Alzheimer's, although the group is pretty high-functioning -- or if some thought the question familiar but unsure of whether it was mere deja vu. Probably the former.

I've got to pack.

As a side note, I am still at work.

So, its been ages -- um, two weeks -- since I've posted. A lot is going on, so here's a rundown of all things bloggable (blogable?).

* I got promoted last week. Very exciting, and unexpectedly anti-climactic all at the same time. Perhaps it was anti-climactic because it's been in the works for a year, or perhaps because I won't let myself believe it until they find and I train my replacement. Anyway, I'm going to be a reporter and doing graphics. I'm pretty happy that it's both because I like the variety, but also because it will allow me to be creative and have more freedom over what I pursue than a traditional beat would. That said, my boss has this URL, so BITE ME, DAVE! :)

* No idea about law school. It's a wait and see thing. I have applied to three schools. Have about seven more do go. Wouldn't it be ironic to spend a couple of thousand dollars, not to mention hundreds of hours, and then not go? It's up in the air.

* Oh, wait, it has to be bloggable. Um, nevermind.

* Going home for the holidays at the end of next week. I'll be there about a week, though I have two-and-a-half weeks off. Like everybody else at work, I'm drained. Intellectually, morally, physiologically, etc. To steal and mangle the words of one of my editors, who in turn ripped off Oliver Cromwell, "Go home for the grace of God!"

* Seeing Bon Jovi on Saturday. If you're from Jersey, you'll understand.

* We haven't had TV for nearly month. I've been reading a book every several days. (Direct TV sucks -- long story.) Just finished Memoirs of a Geisha. Really, a great book. Also, tore through two Betty Smith books, including A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Perhaps it's an obviousness to say that I have a thing for "girl vs. the world" plots.

Tree was such an amazing read for me, in part because the protagonist's life would have in many ways mirrored my great grandmother's. The story was originally and memoir. Smith was born poor and the child of German immigrants in Brooklyn in 1897. My great-grandmother, called Frances like the main character in Tree, was born in 1901, also to poor Germans in Brooklyn. Francie, the character, was born in 1902. My great grandmother lost her father when she was 9 and her family was nearly destitute.

It strikes me how much life has changed, and how much it hasn't; how people struggle to put food in their mouths and to move up just a little bit, generation by generation. Incidentally, my great grandmother married a well-to-do entrepreneur in her German-American neighborhood; her daughter, my grandmother, went to college.