Christmas and the Afterward

Always Christmas is surreal. A flurry of activity. A Christmas tree bought from TROSA, climbing into the attic which only has only a few walking boards. If you miss the board you fall through the ceiling onto the floor of the lower living room (I have not done that yet so I cannot report on how it would feel, but it is quite scary to be in the back of a dark low attic where boxes from times past are carefully stowed {some dating back to my parents years}). But each Christmas box comes out, then goes temporarily back until the end of the season and the boxes are carefully loaded up, just to be found again next year.

My children have always given me grief because I feel that every ornament, even the physically challenged ones, should go on the tree. I used to insist on all the lights until we blew fuses regularly. Now that the children live elsewhere and arrive at the last minute, I can put all the ornaments on the tree that I want. They are, of course, long gone when I take the tree down, so I do have a lengthy day with all the ornaments that have their own special place.

They all try to arrive for brother Jim’s Christmas concert at The Cave. And they are never disappointed when they make it. This year Kate and Chris drove in at the beginning of the 2nd set. You could just see the happiness on Jim’s face, and on theirs. How does that make the mother feel? Fabulous.




Then there are the Christmas cookies, my grandmother’s recipe. This year Michelle, Lexton and Lyriella were here. Lexton (I cannot understand this) declined to participate but helped Lyriella keep her fingers out of the dough and icing. But even then, with all five sibs together for the event, the cookies were spectacular. Credit goes to everyone, (Michelle's sense of humor was an added bonus) but an absent Ariel certainly had her touches as Isaiah made it through the entire process and actually created cookies that were amazingly inventive! Both brothers commented on how fabulous the cookies were this year. When I was reduced to making loaves because last batch of dough wouldn’t roll, they just took in stride and made creative stuff (?) out of it.
Princess Leia made from either an angel cookie cutter or a bat!
Isaiah finally had enough and decided to change flour clothes for clean ones, but LAHR and Lexton came to surf the sugar.

The flurry always speeds up on Christmas Day because the family has their other families, and so a schizophrenic pace kicks in. Presents, always thoughtful and creative, are opened, long distance family called, John racing after paper before the gift is even fully unwrapped with a garbage bag, kitties facing off, and now adorable Lyriella trying to decide if she will nap, or if it would mean that she would miss too much. Though she chose the latter, her parents would have none of it and she wound up sleeping for 2 hours! Then as they arrive back from respective other families off we go to Jim and Anne’s daughter and son-in-law’s and their children for another fabulous evening.


Hmmm Lyriella seems to feature heavily in these pictures. Wonder why?


Hats were traded around, but this was the original...a scream!

It didn't take LAHR much time to learn where the camera was and to fake snuggling with her mother while mugging to the camera!
Kate's boyfriend arrives as Isaiah leaves and the others begin to pack up. Nice timing though.
We finish Christmas season with the whimper that most do probably. Each family member slips away, back to their apartments, some near some far, some on an airplane, some by car. The house is in chaos and the poor Christmas tree is dropping needles as if to shed a tear. Boxes are repacked and hauled to the treacherous attic, the Christmas tree lugged to the street where it will be removed as waste.

Thus, begins the dark time. It is cold. Bones hurt, it is still dark, the birds want fresh food as the old is clumped up from freezing and getting damp; thus, curling in a ball seems the most productive way to spend time. Looking forward, not back does not seem possible. But there you have it. A candle is held out—Haiti?, China? Nepal? A bright sunny day? (ha) Recorder practice? Work? Freezing mountain trips?

New books? Oh well, ok. Let’s get on with it.

I do miss Tanzania where everything was the same. And sometimes the remembering is enough.



So let us press on to the new year. 2010. Congratulations to the survivors.

Winter Wonderland

Usually I am a rather conservative person when it comes to weather. Though I think that snow is pretty awesome, I don't remember being fearless driving in it since I was in graduate school and living in Boston. I had Ravishing Ruby The Truckstop Child at the time, a beautiful red Subaru, who could traverse nasty Boston Slush, Blizzards on Interstates or in town, and take crazy night trips with friends when you literally couldn't see anything in front of you. Ruby was a good girl, and I miss her. When our first Christmas at our cabin in Boone in 1998 was marked with a wild snow/ice/snow/ice storm and we spun around backwards with the Suburban filled with dad, Katrina, Allison, Julia, two golden retrievers and a cat, I knew that I didn't want to drive in this weather again if possible.

So here I am, nearly 61, and my youthful husband greets me this morning with a hearty, "Well, last night's storm was crappy, let's see if we can get to Boone." I was not enthusiastic for an hour or so, but then joined in the delight. Sadly, we don't have a Suburban anymore, nor do I think I can ride in the Subaru for 4 hours, but, we hopped in the Toyota (without kitty) and made the trek. All was well until we hit Wilkesboro where plowing seemed to have bogged down. Still, the roads were pretty clear until we started up the road that leads to our house. And when we came through Mr. Brooks house, I was definitely worried. This was a good worry as we only drove past the first side road and were stuck. Fortunately for us, Brooks' son was plowing, and after he drove past us, we were able to manage to slide our way up as far as the switchback.


So here we are with a beautiful afternoon, evening, and walk around the neighborhood. WNCW is playing beautiful bluegrass Christmas music, and there is the possibility of 4 more inches of snow tonight. If we get snowed in???? Oh well as far as I am concerned. Kitty has plenty of food, water, and warm blankets all around her, so we will be just fine in the "hills of Caroline".

Uganda's Proposed New Laws

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/nation_world/story/231756.html

I promise that Purina Chow was not recruiting my children. They did want him to come to their birthday party, but mostly they just love him. They think about how he shaped their growing up lives by being fun, honest, and helpful and loving them back. What a wonderful experience for them. They won't forget it.

Brutal anti-gay laws proposed in Uganda

I really don’t want to write more horrified sad blogs, but it seems that the world just won’t cooperate. This morning, in the middle of a terrific thunderstorm (snow in 10 days?) I read that Uganda is proposing passing laws that could actually impose the death penalty for persons who were homosexual, and that the backing for these laws is coming from Christian Conservatives. Families who support their children can be beaten, evicted, and fired from their jobs. (Of course the gays and lesbians who are “out” automatically are evicted and fired presumably before being put to death.

As it turns out, this isn’t the only country where automatically gays and lesbians are presumed to be “recruiting children”, as if that would actually happen. Africa might seem to be a leader in this propaganda against gays and lesbians, but when you look deeper, you see colonialism alive and well and “Christianity” seems to be at the root. This type of Christianity which justifies murder just seems like a foreign concept. Would Jesus justify murder under any circumstances? I cannot imagine it. And I feel like years and years of working with gay men and lesbians, and trying to help them “come out of the closet” so that they can FEEL normal and not ashamed is swirling ever more quickly down the drain.

As for AIDS prevention and treatment, this attitude towards homosexuality simply squashes prevention efforts as they speak only towards one population. Just trying to include prevention work for men who have sex with men in an environment where this act could confer death, is impossible.

Our world is a scary place, and the agenda of the conservative Christian leaders only makes it scarier.

What would Jesus do?

World AIDS Day Dec 1 2009

Today is World AIDS Day 2009. Again. I will be busy handing out ribbons, and trying to help KIWAKKUKI by selling their beaded ribbons. I didn't think I would still be doing this, but I also thought that there would be a cure. When my friend Jeffrey and I met in Boston, I knew for some reason that this little Welsh man would have a profound impact on my life. I didn't know exactly why, I was a social work student at BU, and he was a chef and owner of two very successful restaurants Casa Mexico and 9 Knox Street, and also a lover of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Since I loved Gilbert and Sullivan as well, I just thought that we would run into one another from time to time while we performed, he as the patter baritone and I as one of the faithful chorus. But, it didn't turn out that way. A group of us, Johnny (Bloodie), Patty, Sam, Terry, Norman and me, pretty much spent most of our free time with Jeffrey, and gladly cooked, cleaned and were entertained by this amazingly charismatic man. In turn, he showed up for graduate school stuff, including my graduation. We were sort of the "bad seed" when it came to the Gilbert and Sullivan Players of various schools in Boston, as we never took anything seriously, especially ourselves, and that made some of the directors pretty mad at us. But, it didn't last, as we were the first to have the rush of joy when the shows went up and the lights. Jeffrey used to say..."What lights, where?" and look in wonderment around us. He used to do terrible things like drop his false teeth at us as we were trying to sing a patter chorus part, or whisper some hysterical joke in our ear as we were to be weeping on stage. But it was all in good fun.

Jeffrey was cast as Pish Tush in The Mikado, which was to play at The World's Fair in Knoxville Tennessee. What fun. I had two children, and we all planned to drive to see him. But, on opening night, he collapsed on stage. Patty had said that he seemed out of breath when she visited him during rehearsals and that he was very thin. But, no one seemed to know what was wrong. He was so sick that night that he needed oxygen back stage, and was immediately flown out of Knoxville to New York. 1982, GRID.

Jeffrey shouldn't have survived the bout of PCP, but like everything he wasn't supposed to do, he did survive. Probably his life wouldn't have ended so horribly if he had died. The next weeks and months were awful. His friends rallied around and helped to take care of him. No one knew what to do to make him better, and all the treatments he received just made things worse. Sometimes he and I would throw up together--I with morning sickness and he just because he was sick.

Finally, Jeffrey was taken out of the hospital, AMA, and flown back to his beloved England, where his mother and aunties could care for him and he could get Brompton's Cocktail, a wonderful mix of everything pain killing. He recognized his family, and lived a few weeks with his loving family before finally dying.

In one of the dramatic throw-ups, I had promised that..."Until there is a cure", I would keep trying to help others the way that Jeffrey had helped me. Never did I think that it would take so long. Jeffrey was only 39 when he died. He was an amazing man, the Very Model of a Modern Major General.

The voices who cannot speak

What about the voices who cannot speak?

I made one of those terrible internet mistakes yesterday by inviting my entire e-mail contact list, most of whom I do not know, to my personal facebook page. That was a pretty bad error since I was just trying to invite our community advisory board to our relatively new “cause” facebook page. We are having a town hall meeting tonight, and I wanted to get the word out there-yet again.

As I am reaping the repercussions of this error, I pondered the people that I know who would never receive this invitation, nor be able to answer, either positively or in the rage that a few people have. These are the people with whom I really interact. They are the orphans of KIWAKKUKI who are hoping that someone will sponsor them for school next year, the parents of the orphans who hope that someone will sponsor their child (one parent has died) for school because they have no income and cannot pay for school and also for food. They are the HIV-positive adults who try desperately to be hired by employers who are themselves struggling and cannot imagine shouldering the cost of medication for their employees that they know are wonderful, but have a regular medication bill that far outweighs what other employees have. They are the smiling faces of the hopeful who have been damaged so greatly. They are the faces of those who simply cannot divulge this secret…this terrible secret inside because to do it would risk everything that they have built, everything that they count on. Affording internet? Doubtful. They can’t even afford to get an internet virus, yet, they got the costliest virus of all, HIV.

I used to think that everyone should come to the place where they were open about their HIV. I used to listen and help people move move towards disclosure. I marveled at my dear friends who had disclosed their status and had made it through that disclosure intact. But, I have also met people who were beaten, thrown out of their house with nothing but the clothes on their backs, torn from their children, and found that their families weren’t quite as loving as they thought. So- what do you do? As a teen, do you listen to the horrible things that other teens say about people living with HIV? And then disclose that you too are HIV-infected? As a mother, do you disclose your status and then find that the school and other children and their parents have found out and are treating your child badly? As a professional, do you walk around with that silence all around you? I don’t know. Sometimes, I feel I don’t know much anymore.

As my friend Jacquie says, “One day we will look back on this disease and say-boy was that a hard time, I’m so glad it is over.” I hope it happens in my life-time.

The Long Awaited Visit

Ok, I have to back this blog up. Too much work has stressed my life to the limit. Not that I am complaining. But the most fun of October was when daugther Michelle, s-i-l Lexton and darling 7 month old Lyriella came to visit. I definitely know that I couldn't have raised a 7 month old myself at my advanced age. What possesses the 50+ year old women to have a baby? I guess they have nannies. Anyway, how did I forget that Christina crawled her way to freedom at 5 months and laughed when we couldn't find her, what possessed Kate to decide that she would never sleep again after her English Spaniel Ralph died and the sensitive mother told her that Ralph went to sleep. Oh well, as grandmother, the fun began as Lyriella decided her strategy. Move, look, try to decline sleep, persuade Grandpa John that she really needs all Mac products, meet and greet Great Uncles and Aunts (the vote from Lyriella seems to be that they are interesting, unusual, and she would like to see them more, and definitely want the Aunts to be a big part of her life. All in all it was a great week, and Grandma cannot figure out where it went.... I have put away the bed, found the leftover incredibly cute dresses and T-shirts, looked at the funny teeth pictures and thought.....I want my children and grandchildren HERE. But alas, that is there decision. And I will live with that!
Freedom...or fake coals, or the nasty sheepskin

It is very possible that Great Uncle Rick has something wonderful. It might need to be eaten, or at at the least given. These Great's. They are pretty wonderful.!

Great Aunt Kay knows how to deal with her babies. And Grandma is sad that she didn't have the camera for Great Aunt Anne who is equally adept. what was she thinking!

Aunt Julia had many attributes, but apparently the laces were the best. Lyriella adapted to all her family like she had been in North Cacki lacki for ever.

Grandpa John reminds Lyriella that he actually has nice things, not just the laptop, iphone and pager, and she has decided that she wants the Pakistani Wall Hanging...Oh, ok. But we have to die first. One thing at a time.



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Fiona Terry-Breathing New Life Into this Ngirilover

I love the mountains! A weekend with Fiona Terry and her two adorable children. John, Leaves, Pat and Quail, good whiskey, fire in the fireplace... what more do you need?

Make sure that the wood is ready for the fireplace!

Fiona is loving her kids!
So....what is it about this woman and her kids. Fiona is a visiting faculty member to the Kenan School of Ethics and Duke Global Health Center. She is an amazing woman, and she has given me a breath of new life. She has worked with Doctors without Borders (MSF) the International Committee for the Red Cross, and others, and has done so in refugee camps, in terrifying war situations, and in places that most of us would say a big NO! But there she is, literally on fire with her desire to slowly give us (in our working group) a new way of thinking. Ponder carefully what you are doing in a placement abroad, ponder carefully if you are hurting or helping, ponder carefully what the best way to work with refugees and internally displaced persons and provide them with safety...not to make life worse for them and to put yourself in such harm's way that you cause a mess. These are new ways of thinking and they make sense. Think in other words, in a different way and then act on it. WOW. For an old lady like me, this is challenging. Especially for an Irish old lady like me. Then, to top it off. She is so much fun. She is delightful, funny, charming and maybe a little sarcastic. But, she has the neatest kids, lovely, polite, creative, and actually pretty nice to each other. The natural fit for the weekend was to have our dear friends Pat and Quail over. What a terrific time. I just wish I were 29+ and could sign up for all the possibilities that are right in front of all of us for foreign service...and this time in the right ways. On the other hand, maybe we were guided by instinct and haven't done so bad after all!