A month of gifts, day 26: The Gift of Books

I came home from the library today with too many books. Actually, pretty much every time I come home with too many books. There are stacks of books by the bed, more in my closet, a heap beside my desk, even a few in the trunk of my car (just in case). My life is measured out in pages, chapters, authors' notes and afterwords. Give me a plot twist or a bibliography, some good light and a comfortable chair, and I'll entertain myself for hours.

I love the way books smell, the weight of them in my hands, the sound of turning pages. I love the possibilities inherent in libraries and bookstores.

Books are some of my oldest and dearest friends, my companions in times of loneliness. But more than anything, I love recommending them--finding just the right person for a favorite story, or just the right book for a favorite person, is a great joy. 

Once in a while, I get to meet one of my favorite authors and tell them how much their work has meant to me. It's a privilege to share someone else's world for a little while, and look at things through their eyes.

I used to think I'd figured out a way to use the library's automated system to take out more books than I was supposed to, but it turns out they just raised my check out limit without telling me. I guess there are some advantages to bringing borrowed things back on time. Right now my library backpack is full to overflowing, so it's time to curl up and enjoy the temporary stash. I've got history books, psychology, anthropology, true crime, self-help, a couple of Craig Johnson's Longmire novels, the latest Pendergast book from Preston and Child, and a Star Wars tie-in. Among others. I'm not quite at my new, higher checkout limit. But I bet I'm getting close.

A month of gifts, day 25: The Gift of a Childlike Spirit

The times are a-changing in the Crow household. The three kids pillaged our remaining cash and took off in one of the cars, hoping to catch the evening showing of The Force Awakens at the local theater. (Some of us have already seen it. Once. So far.) It’s strange that they’re all so grown up that we can just turn them loose without supervision. Twenty years ago, I couldn’t have imagined this day would ever come.

One of the best parts is that even the older two have kept a childlike spirit, at least about some things. At one thirty in the morning on Thursday, driving home from picking up the Girl!Twin at the airport, I was listening to her and her twin brother laughing in the back seat over some video they both found hilarious. That sound has been making me smile for the past two decades. And now they’re bringing their little brother along on their adventures.

I wouldn’t have minded seeing the movie again in the theater, but it’s good for the three of them to have a little time together. All too soon, the twins will be really grown up and building lives of their own, and I want their brother to have good memories of the things he’s done with them. For a while, when they’re here at home, they don’t always have to be mature and responsible.

For the mom, Christmas spirit usually means focusing on the needs of others and finding ways to make the holiday special for those we love. That’s a good thing—but this coming year, I have a goal of regaining some of that childlike spirit of joy that too often gets crushed out by the weight of responsibility. Making magic for others is a good thing, because it grows when it’s shared, but it’s okay to keep a little for yourself.

The childlike spirit believes amazing things—even miracles—are possible. It holds fast to hope, takes pleasure in creativity, treats others with generosity rather than judgment. And it really enjoys the leftover cookies on the counter.

Saving this for future reference . . .

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A month of gifts, day 24: The Gift of Joy

Before Morning

In that hour when the first pearl gray of dawn glints between the trees,

And bird shadows flutter and shift, lavender ghosts on the snow,

Every child—even the ones with aching bones and silver hair

Tinseled across their brows, even the ones who stayed up late

Building and wrapping and baking, even the ones who drove

Lonely roads or flew, who window-shopped and made lists

And mailed cards—children wake in that dim hour,

Hugging the promise of joy tight to their chests,

Whisper their secret hopes to the angels of the longest nights.

Everything is possible in that moment, every hurt soothed,

Every doomed dream breathing with new life.

We remember, when the still night closes around us,

Who we were before the world wore us down to fit.

We remember the thrill of story, the way songs

Threaded our bones. This moment, ripe with possibility,

Will fade as the sun breaks the horizon.

Joy leaking out into the world as a memory

Shared hand to hand between brothers and sisters,

Mothers and fathers and friends.

Joy passed as fingers brush and eyes meet

And hearts crack a little to let hope in.

c, 2015 Jennifer Crow

A month of gifts, day 23: Click the link below to read about the Gift of Hope

I'm guest-blogging today! Click the link to read about the Gift of Hope.

A month of gifts, day 22: The Gift of Light

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Psalms 30:5

If you live in the frozen north, like I do, then you’re probably not surprised that pretty much every religion and culture has a holiday associated with the long nights of the year. This month, I’ll stand at the window in the afternoon and watch the darkness closing in, too early. It’s no wonder we string lights over our doors, put electric candles in our windows, light bonfires in the yard or put another log in the fireplace. However beautiful the stars are, however sheltering the arms of night, we need the light.

One of the most astonishing things I saw when I visited Russia in 1987 was the Winter Palace of the tsars, in what was then Leningrad.  [Picture] There’s a room in the palace with towering columns covered in gold leaf, and the light in that hall is like nothing else I’ve ever seen.  One of the guys I was traveling with said, “Well, you can see why they had a revolution.” And while that’s true, there’s also the matter of the tsars having enough money and resources that they never had to be in the darkness, at least in the literal sense. But literal darkness isn’t really the problem, is it?

One of the tricks depression plays is to make you think there's nothing left but darkness. And just like a palace hall designed always to be full of artificial light, the cell of depression is equally false. If the night is inevitable, so too is the dawn.

Today was literally gloomy, and night fell earlier than I anticipated. This is it: the lowest point. From here, everything gets lighter. After a long night’s darkness, I’m ready for a new day.

A month of gifts, day 21: The Gift of Dreams

In the waking world, I have two beautiful sisters who are both blonde. But in the dream, my sister was a lovely brunette, a talented architect . . . and the building on which she was working collapsed and killed her. My dream-self was devastated, and wanted to honor her in some way. Someone—maybe her ghost, maybe one of those wise voices that sometimes show up in dreams—told me to finish the building for her, but I was afraid. It had killed her. What if it destroyed me, too?

“You have to build what you fear.” That’s the line that echoed in my mind when I awoke. I knew it was true. Or maybe it would be better to say I knew it was a True Dream, one of those occasions when the deeper mind speaks and the night visions are more than just a reflection of gut-level urges and fears. Still, I didn’t know what to do with it. I’m afraid a lot of the time, or at least anxious. I felt like I was building in fear all the damn time.

But that’s not what the voice in my dream meant, though it’s taken a few years to understand. Trying to construct a career or a life out of fear is not the same thing as building what you fear. Here’s the thing: I’m afraid of being invisible. Forgotten. The only thing worse than a bad review is no review at all. In some ways, it’s a great time to want a career in the arts. Changes have made it possible to reach audiences in ways that were never possible before. The flip side of that being a world so crowded with writers and artists waving their creations, so full of a cacophony of voices—many of them very good—that it’s almost impossible for any one person to make themselves visible.

One blink, and you’ve disappeared.

At least, that’s the new narrative. You’ve got to put yourself out there, create content, connect . . . constantly. Any lapse invites vanishment. Silence is failure.

That pace has been crushing for me, though, especially because there’s no payoff, no point of ‘enough.’ Interacting with people always makes me feel like a foreigner trying to learn strange customs, and I never seem to get it right. Now I’m exhausted. All I have left is the rubble of who I thought I was.

You have to build what you fear.

So this is what I fear: Being invisible. Being forgotten.  I’ve fought that all my life, tried to move faster than obscurity, and only recently have I realized I can never outrun it. So much of what we are, is fleeting and fragile, a brown leaf curling in the wind, and gone. I can waste my life trying to escape that—trying, in essence, to escape myself—or I can take a step to the side and really examine what’s going on. I’m not sure what will happen if I stop grasping, but I want to believe that at that moment, I will begin to build.