Giving of arts and crafts has been interwoven tradition in my family for years. In lean years, we made gifts for people. I still have several of the treasures that my talented mother made. I have some also that I made for family members not with us any longer. I have been making Christmas stockings for people in my family since my first born. My great grandmother made my first Christmas stocking that I still have and display each year. My grandmother made a giant Christmas stocking that has inspired me always in my work on Christmas stockings.
I love all of the handmade crafts made by my family – these are true treasures. Even more, I love the memory of being taught how to do something by family and friends. My mom taught me how to do needlework (crewel embroidery), that I learned in Girl Scouts, but didn’t refine until my mom showed me some key points of understanding about the skill – today we’d call them “hacks”. Back in the day, we did not have social media and widespread how-to’s available to us except in books and magazines or if we were lucky, with a mom or grandmother who could show us what to do real-time.
Very much I wanted to carry on the spirit of tradition and love of making by hand the Christmas stockings. In this, I made a Christmas stocking for my grandchild just in time for his first Christmas in 2015. It was a work of love and hard work this is. Needle work is always hard and it takes love to drive it and have it look right – creativity is a must. Here is a little video of my tour of the stocking (pardon my amateurish camera work!). Hoping that this lasts so that my grandson can see this one day, and appreciate it.
Everyone loves to look at the work and ask about the history. Some of these are deeply handmade, some are just choices of really cute little items that we’ve found that we wanted to include in the work.
Love
Of – My Grandson and Carrying on Tradition by Making…
Visual Memories From the Generations
Especially for My Grandson – A Christmas Stocking Story by Geema
Admittedly, this is a different holiday season in many ways, this year, but most acutely, within my family we will be adjusting to spending our holiday with fewer people this year than last, and praying for the healing of the broken links that are causing this. Links are connections that when one is broken, many are affected.
The hardest adjustment is “re-framing” our situation when this happens – the instability caused, takes a while to re-stabilize to the new normal, whatever that is to be, and our very human emotions are affected forevermore, so more work must be done to contain the reactions and resulting instability that those create, as well.
We hear the term “chain reaction” — our chain may not be linear, but may be more like a net of chain links.
I remember hearing my parents talk about this or that relative who they had difficulty being around because of some unfortunate situation that occurred in the past, that caused hurt feelings where the scars were too great to completely heal. The more major the hurt, the bigger the scars and the damage done. Time factor comes in and sometimes it helps dissipate the hurt, and dilute the ill feelings, but sometimes it does not help in that way.
Troubleshooting circumstances like this that happen ahead of or during the holidays can be especially difficult, can cause much confusion, and if there is perceived loss or potential loss, the losses of the past are dragged up out of the coffins in our memory bank, like Dracula in the darkness, coming out to demand that “deep inner work” be done, once again – to resettle the grief, and attempt to heal and recover back to a more normal state.
The human condition involves loss and grieving.
We are wired to feel loss and grief, but we are not given a handbook on how to do the healing in the best way possible – someone forgot to pack that in our backpack when we were born – oh – right – we are not given a backpack, just the capabilities to develop as we mature — and some of us are not given the best sets of tools, or there are things that happen that cause the tools to be broken or rusty when we pull them out to use them.
I always ask God to advise me on these occasions. Sometimes I listen and do not hear back. Sometimes the message comes in an unexpected form. In fact, usually, that is the case. I am waiting right now. Just saying.
Joni Mitchell is great at articulating how wistful the holidays can be in her song “River” when she discusses how broken relationships affect the time.
In our case, I am praying hard for guidance in troubled times. I am praying for healing, and for recovery — and I am praying for Peace… It’s a different holiday season this year. I am observing it. I am trying to re-frame for this year in order to survive through the time with some holiday spirit.
Astoundingly fast the time goes these days. When we were kids, we used to say “as slow as Christmas” when we thought that something was taking a long time. We were always waiting for Christmas to come around again. The dramatic lead up to the climax of the eve before the big day. Loved “The Christmas Story” movie about the kid and the bee-bee gun – absolutely one of the best Christmas movies out there… Likely, the kid thought that things were indeed moving slowly as he wished and hoped that Santa would deliver his dream!
I was running the other day and had these thoughts, as I do, about this phenomenon of time moving faster as you get older. Well, unfortunately, I forgot it (mostly), as you do, when your endorphins go back down to normal levels after the run. Shit. I hate it when that happens. I lose some of my best insights that way. Sometimes I record these, but then I get nervous and feel like I am on radio. It completely upchucks the thoughts and garbles the original flow. I wish I could invent something that could record these important insights in my brain and not look like really screwed up garbage.
I don’t have the comic strip anymore, but years ago, Dagwood Bumstead (of the comic strip Blondie) awakened and opened up a notepad on his bed stand after having a brilliant flash of insight when he was dreaming – and what he found the next day was a bunch of nonsensical words written down, much to his chagrin. That would be me!
I get a little depressed that my time on earth is now within that realm of “realizable”, as it now has the potential to be no longer than my longest marriage relationship, statistically speaking. In addition to this, we all, as we age, begin to see each year more people taking off due to unexpected circumstances and early-onset illnesses. Big fat finger in your face, reminding you that you are not in control here.
My neighbor told me the story of asking her dad on his 70th birthday, “Dad, how does it feel to be 70?” She said he was not happy being asked that question. He told her to consider how she would feel if she knew that she had more years behind her than the number ahead. I had a similar experience with my Dad when he was in his sixties. He got really grumpy when I made a bad attempt to be humorous about his age. My bad judgment and lack of understanding got me into some deep doo-doo on that one…
Yep, it’s a fact. No matter which flavor of religious affiliation you are, generally speaking, you are mainly being prepared for leaving the planet as you listen to sermons and read about what prophets say. This time of year, the joyousness of the season is infectious and people of various faiths do celebrate The Holidays together as much as they can because it is positive and cheery – everyone feels good, mostly, when they get out and party in a positive way with people.
As an analyst, looking at religions across the spectrum, the preparation for “what’s next” in the human experience and birth-life-death-re-birth (or not) is the one common denominator. We see that some religions more focus on the here and now, and some focus on the within more than the without, and some focus on the after, more than the now, but the departure in all its forms, of leaving the body in which we are living presents a major event horizon that triggers something else in the belief systems of major and minor religious philosophies. Besides Death, Birth is that other one single event that is viewed as important, as it begins a cycle of life on the planet. It is all wondrous and never solved definitively, likely by design by someone or some thing.
People dedicate their entire lives to the solution. They go into the forest by certain trees and sometimes get so far in that they lose sight of the original point that they are trying to solve – or rather the mystery – maybe it is not a problem, just a condition, or a situation. Whatever.
The trees still have green leaves on them where I live. Some of these are supposed to have fallen off, or at least be brown or some other color besides green. We have constant change in our environment that poses big world problems or problems of the planet. We watched the movie, “Interstellar”, the other night. It was one of the physics and math will solve this if someone smart enough can do this in time types of movies with the added aspect of the explorers going outside to look for a new planet, just in case, even though most people will be dead back home because of the time warps and distance issues.
You know – it’s enough to entertain you, and make you a little anxious. Half-facts, with the seasonings and flavorings borrowed from Contact, Mad Max, and other such movies. We didn’t see aliens – they were missing. But then ahead of this, there was the boring war movie that had the alien spaceship and when I am falling asleep watching movies, they tend to merge into one plot. Or I get distracted and the movie isn’t that meaningful, so I go surf the net, or go on Facebook. I mean, how many ways can you slice and dice the plot lines? It’s all about the same thing.
Redux. Is there anything new under the sun? No, not really. It is, as I said in one of my other posts, all matter just recomposed and reconfigured. Stuff just isn’t produced – it is reconstituted. Think about it. How would anything really leave and how would anything else come in? Hmmmm. Think of the options. According to some folks who are “in the know” – it hasn’t happened that anyone can prove… At least not yet, right Agent Scully?
So, what was I saying? Slower than Christmas? Whoever thought that up was just trying to be clever. I am with you.
What I do know is that Humor IS required! Without it, you are sunk. “Bottom of the ocean…”
And before we know it, it will be Christmas Day. We should celebrate something – any aspect of our lives that has reflected positively and gives us hope – definitely, it is a time to reflect on new beginnings and try to not think about the anxieties of the world.
What do I want for Christmas? Twenty-four hours of no television, of good conversation that is not negative, with reflections of good times and gratefulness – peace for a day. Longer if possible. That is what I would like for Christmas this year. Oh, and good health. Yeah, that would be good – for the entire family.
