Hi all,
I hope you had a fan-tabulous holiday season and Happy New Year!
Just dropping a quick note to say that I’ll be moving over to Tuesday and/or Wednesday AM posts from now on. Posts will range from poetry, fiction, blogging, and miscellaneous content.
I am looking forward to a productive writing year! All the best,
-AJM
a brand new sherpa
draped over the furniture
it isn’t dirty yet
or covered in dust
it doesn’t have dirt or stains
or mud
a virgin snow
untouched
by the long, dark
or the salt that curses the roads
beautiful
innocent
it is the puff
of fresh air
on your lips
Dear Grandma,
I miss you
I think of you everyday
your loud laughter
your eye-crinkle smile
even your house
that smelled a certain way
the holidays are near
I want to show I care
I want to know that you’d be proud
I want to feel like you’re here
I want someone
to throw wrapping paper
I want someone
to squeeze me so tight it hurts
I want the fake snow-flake decals
on every single window
It doesn’t feel like Christmas
now that you’re gone, grandma…
it feels like a big hole is missing
that place that used to exist
the place where Christmas used to be
I imagine it sucked out like a giant vacuum
a void, a black hole
a darkness that feels so sad
and so angry
so empty
so empty
It makes me mad
that you’re not here
to see the years past
you won’t get the family bulletin
a summary of the year
of life’s triumphs
and heart-breaks
Instead we drag on
we trudge behind time
like lost little sheep
we labor to it
we are slaves to it
we worship it
but we can’t do anything
there’s nothing I can do about you being gone
I’d know what you’d say
you’d laugh and say something like,
“Trust God, and in him, all things are possible.
And what are you worrying about anyway?
I’m with him. And that’s as it should be…”
But it feels so sad, Grandma…
so hopeless,
without you.
I might sound like a major Grinch in this post, but I’m not going to apologize.
Christmas is coming, no, its steamrolling its way here faster than I’d like, and it’s sprinted past Thanksgiving and is on its way to Christmas in July…which will probably get here faster than Thanksgiving.
And Turkey day is merely two weeks away…just saying.
I’ve been out and about the last couple of days doing errands, and I’ve been noticing more and more red and green than I have before. Christmas may not be my favorite holiday, but usually I like to get into the Christmas spirit after Thanksgiving. Not before. Not during.
My less than jolly mood could be contributed to my three years spent working retail, and the Christmas music that some stores shove down your throats the day after Halloween.
We also lost my grandma this year, and it just doesn’t feel like there should be a holiday at all, but I definitely don’t want to see Christmas trees and fake snowmen out before I’m ready.
I guess when it comes down to it, the holidays mean something different for each and every one of us. For those who have lost loved ones, it can be a difficult time. Most of the time I get annoyed because of how commercialized Christmas has become. It is all about the money and stores are even opening Thanksgiving night, instead of early black Friday morning.
I feel just like Charlie Brown on A Charlie Brown Christmas. What ever happened to the true meaning of Christmas? To spending time with friends and family and loved ones?
To realize that Christmas is about the joy of spending time together and giving and love.
Maybe it doesn’t feel like Christmas this year because the only thing I want for Christmas is the one thing I can’t have: to spend one more Christmas with my Grandma. To hear her laugh again, to get wrapping paper thrown at my head.
Well, I didn’t mean to get all sentimental on you guys, but I am doing everything I can to find some joy in Christmas this year, and it just isn’t happening.
And it certainly doesn’t help when the outside world is telling us too soon that you better be ready: Christmas is coming!!
Where do you find the joy in the holidays?
I’ve decided that I’m going to try to make most of my presents this year, but I think I might also do some online shopping. I’ve had enough of stores already!
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
These last couple days have been a blast. Christmas isn’t apparently just one day in our house, we have been celebrating more of a Christmas week. I think it is definitely time to start eating healthier again, though, and to start exercising. And on that note, while taking a walk on Christmas day near my Grandma’s house, we came upon an old cemetery, and this headstone:
Not only is it interesting that this person from middle-of no-where-upstate, New York, fought and died for his country, someone somewhere out there still appreciates him. He was a veteran and that still matters, even if it happened over 50 years ago.
The flowers in front of his headstone were blown over and covered with leaves, but we dusted them off, and nestled them in front of his grave. The wind was blowing and the rain started splattering on our faces, and I tried to identify the significance this moment could possibly have.
Was it sad to be in a graveyard on Christmas afternoon? Was the rain and gloominess really just a way to emphasize it? Every little detail became so important suddenly: the curiosity on my boyfriend’s face as he yells across the headstones: “Look at this one, babe!”
The way the land curves and rolls; the mounds of grass, the moss that grows in splotches; and the path that cuts through the cemetery between tall, long-limbed trees. If you stood at one end of the path and looked down it, you get the impression that it goes on forever; that life continues somewhere on the “other side” where the road ends.
And meanwhile, the sky is so gray the clouds seem grumpy, like steel-gray eyebrows furrowed in disappointment, that it seems nearly impossible to find the light in the darkness, to stand tall and go about your day.
Except, I wasn’t sad or disappointed, I just felt…blessed. I was thankful to be where I am, in the country I am, with the people who I love and that belong to me. I felt proud for this soldier who had represented my country, and honored that I was the one who righted his flowers, to tell him, (even if it was just in a small way), that he did matter and still does to those who understand freedom and cherish it like I do.
I felt irony because of the name on the headstone, which happens to be the veteran’s father: George Bailey.
George Bailey, the name of the character in It’s a Wonderful Life, the man who didn’t know what wealth truly was until it was taken away from him. That our worth isn’t measured in the dollars in our pockets, but in the lives we touch and the people who love us most.
And isn’t that at the heart of Christmas?
I had a fantastic holiday, and I hope everyone else did, too. Did you do anything special this year? Vacation in the tropics? I’d love to hear about it.
Happy Writing everyone!
There’s been something on my mind lately and that is Love.
Art done on Paint; by AJM
What is it exactly?
A discussion in one of my college classes about love suggested that love can be varying. We were talking mostly about the love that you feel towards someone – how someone described as being in love as a sacrifice of themselves, to be so consumed by another person, you forget who you are.
To love someone is to put that other person before you, to care that they hurt, to want to make their passage in this world as easy as possible.
So, the question on my mind is: How do you know when it’s real?
Even as I write this, I find it ironic that every other song on my Pandora station has to do with love, or even has the word in the song. Love is everywhere. It is in the very fabric of our being; to find that place where we belong, where we are appreciated, where we are needed.
In my opinion, it is simple, really. We seek to define love to understand it. We give it different meanings and write different definitions for it. But real love shouldn’t need to be defined, it is only felt. Whether it makes sense or not, is beyond the point.
With real love we risk real heartbreak, but it is a sacrifice that everyone must accept to find where he or she truly belongs.
Me and my cat Milo, when he was a kitten. What a goofball!
On that note, I’ve decided to focus on something else this holiday season…and that is giving gifts to show the ones I love how truly thankful I am to be known by them, to love and be loved.
Every year I struggle with Christmas and the fact that it is so commercialized! (I blame the years I worked in retail. Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday!) I’d decided to do a few things to bring myself back into the holiday spirit and to focus on the love and selflessness that the holiday is meant to show:
What are you doing to get into the holiday spirit? Thoughts below if you got them!
A. J. Morse 