Reverb11 - Day 25 - Who I love and the best gift ever

#1 Prompt: Love: Who do you love + why do you love them?  What does it feel like to be around these people?

#2 Prompt: The reason for the season - What's the most memorable gift you've ever received?

#1 -- The person I most love is my husband Tony, who has always on Christmas Day given me either a beautifully sentimental card or written me a letter. He opted for the latter this year and although I love the cards, the letters are the most special, and yes, they get kept.

In it, he writes of the Christmases we've spent together (this is the 15th), how he feels about that and about me and about the myriad of things that I do to make the day special for us, and, well -- a lot of wonderfully loving language that you don't need to hear because it's meant just for me.

How could I not love that? But I knew I loved him and that we were right together almost from the very first day I met him. Every day, every hug, every kiss reaffirms that for me, over and over. And my gratitude for him simply overflows my heart. After all these years, I love his touch, I love it when I see him coming towards me in a group, I love watching his face when he doesn't know I'm watching him. He is my rock, my calm center, my home, no matter where I am. How lucky I am to have this. How lucky we are to have found each other.

There are others whom I love dearly -- brother, sister-in-law, daughters, friends -- but I think the ability to love comes from first being shown great love: the more love you receive, the more you have to give to others. When your own well runs dry, it's hard to find a drop for others. I am grateful to those who love me so well, and I hope you receive back from me that gift.  

#2 -- There have been some wonderful gifts in my past, and a few maybe not so much (think Crock Pot...from my husband ... ex)

The one that I best remember is a personal life album (scrapbook) and family history made by my mother and father in 1997, I think, or maybe 1996. She had been so painfully sick with osteoporosis and heart issues that year that their traveling days had to stop, and she had quite a lot of time at home. She had gone through decades of newspaper clippings, photographs, school records, and the other  keepsake papers, written a family tree geneology for each side of our family. She'd made a collage of pictures for the cover -- and this was not only for me, but she also put ones together for my brother and for my daughter, so each was different, with a few of the same elements.

They began with old pictures of each family -- our grandparents and great-grandparents, along with their names and a brief history. Where there were appropriate photos of us interacting with them, they were included -- like the four generation one of me, my father, my grandmother and my great-grandmother, taken when I was maybe 2 or 3.  She'd chosen photos of me at all the stages (to that point) of my life: child, teen, college student, young married woman, young mother, middle-aged working mom, etc., and of the people who have been so important in my life, along with other little news clips or keepsakes from her treasure box (her wedding hankie, for instance, was in my daughter's album).

It was a beautiful gift and we all three looked at them all day, sharing memories, sharing some of the different elements of each book, telling stories, and listening to my mother and dad tell theirs. I have custody of the albums from which the life album photos were chosen, but none is more precious to me than the one she spent that year putting together for me.

What they cost was time, her time and my dad's, because he was there helping her choose photos, pasting them in, remembering stories along with her. That gift of time and memory is still the best one I've ever received.

How blessed I am!

Ch-ch-changes

When I was in the eighth grade in Springfield, Mo., I was in the "Broadcaster" class -- a group of students who, in addition to regular science, math, history, gym, and English classes, also produced the school newspaper. It was a good group -- some of the brightest and best students of my generation were in that classroom. I was privileged to be there and learned a great deal, and inclusion very likely influenced my choice of careers.

That was the year of Nixon and Kennedy. Nixon came to Springfield. *I* was a Nixon supporter, I'm embarrassed to say, probably for no other reason than my dad was a Republican (yes, I came from a split home: my mother was a Democrat, and one of my early memories of politics is them arguing over Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower...)

But Kennedy won. And I remember watching the inauguration at school (they brought in TVs when something historic was happening, like the space launches or the inauguration). I remember tottery Robert Frost reciting his poem The Gift Outright -- not the original poem he had written because he couldn't see past the glaring sun.

And I remember writing a poem myself, at the request of the teacher, for the newspaper (I was sort of the class's poet). I don't know that I still have the text, but it was titled After the Ball, and referenced the heavy load that the new, young, bright-shining President would assume after the balls, the festivities were over.

Today, as I watched Barack Obama take the oath of office under cold, sunny skies in Washington, I remembered Kennedy's inauguration too -- the hope, the promise, the winds of change that accompanied him into the White House. And I cried a little, and a little more when the Rev. Joseph Lowery gave his stirring benediction.

With this new president, we baby boomers have passed the torch to a new generation. For one, I am hopeful and optimistic, along with the millions and millions of people who watched today's ceremony either from the Washington mall or on streets all over the world or in the quiet of their own living rooms. The collective energy is almost palpable, even from here in my home.

For today, there is hope. There is love and courage and faith and trust. There is joy at the realization of the dreams and courage of a generation now as old and older than I.

I am reveling in this feeling today, energy boosted, connection with the world heightened. I know it will fade. I know our new president will make mistakes. I know things will not instantly improve.

But for today -- which in the end is all we ever have -- I am grateful for this feeling, for this opportunity, and I will add my voice to the collective energy of so many others who are praying for change, who are grateful for new beginnings, and who believe in the possibilities. To do otherwise is to deny the power of the universe and ourselves to turn things around.

Missing my folks

I don't know why the memory came to me exactly, but I have had the strongest memories in the last couple of days of the house where I grew up in Springfield, Missouri.

And specifically, oddly, of my parents' bedroom, which was at the back of the first floor of the house, a two-story Tudor-style dwelling. Their room was an add-on, I think, before we bought it when I was in the fifth grade, and could have been used as a family room. Two other bedrooms were upstairs -- mine and my brother's.

Their room had a door to the back yard and a window opening to the kitchen, in addition to the door from the small hall between kitchen and living room that also had the door to the basement. My mother, a neatnik, always kept the room immaculately neat and tidy. There was a tall bookshelf in their room, which was fairly large, and built-in drawers and a countertop near their large closet. They had a bath off a dressing area.

But my memory is of my mother taking a nap, probably on a Sunday afternoon, which was the only time she really allowed herself that luxury unless she was sick, which she hardly ever was (at least until the last several years of her life).

I can see the drawn drapes, the partly closed shuttered window into the kitchen, the soft glow of an afternoon. I can see her on her side of the bed, curled on one side, with the bedspread pulled back and neatly covering her.

It makes me puddle to remember that, somehow. Maybe it was the sense that all was well.

Daddy would likely be dozing in his big swivel rocker with golf, or maybe football or basketball, flickering quietly on the television and the newspaper's crossword puzzle in his hand. The Sunday papers would be on the brown leather hassock that sat in front of the other two rockers in the room. There might be a hint of pot roast in the air, or of spicy apple pie, reminders of the good Sunday dinner we had enjoyed after church.

It was quiet, peaceful, and all was right with the world.

It makes me miss them so much, though -- or maybe it is simply nostalgia for a time when my world was predictable, safe, calm, and pretty much without stress. I knew I was loved, I was safe and taken care of. My responsibilities were pretty minor -- clean my room, help with housework and laundry, keep up my grades, tell the truth. The only other person who ever saw my parents nap like that on a Sunday afternoon is my brother -- and I don't know if he remembers it as I do.

I'd welcome a little more simplicity right now, a little more predictability, a little less stress, a lot less worry about those I love. It seems like such a different life, this one, and so very far removed from that time.

I nap -- on those rare occasions when I DO nap -- much the same way as did my mother, curled under the bedspread or maybe with an afghan covering my legs. It is one of the sweetest sleeps I know, napping like that on a quiet, lazy Sunday afternoon. It doesn't happen often enough. Maybe it should.