Bonnie Gray’s “Finding Spiritual Whitespace”

In 2011 and 2012, I was participating in a blogging linkup hosted by Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista. It was mostly a linkup with women and “mommy bloggers,” but I could write about my own children and my new grandsons, and I didn’t need an excuse to do that.

And then Bonnie went off-the-grid, for personal reasons. We knew she had been writing a book, but when you go off-the-grid to write a book, that’s what you say. Bonnie didn’t say that.

When an online community leader says “personal reasons,” you respect that, and you pray.

Bonnie’s season of rest went on for a year. She was writing a book, but not the book she expected to write. What she was writing about was surviving and dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and some of its more visible symptoms.

Panic attacks. Insomnia. Depression.

Bonnie turned to counseling, and she wrote what seems to be an almost effortless book that is part memoir, part meditation, and part resolution of what she was dealing with. I say “almost effortless” because the book reads easily; it’s both well-written and compelling. And you keep reading on even when it’s time to turn the light out and sleep.

It’s a book written with pain, and in pain, a book about how brokenness and broken relationships can suddenly and unexpectedly erupt, decades after they happen. It’s a book about finding rest and resolution, or at least the beginning of resolution. And it’s a book about understanding, realizing how to deal with what can never be made whole, what can’t be “fixed.”

The book is Finding Spiritual Whitespace: Awakening Your Soul to Rest.

The heart of the story is what happened to Bonnie when she was a little girl. Divorce is, unfortunately, not an uncommon event. Abandonment by a father is not an uncommon thing. Dealing with a mother’s anger and rage may be less common, but it is still common enough to be recognizable, to be familiar.

In Bonnie’s case, the effects were both immediate and often ugly and long-term, buried until they erupted into those panic attacks and insomnia. Our culture may make divorce a relatively easy to accomplish, but there is nothing easy about what leads up to it and what happens afterward.

And what she writes about her own story is personally familiar. My own parents had both been previously married. Each had a child from their first marriages. How and why those marriages failed played itself in our family, too. Children often don’t, or can’t, understand how this happens, but their do experience the effects. Brokenness shapes who all of us are, even in families that don’t experience divorce.

One result from divorce can be overachieving, the state of constant activity and work that is both a reach toward an unattainable perfection and a desire to escape pain. Welcome to American culture.

Bonnie tells her story with a structure that is both personal and communal – developing her own story and helping readers find ways to tell theirs. The purpose is in the subtitle – awakening the soul, and the mind and the heart, to the idea of rest, rest from the frenzy of activity we call contemporary life, rest from the pain many of us are trying to escape.

Finding Spiritual Whitespace is more than a good story. It is a needed story. It’s a story that, as you read more and more, becomes uncomfortably and personally familiar.

It’s our story, too.

And Bonnie’s community linkup is back.

Photograph by Bobbi Jones Jones via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

The Bookshelf and the Encyclopedias

My first bookcase was a simple affair: four shelves made of boards of pine stained a reddish brown. My father built it one weekend; I would have been nine or ten years old. It held my Golden Book Encyclopedias (purchased one a week by my mother at the A&P grocery store); my Hardy Boys stories (usually placed in the vicinity of my Trixie Belden mysteries); several Tom Swift books; and the books I ordered each month at school through the Scholastic Book Service (oh, my barely contained excitement to see the monthly SBS box sitting by the teacher’s desk).

The first bookcase ended up traveling; it followed me to Texas, and then it followed my wife and me to St. Louis. It was joined for a time by the college student’s need for cheap bookcases (cinder blocks and board, again of pine but unstained), then by the set of three-you-could-buy- fairly-reasonably at the furniture store (the set you knocked together yourself).

Actually, it was followed by several sets of three over the years. Some of those sets have come and gone; others still reside in our basement, holding a host of non-book things. The good bookcases are upstairs, occupying most of one bedroom and part of another. Oh, and there’s that small shelf in still another.

The original bookcase, now more than half a century old, sits in our basement. It’s still just as sturdy as it ever was. It’s never needed repairs. And on its bottom shelf sits that same set of Golden Book Encyclopedias that my mother bought at the A&P. (If you look closely, we can see them in the picture above on the bottom shelf, to the right of my high school “Warrior” yearbooks .) Years ago, when we were visiting my mother in New Orleans, she asked me if I still wanted them. If not, they were headed for the next garage sale. Since the Hardy Boys and Trixie Belden had already walked the plank at one of her garage sales, I took them back to St. Louis.

I suspect that the only reason she didn’t set them out to be sold was that she remembered buying them a volume a week at the A&P, trying to remember which volume to get, occasionally marking it down on her grocery lists, sometimes buying the wrong one and having to return it. Yes, she had a lot invested in those encyclopedias.

The bookshelf they sit in, that bookshelf they first sat in, is a bit worn, sitting rather quietly as it does in the basement. I can still remember watching my father build it. I can still remember my excitement. I can probably imagine my mother’s relief at having a place to put my books.

My father and I did few things together, outside of working at his printing business. The bookshelf project was one of them, even though my participation consisted of watching him. But that was sufficient; he was building it for me.

 

And those encyclopedias – they’ll likely end up eventually as a donation to Good Will, or sitting in a box on the driveway as part of a garage sale. But not in my lifetime. They may be meaningless to my children, but I know what attention and focus my mother brought to their acquisition. Just as I know the effort my father put into that bookcase.

In Finding Spiritual Whitespace: Awakening Your Soul to Rest, Bonnie Gray talks about a bookcase, one she kept in her bedroom until a friend convinced her to move it to the living room. The bookcase represented safety and escape. It blocked memories of bad experiences. Moving it was an act of embracing vulnerability.

And there’s my bookcase, sitting in the basement, holding those encyclopedias, among other things. It’s a reminder of things my parents did for me, ways they recognized that they had this voracious reader in the family and weren’t quite sure what to do with him, but they would at least build him a bookcase to hold his books. 

No. 40 Valentine’s Day

We must have been idiots.

Feb. 14, 1973: We had known each other a little over a month. I gave her flowers. She gave me an album (back them it was a real album) – the soundtrack to Godspell, which had been on Broadway only a couple of years before. The flowers were red and white carnations, with one blue iris right in the middle. The blue iris was my fraternity’s flower.

How do I remember the flowers? She took a boatload of picture of them. We still have an old, faded photograph.

It was cold. Not long before, we had actually had snow, a massive half inch that had paralyzed Baton Rouge.

We had known each other a month, and we were what they called head over heels. Eight months after that, we would be married.

We had to be idiots.

When she took me home to Shreveport to meet her family, their first reaction was shock, and then relief. They were expecting a long-haired barefoot hippie. After all, I was from New Orleans, and everyone in Shreveport (my relatives included) knew exactly what New Orleans was about.

Instead, in walked Joe Frat. I was likely wearing my standard school uniform – white dress shirt, blue jeans, wing-tip dress shoes.

When I brought her home to meet my parents, she shocked my mother. She brought a hostess gift. I had brought girls home before, but none of them had brought a hostess gift.

My father knew this was the one.

I graduated in May. The day after graduation, I drove her to the Baton Rouge Greyhound bus station for the ride to Shreveport. I can remember us sitting on the curb across the street from the station.

Part of me was making the drive to Beaumont, Texas, to start my new job the next day with the Enterprise newspaper.

Part of me was getting ready to board a bus for Shreveport. We were going to be mostly apart for three months.

I learned the drive from Beaumont to Shreveport. I think I could still find the way. My first apartment was part of a large complex of apartment buildings. I called them the posh Northway-Gaylynn Luxury Apartments. They were neither posh nor luxury. But there were clean, if old. And furnished, since I couldn't afford to buy any furniture. The first piece of furniture I would buy was a Lane sweetheart chest, spending $98 plus tax. I was making $125 a week.

We still have the sweetheart chest.

We must have been idiots.

But I would do it all over again.

Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray is hosting a blog link-up on “love.” To see other posts, please visit Faith Barista.

Photograph: The two idiots sometime after 1973, like 35 years after 1973 – at their oldest’s son wedding in 2008.

Beloved, a story

With Matthew and the other children eating cake and ice cream in the dining room, Hank went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Five-year-old David, watching his older brother carefully, followed.

“Hank?” David asked.

“Yes, my little guy?”

“Hank, will you still love me?”

Hank stared at his little brother. “Now where did that question come from?”

David shrugged.

Hank sat at the kitchen table and motioned to David. “Here. Come here and sit on my lap.” The boy fairly leaped towards him.

“Do you know what your name means, David?”

The boy shook his head.

“It means ‘beloved,’” Hank said. “The one who is loved. Do you know where your name came from?”

“From Uncle David?”

“Well,” said Hank, “it’s the same name. But do you know who gave you your name?”

“Mom and Dad?”

“No. I did.” He reached for his water and swallowed a sip.

 “We’d been celebrating our Christmas with Grandma like we always do, and we’d just finished our lunch when Mom looked at Dad and said, ‘Michael, something’s happening.’ Well, it was crazy, we all jumped up. Dad ran to the telephone to call the doctor. We were all so excited that Grandma chased us outside to play in the snow. So the doctor said that when Mom felt these movements about five or six minutes apart, to come to the hospital.

“So we waited. And Mom did a lot of walking around and taking deep breaths. And then it was time. Well, Grandma wanted us all to stay at home, but there was no way that was going to happen. We were all going to the hospital. Mom and Dad were in one car, and we followed in two other cars. And off we went to the hospital in Edinburgh. The whole family. Me, Helen, Sophie, Mark, Tommy, Jason and Jane with Paul and Timothy, Jim and Laura and Grandma. All of us. ”

David sat on Hank’s lap, almost spellbound. He had heard Mom and Dad tell the story. But never Hank.

“So we get to the hospital, and Mom and Dad went to the labor room, and we sat in the waiting room. We waited for hours. We drove the nurses crazy because we kept asking what was going on. And about 9 o’clock that night, Dad comes in to say that we had a new brother. And about an hour later, we got to see you in the nursery. You were a big one, almost 10 pounds, like me, in fact. I was almost 10 pounds, too, when I was born. And you had all this black hair, and Dad said you looked just like I did when I was born.

“The next day, we all got to hold you. We took turns, and I let the rest go first. Then it was my turn. And that’s when Dad asked what we should name you. Everyone had an idea. Helen wanted to name you Sebastian.” David wrinkled his nose. “Sophie thought Nicholas would be nice. Tommy and Mark wanted to name you Doorknob.”

“Doorknob?” asked David indignantly.

“Mom put a stop to that real fast,” said Hank, laughing.

“So I said I thought we should call you David. I’d been studying about David and Goliath in my Bible class at school. And I said we should call you David, because you were beloved, and more than that, you were our whole family coming together. You were all of us. And so that’s how you got your name.”

David leaned against Hank’s chest.

“So if you think I could stop loving you, you are absolutely wrong. Just because I’ve adopted Matthew doesn’t mean we’ve run out of room in our hearts. David, God gives us the ability to love, and to love a lot of people. We may love then in different ways, but we love them all. You love Mom and Dad, right?”

David nodded.

“And you love me?”

David nodded again.

 “And I love Matthew like he’s my son,” Hank said, “and I love you as my brother. But I have to confess, it’s a little more than that, too. I love you because God made you so special.” Hank smiled. “David, I love you with a fierceness, a fierce brotherly love. You and I look a lot alike, right?”

“Dad says we’re the twins 15 years apart.”

“That’s because we are. We are the first and the last of Dad’s natural born children, and because of that, we’re special to each other.”

“I love you, Hank.” And the boy scampered off to rejoin the party.

Over at Bonnie Gray’s blog today, the prompt word is “beloved.” To see other posts based on the word, please visit Faith Barista.

Photographs by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

My One Word Isn’t

I’d been seeing a lot of blog posts – a LOT of blog posts – about “one word for 2013.” It’s an idea, organized by someone so far back in the viral chain that they’re probably not identifiable, to select one word as your “word” for the year, and then blog about it.

I’ve seen so many posts about “one word” that I think I’ve been caught up in a permanent online flash mob.

But, I persevered. I thought I had safely dodged this, when I received an email from Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista, who’s been away from blogging for a time for personal reasons and is now writing again. And Bonnie asked me to consider linking up today, using the theme “one word.”

Quandry. Angst. Anxiety. I was so pleased that Bonnie’s back among the blogging.  But could I take the plunge into the flash mob?

And even if I could, could I choose only one word, one word that would somehow summarize my plans and goals, hopes and dreams, for the year? And even if I could somehow pull that off, could I find a word that wasn’t like everyone else’s?

To give you an idea of what’s already been taken and written about: faith, hope, love, encourage, plan, joy, write, rejoice, worship, excite, race, excel, achieve, publish (a lot of writers are doing this), engage, involve, serve, diet (this might have been my favorite one-word post), lose, gain, soar – I think you see the problem. What’s left are words like survive, subsist, meander, complain, and procrastinate.

Yes, I could use a word that’s already been taken, but that’s not very original. Anything I might say would be additive at best. I mean, after you’ve read five different writers on “encourage,” it’s all pretty much been said, in an encouraging way, of course.

I pondered. Could I find one word that encapsulated all my hopes, and even my fears, for 2013? Could I find one word so encompassing that people, including me, would be amazed and dazzled?

I’m not sure about the amazement and the dazzling, but I did think of a word.

One word – one word that includes everything. One word that will tell you everything you need to know. One word that includes every goal, hope, dream, concern, issue, fear, desire and aspiration that I have for 2013.

And not only that, but I haven’t seen anyone else claim it. Perhaps it is too big an idea. Perhaps some considered it and turned away with a shudder.

But never to stop where angels fear to tread, I can confidently claim my all-encompassing word for 2013.

And the word -- my one word for 2013 that includes everything -- is dictionary.


To see more posts on "one word," please visit Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista.

Photograph by Daniel Pellati via PublicDomain Pictures. Used with permission. I knew my one word was somewhere in that pile of paper.

A child's heart

It doesn’t matter whether we go to his house or he comes to ours. Our grandson Cameron has learned to connect his grandparents with some fairly definitive things.

One is dancing. My wife has a CD of children’s songs by Chad Stuart called “Don’t Argue with an Elephant.” As soon as Cameron spots my wife or me, he runs for the CD player, and bounces up and down until we turn it on. Then we dance.

A second connection he makes with us has to with books. He loves being read to. One of his favorite books is Five Little Monkeys. There are several others. He loves hearing the stories read aloud, over and over again. And his grandparents are only too happy to oblige.

A third connection is blocks and Legos. The two of us build stuff – mostly towers. And we see how many blocks we can place on our heads. Cameron likes to knock the towers down, so we can build them anew.

What these three activities – dancing, reading and building – have in common is that Cameron gets our undivided attention.

This past Sunday, we went over to my son and daughter-in-law’s house for an hour, to drop off my son’s birthday present. Cameron was getting better from a bout of respiratory crud, but he perked right up when we walked in the door. He grabbed my hand, walked me to the pile of blocks and Legos, and pointed.

He trusted his grandfather enough to know that I would immediately sit down and start building a tower.

He’s learned that his father is already ready to play and horse around, and that his mother is there to hold him when he’s sick. His grandmother will always have cherry tomatoes stashed away (Cameron loves cherry tomatoes. And salad.) His grandfather packs a BlackBerry in a holster, and Cameron always wants to see it, because the wallpaper on it is a picture of – Cameron.

In short, this little boy who’s almost two has learned he’s surrounded by love. He has his moments of unloveability like we all do, but he knows that regardless of what he does, he’s loved.

He has that’s child’s heart that’s full of trust based upon consistent love.

Is it any wonder that Jesus said “let the little children come to me?” Is it any surprise that it’s the kind of heart – a child’s heart – that he wants all of us to have? It’s not that our hearts are pure and good. He knows better.

But it is that our hearts are full of trust for Him, because we know better.

To see more posts on trust, please visit Bonnie Gray, who’s hosting a blog carnival today on trust at her blog Faith Barista.

Photograph: Cameron Young watching Monsters Inc. on television, by Stephanie Young. Notice the blocks in the foreground.

It was just a piece of music

Sometimes my brain works in ways that are strange. Actually, my wife would say, “Tell me something I don’t know.”

A few days ago, I was listening to a piece of music, and a character popped into my mind. I could see him. I knew he was 40 years old. I knew what he did for a living. I knew what quirks he had. And I knew what his heart yearned for.

I listened to the music again. Almost as quickly, a second character popped into my head. I could see her. I knew her age. I knew what she did for a living. And I knew how she was going to be brought together with the first character.

I listened to the music yet again. Within two days, I had the entire story mapped out in my head, start to finish. I started looking at web sites of places that would be settings for the story. I started marking certain web pages as favorites.

I knew this was going to be a novella, or short novel (or long short story). Three other characters materialized in minor, supporting roles. I could see their faces, too.

My problem is – I didn’t need this right now. I’m editing the manuscript that’s the sequel to Dancing Priest, I have a full-time job, some online work for The High Calling and a family.

But the music did something, stimulated something or initiated something. I did not sleep Monday night. It was as if I had drunk a very large cup of strong regular coffee right before bed. My eyes stayed wide open for most of the night as I played scene after scene in my head.

The story is done, beginning, middle and end. In my head. Not one word has yet to grace the computer screen.

I wrote Dancing Priest in my head for three years, and then starting pushing out the words.

But this time, the entire story came together fast. A simple story, a story about the need in a man’s heart. And all because I listed to a piece of music.

Author Travis Thrasher, who’s written numerous books (and I’ve liked every single one I’ve read), writes to a kind of soundtrack. In fact, the last few books he’s done have included a playlist of the music he listened to and connected to each book. (His official web site is here. He blogs at The Journey is Everything.)

But this is a bit different. One piece of music did it.

I just listened to it again. I confirmed the ending in my head.

Does anyone else write this way?

Please say yes.

Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray has suggested the word “vulnerable” for a blog carnival prompt. I certainly felt vulnerable writing this one. To see more posts, please visit Faith Barista.

Photograph: Music Notes Background by Vera Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Me and Julie Andrews

Joy must be in the air. On Monday, the theme for the Warrior Poets Circle was “unspeakable joy.” Today, Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista is hosting a blog carnival on joy.

I’m not going to sing “My Favorite things” from The Sound of Music like Julie Andrews did. But I do have a list of some of the things that bring me joy – which I rather loosely define as “a surge of emotion that makes it impossible for me to keep a smile off of my face.” And here it is, in no particular order.

My grandson’s squeal of delight.

Dancing with my grandson (notice a theme here).

Waiting at the airport for my wife to deplane after she’s been away for a time. (As soon as I see her, I get this goofy smile on my face.)

My wife turns her head in just such a way, and I see the girl I married 38+ years ago. (Hmmm, notice another theme here.)

A really good book.

An email or note from someone telling me that this novel of mine made them realize something or do something or cry.

An organ postlude played by the music director at our church.

A sunset in Arizona (yes, I know a lot of it comes from smog, but you still can’t beat them for spectacular-ness).

Biking 93 miles in a day (joy matched only by exhaustion; my personal record).

Being cane-free for the last two weeks (the back is backing down).

A good story, told well.

A good poem.

Writing a good poem.

Reading poetry aloud in the English Woodland Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Reading a new book by a favorite author.

Reading an old book by a favorite author.

Dancing at a wedding.

Hearing a really good tenor sing “O Holy Night.”

The day I met the editorial staff of The High Calling in the San Antonio Airport.

The Art Institute in Chicago.

The day my wife and I sat at a window table in a coffee shop across the street from the Art Institute.

Hiking the Shaw Nature Reserve near St. Louis.

To see more posts on joy, please visit Faith Barista.

Top photograph: Arizona sunset; bottom photograph: Pinetum Lake at Shaw Nature Reserve.

And the word is...

I’ve been seeing numerous posts about “one word” – one word to describe your hopes and plans for 2012, or what’s on your heart for 2012. It sounds sort of New Year’s resolution-ish to me, and I don’t do resolutions (since I know how well I keep them).

But there’s a word that comes to mind.

The year 2011, as most years do, brought a lot of change – a major remodeling of our home; watching my grandson start walking and learning of a second grandson on the way; our youngest moving to Florida; my back problems which sidelined biking, travel and a lot of other things; and publication of my book – to mention only a few.

It was a lot of activity, but in my mind it was a lot of slowing down, and mostly because of my back. There were a lot of things I couldn’t do that were part of normal daily life (like putting up the Christmas lights, or gardening). I had to depend upon others to do things that I usually did without thinking. I had to plan things like the best time to leave for a work meeting in the building next door to mine.

My sleep patterns changed. Instead of going to bed at 11:30 or midnight, I was going to be bed at 10, or 10:30 at the latest. Things slowed down. And when things slow down, you have more time to think, consider and reflect. And more time to plan.

I’m already seeing how this year will shape up, and shape me. I know some things that are coming – some changes in what I do online (more on that in a few days), what’s going to happen with my writing, and family changes. As frustrating as last year was, I see it for what it was – a year to slow down and renew.

I see what’s coming for 2012, with my writing, my faith, my family and my work.

And the word is grow.

Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray is asking what one word has God laid on your heart for 2012. To see other posts, please visit Faith Barista.

The Character of Joseph

One of my favorite movies about the birth of Christ is The Nativity Story, released in 2006. One of the reasons is that it has more about the character of Joseph than most nativity movies.

There’s not much we really know about Joseph. He was a carpenter in Nazareth, engaged to marry Mary. After learning she was pregnant, he resolved to divorce her. The text in the Gospel Matthew says he wanted to divorce her quietly and not expose Mary to public disgrace, “because he was a righteous man.”

But then he has a dream, and an angel of the Lord explains what’s happening. The account is not as lengthy as that of the angel and Mary in the Gospel of Luke, but it’s clear that Joseph does exactly what Mary did: he obeys. He “did what the angel of the Lord commanded him to do” and takes Mary into his home as his wife. And when the baby is born, it is Joseph who obeys once again and names the baby Jesus.

He takes the pregnant Mary to Bethlehem for the census, and he was most likely with her when the baby was born and may, as the movie suggests, have helped deliver the baby (there wasn’t anyone else around in the manger). Eight days later, he and Mary bring the baby to the temple “to be consecrated to the Lord,” required for every firstborn male.

While the timing isn’t exactly certain, we know he was with Mary when the Magi visit and present their gifts. And then Joseph has another dream, where the angel of the Lord warns him that Herod is out to kill the child and to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt. After Herod dies, Joseph has a third dream, and an angel tells Joseph to return to Israel.

We can deduce that Joseph taught Jesus to be a carpenter. We know that Jesus had half-brothers, and that Joseph would have been the father (whether you believe Mary was their mother depends upon whether you accept Protestant or Catholic teaching). But we do not know anything else about Joseph – his age, when he died, what he thought about raising Jesus, whether he had doubts like Mary seemed to have at times, or what his personality was like. And nowhere does Jesus mention or refer to Joseph.

We know he was a righteous man. We know he obeyed what he was commanded to do – three times. We know he trained Jesus in his trade, as any father would have done at the time. His job, one that he accepted in rather unusual circumstances, was to protect Mary and the baby, and then to raise the child as his son. He protected his family from both physical harm and the shame that would have attached itself to an unmarried mother and illegitimate child, especially in a small town like Nazareth.

He was an ordinary carpenter who was called to do extraordinary things, and he obeyed.

Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray is asking the question, what character in the Christmas story is speaking to you this year? To see how others answer the question, please visit Faith Barista.

The Best Christmas Present Ever

I was in first grade. In early December, I came home from school in tears. My mother thought I had been in a fight on the school bus, or that someone had said something to hurt my feelings. Actually, it was far worse that either of those.

My first-grade teacher, whom I adored and had a secret crush on, had told our class of six-year-olds that there was no such thing as Santa Claus.

My mother was furious but couldn’t do much about it – there was no use in shutting the door after the horse had left the barn. But she was even more upset that her six-year-old continued to mourn the loss of Santa Claus.

A few weeks later, we drove to Shreveport to spend Christmas with my father’s family, which meant staying at my grandmother’s house. From my perspective, my grandmother was Christmas magic 365 days a year. I adored her and she adored me, and all was right with the world. Even with the loss of Santa.

As we neared Shreveport, my father asked me was there any way I might believe in Santa Claus again. By this time resigned and embittered, I said the most outrageous thing I could think of. “I’ll believe in Santa if I get a puppy for Christmas.” Everyone laughed. I wasn’t getting a puppy for Christmas.

On Christmas Day, we drove to my aunt and uncle’s house for the family get-together. Presents had been opened earlier that morning at my grandmother’s. As we sat in the living room, my uncle mentioned that Santa Claus had made a special stop at their house the night before.

The cynical six-year-old rolled his eyes. Right. Like I was going to fall for that again.

My uncle went to a back bedroom, and returning, guiding something with his foot. As he rounded the sofa in the living room, I could see what he had.

A puppy.

A beautiful puppy.

I didn’t have to ask. I knew who the puppy was for.

Struck dumb in wonder, all I managed to say was,”There really is a Santa Claus.”

He was a collie-German shepherd mix, He had the markings of a collie but the form of a shepherd. My father and uncle had found him at the city pound in Shreveport.

We named him Skipper.

My mother still has a photograph of me and Skipper in our backyard in New Orleans. I’m kneeling with my arms around my dog.

He was the best Christmas present ever.

To see more posts in Christmas and “Unwrapping Jesus,” please visit Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista.

Mogen David Wine and Mince-Meat Pie

For years when I was growing up in New Orleans, part of the wonder of Thanksgiving and Christmas were the family dinners – and they were always held at our house. The simple reason for that was that we had a family room that had started out life as a carport and porch – and once it had been enclosed, it became the largest room in my mother’s extended family, the one that could accommodate a sit-down dinner for 25 or more people.

My parents would rent or borrow tables, arrange them to look like one long table (covered with tablecloths), with usually the table in the adjacent kitchen used for the kids. My parents made the entire meal – everything from the turkey (Thanksgiving) or ham (Christmas) to the desserts. And the holiday meals were the two times of the year my mother used her good china and silver.

My father made the turkey and the oyster dressing, which everyone in the family except me ate with great gusto. I refused to eat it, likely because I was never a major fan of oysters (a felony in New Orleans). My mother would make mashed potatoes and other vegetables and the pies, which were always pecan pie and mince-meat pie. The mince-meat pie was for me – it was and still is my favorite. I would watch to make sure none of the relatives took too much of the mince-meat pie, especially the last piece.

The gatherings were loud and noisy. Three of my mother’s four sisters came with their husbands and children; the fourth sister had six children and generally went to the in-laws for holiday meals. My grandmother would arrive with one of the aunts. There was lots of hugging and kissing and usually a considerable amount of alcohol consumption. Much of the alcohol was left over from holiday parties at my father’s office.

The number of children was relatively small for the gathering – only six of us. Two were too old to “play: with the rest and one (my little brother) was too young, so it was left to me and two cousins to invent things to do. Usually that meant disappearing for a time and going to the woods across the street from my house. My cousins lived in the city and the closest thing to woods was City Park or Audubon Park, which were (and are) wonderful spaces but not quite the same thing as woods with trails, vine swings and the likelihood of running into Mr. Snake, which was both an enticement and a fear.

When it was time to eat, usually around 2 p.m., we would gather for a prayer (which I seem to remember my father always praying) and then consume mountains of food. The adults always had wine with dinner, some vintage of kosher Mogen David wine. I don’t know why it was always Mogen David, but I think it had to do with the brand being a step up from the more common ones but still cheap enough to buy for a lot of people who enjoyed wine with their dinner.

After the meal, some of the adults would look for a bed to sleep off too much Mogen David. The conversation would go on as the clean-up got underway. The kids would usually go nosing around for another piece of pie (and me to check on the status of the mince meat) and then we’d be outside playing games, running around, doing normal kid stuff.

These holiday celebrations continued well into my teen years. At some point they stopped; my parents may have tired of the hosting duties.

But they were special, special because of family, a large family, coming together to celebrate and doing the things large families liked to do. My wife remembers similar family celebrations at her grandparents’ home in Shreveport – similar except for the Mogen David. You didn’t have wine at holiday dinners in Shreveport. Consequently, things were more subdued than in New Orleans.

Today I look around at my own family at holiday meals in St. Louis. We are definitely a smaller and quieter crowd, and the wine is better. Yet I’m still reminded of Aunt Tean and Uncle Chester, Aunt Toot and Uncle John, Aunt Gee and Uncle Sonny, my grandmother Lillian, and June and Lee and Jimmy and Donna and Susie and Alvin and sometimes someone’s in-laws and out-of-town visitors, and the laughter and the jokes and running in the woods.

And that mince-meat pie sitting with the other pies on the card table in the corner.

Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray is celebrating the month of December with a blog carnival on “Unwrapping Jesus.” Family memories are one way I do that unwrapping. To see other posts, please visit Faith Barista.