 Romance/Love: December 07, 2010 Issue [#4124] |
  Romance/Love
This week: Wrap all Your Presents in Love Edited by: Fyn  
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Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart... filled it, too, with a melody that would last forever. - Bess Streeter Aldrich
Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone. - Charles Schulz
Christmas is for children. But it is for grownups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts. - Lenora Mattingly Weber, Extension
Christmas is forever, not for just one day,
for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away
like bells and lights and tinsel,
in some box upon a shelf.
The good you do for others is good you do yourself...
- Norman Wesley Brooks, "Let Every Day Be Christmas," 1976
Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts. - Janice Maeditere
Christmas - that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance - -a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved. - Augusta E. Rundel
Christmas! The very word brings joy to our hearts. No matter how we may dread the rush, the long Christmas lists for gifts and cards to be bought and given; when Christmas Day comes there is still the same warm feeling we had as children, the same warmth that enfolds our hearts and our homes. - Joan Winmill Brown
Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. - Norman Vincent Peale |
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Six years ago my now husband and I returned from an evening out where he had played the drums all night for something called 'Pickin' 'n Grinnin'. It was one of those events where different folks could get up and play guitars or banjos or sing. While it had been a good evening and we'd had fun and he had (as always) played well, picking up on whatever song came his way, it had had a sour note as it was announced that it would be the last night for the event because it didn't make enough money for the Rod and Gun Club. (Now, understand, the place was packed to the rafters, everyone was dancing and singing and keeping the bartenders running.)
He was very discouraged and came home and put his drums away in the basement. They hadn't been out since. I missed his playing and would far prefer to hear him actually play the drums verses his drumming away at songs with his fingers on any available, convenient object.
There is one particular song he always drums along with and over the years, I kept asking him to get out the drums so I could really hear him go to town on it. Excuses flowed. The basement was too full of other stuff, his shoulder hurt, he thought he was too old and on and on and on.
This, mind you, is the man who always puts his 'Little Drummer Boy' ornament he got as a kid on the tree first every year. This is the man who to this day is still geeked about once playing the drums in an orchestra while Doc Severinsen played and conducted!
This year, as the basement was undergoing its annual 'The Christmas Party is in three days' ritual cleaning, I got him to promise that I could hear him play on New Year's Eve. This was accomplished by some good-nature-ed egging on by the neighbors and pleading looks (and occasional pouting) from me.
Then, at about2:30 in the morning, the night of the party, he decided to drag them out and put them together. This was supposed to be a surprise for me which I rather messed up by heading downstairs to tell him something. (Actually, as it was just him and a few buddies down there, I had intended to tell him I was crawling into bed but when I saw the drums, that idea flew out the window. Talk about waking up and getting a third wind in a hurry!
Would I find a copy of the song I wanted to hear? Would I? Heck yes! I headed back upstairs. Now, my computer flat out refuses to network with his, and my computer has the song on it. So I emailed it to him, went to his computer, downloaded and wasted an entire cd to burn a copy for the stereo downstairs. I was frantic it wouldn't work on the old stereo in the basement, but it did.
I sat on the couch, he hit play and the sounds of Transiberian Orchestra's 'Wizard of Winter' blasted out and across the neighborhood. Folks who had left recently, meandered back and found their way downstairs.
The neighbor said he could have shut off all the lights in the basement and there would still have been a glow from the couch and a floodlight emanating from where he was sitting.
He was right as my hubby was absolutely beaming. He 'hadn't lost the touch' and played as well as ever even considering he hadn't touched them in six years and was considerably under the influence of an entire evening of Christmas Cheer!
I was sitting there grinning, and until that same neighbor hooted that I was crying, didn't realize that tears were streaming down my cheeks. The applause from the folks who had rejoined us downstairs was deafening. Everyone was smiling and it was a perfect moment.
Has he played better? Probably. Did anyone notice or care? Absolutely not! Wrapped in symbols/cymbals (either spelling actually; pick one or both) and glowing with complete love: The Best Christmas present ever!
"I was afraid I'd mess it up," he said later. "I ain't as good as I once was," he continued with a rueful grin, quoting from the song.
To me, he's never been better!
Moments like this are so very special. Will this show up in some form or another in my writing? Aside from the fact that it now has, of course. This is a perfect example of something from 'real life' that can infuse your writing with the details and 'moments' that bring a character to life. I call them 'cotton moments'. . . 'fabric of our lives' and all that. Weave this sort of thread into your characters and watch them come alive. |
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and because he inspires me...
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Feedback from my last newsie...
shaara said:In my opinion the average Joe isn't all that interesting. I want to hear about the miners, the winners of Lotteries, the people who've achieved something stupendous. (Speaking of which did you read that one of the miners completed the Boston Marathon? Wow! Now there's a story!)
Why is it interesting to hear about those who rise above the rest of us in daring or via bad luck -- because it takes us into a world where we don't reside. We, the readers, get to slip into someone else's moccasins. What fun! Thanks for an interesting editorial. Shaara
I know of many folks who feel that way, but I, personally, feel that everyone has a story, an interesting story, to tell. It may not be newsworthy, or on the evening news, but it is still important in its own way. It used to drive me crazy when folks in my writing classes didn't think they had ever done something worth writing about, yet they lived and dreamed, and did and had overcome myriads of obstacles in their lives. These were real and easily identifiable people to whom I could relate to as a character. I like feeling that some of the characters in books might just be that guy in the coffee shop down the street or the lady who feeds the neighborhood cats. Walking in anyone else's moccasins will bring new perspectives to light.As always, I love getting feedback, and appreciate your response. *smiles*
Doug Rainbow writes:Your comments about real life remind me of the song from Camelot, "What do the Simple Folk do?" The royal folk sit around and wonder what the simple folk do, while the simple folk sit around and wonder the same thing about the royal folk.
If it is anyone other than yourself, their approaches to life may be vastly different than your own...which is why I wonder 'what the other people do!'
billwilcox comments:I have to admit the trapped miners was eye-boggling copy, but I just have this weird feeling that not all is right with that story. I mean, I don't want to come off as a conspiracy type, but those were the...how should I say...the freshest miners I have ever seen. These guys looked like they came from backstage, not from two miles down inside the earth. I'm just saying...
I've heard that too...And there a few stories there as well....
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