Bonnie's Broken Arm: A Christmas Miracle

My favorite doll, Bonnie, is dressed in her Christmas finery today as she sits in a chair by the fireplace.

When I was a little girl I had a favorite doll named Bonnie. Bonnie came with a polka dot sundress and bonnet. I don't remember ever dressing her up, but I'm sure I did. I played with her constantly. Bonnie was all rubber, which I much preferred to the china dolls my sisters had because I didn't have to worry about her chipping or breaking. Mine was rubber. Her round rubber face had hair that was sculpted into the head. It would always be perfect, never falling out or getting tangled or frizzy.

Bonnie was similar to the Betsy Wetsy of those days. I could feed her a bottle of water, but I'd better be holding her over the sink because the water ran straight through! Her sweet blue eyes closed when I tilted her back. If I squeezed her she made a plaintive bleet. It wasn't much of a cry, but it worked for me. I thought she was wonderful.

One day, as I was playing with her, I noticed her arm had a split in the crease of her elbow. I wiggled it back and forth to get a closer look. And pretty soon the little split was a big split. My dad was a doctor, but he was also a great fix-it man. I waited for him to come home from work so I could show him Bonnie's broken arm. I was confident he would make her all better.

He studied the arm carefully and proclaimed it broken. "Can you fix it?" I inquired hopefully?

"She may need to go to the doll hospital, but I can put her arm in a cast." Dad took my doll and wrapped medical tape around her arm from shoulder to wrist. I was a little disappointed that he couldn't make her all better, but by the next morning, I had accepted Bonnie's fate and was back to playing  with her.

As Christmas drew near I turned to Santa. Maybe Santa could fix Bonnie's arm. Each night I went to bed wondering if Santa would come through. Would my Bonnie's arm get better?

Christmas morning arrived and I waited with my sisters at the top of the stairs while Dad went downstairs and turned on the Christmas lights. When he gave the signal we all traipsed downstairs. I spied my stocking hanging by the fireplace overflowing with goodies. But my eyes widened when I saw the high chair next to it with Bonnie sitting there. The tape was gone from her arm and it was all better!

Christmas miracles come in all shapes and sizes. For me it came in the form of a doll whose arm, once broken, was now whole.

The Children's Christmas Pageant

It's been a busy several weeks with our final RV trip, a trip to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving and the subsequent preparations for Christmas. I've had so little time to write. However, I decided to share with you one recent Christmas memory. It is from Christmas 2012 when we went to the Christmas Eve service with our daughter's family in Iowa. The children presented their program as we looked on with delight, and a good bit of concealed, but adoring laughter. It is a very fond memory for me, and since we are in the midst of grand adult Christmas cantatas, school holiday programs, and children's church pageants, I wanted to share this with you. I wish all grandparents that are able to see their grandchildren perform, and parents who want everything to go perfectly for their young ones revel in the moment when the halo fails to sit where it belongs, and the star-struck ones soldier on holding fast to their 'pink kitty'. For the story of the Nativity doesn't celebrate the perfection in our lives. It celebrates the night when nothing was going right for Mary and Joseph, but in the end our lives were made perfect. Merry Christmas.

The Littlest Angel; a Christmas Story

The children's choir walked up the center aisle of the church, tallest ones leading, followed by the smaller ones. The procession stopped at the front of the church, off to the side of the manger scene. Moms, dads and grandparents strained to see their little ones as they prepared to sing the songs that went with the Christmas pageant. The voluminous old white choir gowns that passed for angel costumes had seen many pageants over the years. 

The littlest angel stood in the front row, her head just shoulder height to the other 'angels' in the choir. Her long locks draped over the shoulder of her white angel gown that was several sizes too big and reached nearly to her shoes. Her brother, a full head and shoulder taller than her, stood on one side, while the older children stood around them. Tinsel garland halos encircled their heads.

A chorus of young voices rang clear as they sang the first song. "O come all ye faithful..." sang her brother earnestly. His head bobbed up and down as he emphasized each syllable. And with each syllable, his halo dipped further and further across his brow. He reached up to steady it and push it back in place. 

The littlest angel sang not a word, but looked silently out at the congregation clutching her old pink kitty, the one concession her mother made as she talked her into joining the other children in the angel choir. Her little fist wrapped around it's neck clutching it to her. 'Meow' would not have lived long had he had air in his lungs instead of stuffing. Not with that grip. 

The next song began. She moved not a muscle, except her eyes, which shifted from left to right searching out anyone who would come rescue her. As her eyes moved back and forth they reminded her mother of the eyes on the black and white cat clock she'd seen in cartoons. In the congregation, her grandparents sat grinning proudly from ear to ear as they watched their adorable grandchildren. 

The littlest angel looked down at the floor. Her halo slipped over her face and dropped to the ground. Only her head moved as she looked back up. A boy sitting on the step in front of her picked up the garland and passed it to her brother. Matter-of-factly, and oblivious of the people looking on, he dutifully took the garland, turned to his sister and began to arrange it on her head. The billowing sleeve of his robe draped over her face as he patted it into place. 

In the congregation, the grandparents sat hiding their laughter as they watched the two, coping with the dilemma of costumes, songs, and propriety, but their shaking shoulders gave them away. 

The third song began. The halo slipped down. The littlest angel did not move. The older brother picked it up and turned to his sister. As the rest of the choir sang, they faced each other, she looking up at him trusting him to fix everything. He shaped the garland, arranged it on her head, studied his work, adjusted the halo, and patted it into place, again. Pink kitty dangled limply at her side, but as long as he was there, and her brother took care of her, she could make it through the show. 

And the grandparents wiped their eyes, stilled their shoulders, and beamed at their grandchildren. For what is a Christmas pageant without a littlest angel, and her big brother to look after her.

Advent--Teaching a Procrastinator How to Prepare

December may have just arrived, but Christmas has been in the works since late summer! Every year we complain that the stores start their holiday promotions earlier and earlier. It seems to test our senses. This year, though, I started thinking about how we view all that commercialism and I came to a new conclusion. Maybe starting to prepare for the holiday so early isn't such a bad thing.

To many people, December is the month we get ready for Christmas, but to Christians, December is the month of Advent. In church each Sunday we light the Advent candle counting down the Sundays until Christmas Eve. Advent is all about preparation. It reminds us that what we are preparing for is the birth of the Christ Child. For all Christians December is a balancing act between the festivities and the focus. Everyday I hear people counting off the 'jobs completed'. "Christmas cards went out today!" "We picked out our tree and cut it down." "Our tree is up!" From baking and shopping to office parties and Christmas Cantatas, the whole month of December is a month of preparation. For a dyed in the wool procrastinator, my attention is much more on the festivities, and less on the focus. For instance...

As a child the feeling of urgency on Christmas Eve added to the excitement. Unfortunately, I carried that into adulthood. I would still be making that Christmas stocking on Christmas Eve so it could be hung by the chimney with care after everyone had gone to bed. In fact, I kind of reveled in the rush to get it done. Over the years I've gotten better, but Christmas Eve will still find me up late getting everything ready. Festivities or Focus?

And that got me thinking about the preparation that goes into the preparation. How often do we fuss because the Christmas decorations have appeared in the stores before Halloween? Being a procrastinator it is easy to jeer sarcastically at them and say the season keeps starting earlier and earlier. But is it possible that those stores are doing us a favor by helping us complete some tasks before the real prepartion begins? For instance maybe I should admire all those early birds that have their shopping done BEFORE Black Friday even arrives.

Lately, I've started to recognize all the benefits of getting things done early. The cookie baker who bakes and freezes her cookies in advance is ready for any party and doesn't have a sink full of mixing bowls and baking pans as she heads out the door. What a thought! Buying that Christmas Tree in September (artificial, that is) means you aren't paying for it in December when money is at a premium. In fact, an obvious benefit of shopping early would mean my January credit card bill would no longer cause a major meltdown in the family budget. I'm not holding out much hope for me for that one. I have multi-levels of reasons that support my need to buy gifts at the last minute.

The point here is that Advent is the time when we prepare our hearts for the birth of Christ. The decorations, the shopping and the parties add to the fun, but probably not so much to the focus. Maybe next year I'll find a way to do some of the prep work in advance so that during this month I can focus more on what Christmas means. The stores have their reasons for getting me started early. It's called 'getting into the black'. But I can take their strategy and work it for me. And I'll call it 'getting the spirit back'.

Traditions

Growing up my family enjoyed the holidays, both summer and winter. Breakfast picnics, Thanksgiving gatherings, Christmas parties, the candlelight service on Christmas eve, as well as the sunrise service on Easter are all just a few of the things we grew up doing. My brother-in-law had a word for it. Tradition! "Tradition!" he would declare when we would be planning a picnic or talking about a family sing.

After Larry and I married, we started to create our own traditions. Our own family was raised with a set of family traditions. Because we lived in Florida, far from any other family, our Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions were centered around just the four of us. As the girls grew up and left for school, or marriage, they still came home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and those traditions continued.

The year we moved to Pittsburgh was the year we upset the apple cart. It wasn't just us. Janice married and moved away. We moved here. Jen remained in Florida. But suddenly we had to re-invent our holiday traditions. The girls discovered their in-laws handled Thanksgiving differently than we did. From stuffing to pies, the food on the table, as well as the rituals involved had some subtle and some not so subtle differences.

Ben Franklin once said, "In this world, the only thing certain is death and taxes". About a year before we moved I felt pretty certain that our family would move into the next phase of our lives and live within a few hours of each other, in Florida. The next year was like watching dominoes fall in slow motion. When the last domino fell we were all separated by 900 miles.

I think one of the hardest parts for everyone was discovering how to celebrate holidays we had spent together for the previous 30 years. It may have been difficult, but ultimately, I think it is one of the biggest parts of creating and raising a family. As an empty nester, this year Larry and I are faced with re-creating a Christmas morning without kids. When we got married, it was exciting to have that morning together, before we met with the rest of his family. The traditions we developed were a combination of some of his favorite memories and some of mine.  But 40 years later it seems daunting.

Even so, I look forward to finding out what we will do. Traditions add stability, expectation and excitement to family events. But they are not stable. They will change and that is a good thing. It means life is evolving and we are open to new things. Traditions aside, that seems like a much more stable way of life than remaining static.

A Dreary Day--I am Thankful for Music

Oh the weather outside is frightful! Sorry, that's a line in a song isn't it! Well, it was true one day this week. Outside it was cold and dreary, wet, foggy, gray... But inside it was lovely. My house was warm and dry. The lamplight brightened the room. Music on the CD player brightened my spirit.

Listening to music always brightens my day. I have the choice of rock and roll to get me moving, classical to soothe me, Christmas music to cheer me. Music has always been my 'mood altering drug of choice'. This week, it was Christmas music; everything from John Denver to Josh Groban, Mannheim Steamrollers to Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

It may seem a little early to turn on the Christmas music, but I am in a church choir. Anyone who sings in a choir knows that Christmas music starts in September, when practice for the Christmas Cantata begins. It reminds me of the retailers. We complain about how early everything starts, but the truth is, if we want to be ready for the season, we have to begin our preparations way before the season.
As the leaves are turning, I am learning a new arrangement of Noel, or Ring those Christmas Bells. By the time the leaves have covered the ground and the trees stand tall and bare, that arrangement is on automatic replay in my mind.

So on a dreary day I have my favorite cup of tea on the cup warmer beside me. Andrea Bocelli is on the CD player. Maggie sleeps at my feet. I have much to be thankful for and Music is one of those special gifts in my life. I can't imagine a life without it. This would lead you to say "Then you must be thankful for your hearing." I am. But that is another post. Today I am thankful for music.