December 10, 2008
Wednesday

Until a moment ago, this post was called “Stuck.” The only epigraph I could think of is from Paul Simon: “I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.” I had to pay full price for a prescription today because suddenly Rite-Aid claims I have no insurance, and I know it will take a dozen phone calls each with tedious choice trees to discover and fix the problem. I arrived home from  D.C. with a sprained shoulder that is improving but still made me reluctant to undertake baking tonight, so my Thursday morning group won’t have my traditional St. Lucia rolls for tomorrow. That’s the requisite fifty words that can count as my Holidailies post, but since you took the time to click on over, I think I should offer better content. Therefore, an excerpt from a 2006 post. It will get referenced again in the “two years ago” link for December 16, but tonight I have nothing else. So here are poinsettias again. Thank you for reading so much, so often.

Much of Christmas for me is about remembering. Tomorrow I’ll put in my order for poinsettias to decorate the church sanctuary on Christmas Eve and through Epiphany. We can place the poinsettias in honor of or in memory of someone. I always place one in memory of my parents, noting that my father’s birthday was the Feast of Stephen. He’d be 91 this year. And one in memory of Ron’s Aunt Ezenne, whose birthday was Christmas Eve. She’d be 88. Those birthday dates get lost in the fa-la-la. I can’t remember ever getting my father a birthday card.

And I always set a poinsettia in memory of Sister Mary Thecla, R.S.M, my sixth grade teacher who taught us to make folded paper stars, and Sister Mary Rita, R.S.M., my teacher in seventh and eighth grade, who gave us the Poinsettia Song.

Sister Rita was a tiny woman. She was of Irish heritage, born in the late part of the nineteenth century, and probably grew up in one of the coal towns that dotted central Pennsylvania in those days. She had several expressions that live on in the memories of her students. She abhorred idleness and was always exhorting us not to sit around “like bumps on a log.” And if we acted like know-it-alls, she’d say, “Who do you think you are, D’Arcy McGee?”

D’Arcy McGee was an Irish patriot who emigrated to America and then made his way to Canada, where he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada and worked for the cause of Canadian independence from Britain. He began to moderate his radical Irish views and ultimately denounced the violence-prone Fenian Brotherhood in America. He was assassinated in 1868, probably by members of that group. It is unclear to me why, as it is unclear after forty-five years whether, in comparing us to McGee, Sister thought we were acting above ourselves or emulating a scoundrel.

What is clear to me is the fondness I have for the Poinsettia Song. I’d come up through the grades hearing it every year from Sister Rita’s class at the school Christmas assembly, and in seventh and eighth grades, after what is remembered as endless practices, I sang it myself with classmates I still see from time to time. It’s sweet, sentimental, with a nineteenth-century lilt that brings those simpler times to mind.

Down in the garden, growing in rows.
Nodding our heads when soft the wind blows.
Close by a window, over the wall,
Spreading our sweetness to one and all.

Here are poinsettias, petaled in red.
Flowers for the holidays, sweetness we shed.
Glowing like living flames, Christmas we share.
Bringing you happiness, everywhere.

 

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A year ago, I started packing up to leave Wyoming.

Two years ago, I ranted about how a local newspaper ‘s religion reporter, who identifies herself as a devout Catholic, apparently does not understand the difference between the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth. Harumph again!

Three years ago, I wrote about my February 2005 visit to see Christo’s The Gates in New York City.

Four years ago, Lynn came back from college to attend her old high school’s choral concert.

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