{"id":253,"date":"2008-01-01T21:40:49","date_gmt":"2008-01-02T02:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=253"},"modified":"2009-01-01T20:56:52","modified_gmt":"2009-01-02T00:56:52","slug":"forward-motion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=253","title":{"rendered":"Forward Motion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"HolidailiesJanuary 1, 2008
\nTuesday<\/strong><\/p>\n

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.
\n<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Ellen Goodman, b. 1941
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0American journalist<\/p>\n

This is\u00c2\u00a0the last Holidailies post for the 2007 season. I’ve walked through the rooms of my life\u00c2\u00a0several times these past weeks. I have always been able to see both flaws and potential. My problem is turning that potential into progress. I don’t want to dwell in\u00c2\u00a0Emily Dickinson’s possibility anymore. I want to dwell in accomplishment.<\/p>\n

Although today’s observation and report from a day in the life has a\u00c2\u00a0Christmas flavor, it’s not a Christmas piece. It’s a back to work piece.\u00c2\u00a0I went back to work today. I started with the prompt for January 31 in Judy Reeves’s\u00c2\u00a0A Writer’s Book of Days<\/em>. I’ve used this resource repeatedly, always\u00c2\u00a0responding to the first couple of prompts in each month but then losing focus. I decided to take January but work it backwards, from the end of the month to the beginning.<\/p>\n

The first time I wore . . .<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 I began, and then I was\u00c2\u00a0writing about nylons and being forced to wear them for my Confirmation, alien items held up with garters that pinched my thighs or a garter belt that was anything but a fashionable item from the turn-him-on collection at Victoria’s Secret (why do<\/em> men think these contraptions are exciting?) but a torture device full of hooks and lumpy slides that left marks on my skin, because they weren’t pantyhose but two separate stockings that my clumsy hands snagged and ruined before I’d worn them very much. I gave the whole episode to my character who\u00c2\u00a0sees her neighbor’s secret boyfriend cause a cat’s death, and there I was, back in fiction again.<\/p>\n

\"StAnd I really don’t know how I progressed from my character who doesn’t want to wear nylons and doesn’t really want to grow up just yet to thinking about the church of my early childhood, Saint Margaret Mary’s, named after me, my father convinced me, because he was the choir director.\u00c2\u00a0The\u00c2\u00a0facility my parents helped build will be abandoned soon when the congregation moves into a new structure. I started thinking about the cr\u00c3\u00a8che they use, an elaborate tableau seen at left that calls to mind the one in the Dragnet<\/em> Christmas episode. The figures are out of proportion (the infant’s head is twice the size of Mary’s clasped hands and the donkey\u00c2\u00a0has about the same stature as a cocker spaniel) and a little shabby, having been in use for nearly sixty years. And I thought, what if, when the congregation\u00c2\u00a0moves into a new sanctuary, they think that it would be a good thing to get a new cr\u00c3\u00a8che to go with\u00c2\u00a0all the other new furnishings? Maybe this is the last year I can see it.<\/p>\n

It’s the camel that draws me. When I was a little girl, I thought the beast was “life size,” and I delighted in the way my father would lift me up and let me ride on it.\u00c2\u00a0I looked up from my reverie\u00c2\u00a0and my writing and saw that it was 9:15. I knew that a Mass would be in progress or about to begin at St. Margaret Mary’s. It didn’t take me long to throw my notebook and my camera into my bag and get going, because I am all about action now.<\/p>\n

The 9:00 Mass for the\u00c2\u00a0holy day (the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u201d the new name for what I knew as the Feast of the Circumcision) was moving toward completion when I arrived. I sat quietly in the back, near the plaque that honors those memorialized when the remodeling and redecoration of the sanctuary was done about thirty years ago. My maternal grandparents and my maternal uncle are named there, funds for a floor vase having been given in their memory by my parents. When everyone had gone I approached the cr\u00c3\u00a8che.<\/p>\n

\"StephanieIt seems a lot of people have a devotion to visiting the scene. The figure of the\u00c2\u00a0infant was surrounded by folded currency, and while I was there a number of worshippers stopped to reflect for a moment and to add to the stash. A young\u00c2\u00a0couple were introducing their fourteen-month-old to the scene at Bethlehem, taking pictures. They did me the great favor of placing little Stephanie on the camel, and I was greatly amused to see how small the camel was in proportion to this child who is far younger than I was when I thought\u00c2\u00a0it was just right for me to ride across the desert with the\u00c2\u00a0Kings of Orient\u00c2\u00a0in search of adventure.<\/p>\n

Visiting a cr\u00c3\u00a8che and paying\u00c2\u00a0my respects to a painted plaster camel should be the way every holiday season ends for me. The Magi came to pay\u00c2\u00a0homage to the child whose birth had been foretold, but they did not linger. They went home by another road.<\/p>\n

And so do I head out on a new road. Happy 2008. Thank you once again for reading, so much, so often.
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
\nmargaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)<\/em><\/p>\n


\n