All Hallow's Eve

Halloween has always been my least favorite holiday. As a child, I approached it with a stomach dropping sense of dread. It wasn't fear of the ghosts and goblins purported to be on the loose. It was the expectation to dress up in costume and go out "begging" for candy that brought me to my knees in terror. I have no idea where my aversion to costumes and trick or treating arose. It's possible that my inherent shyness was at the root of it. Wearing a costume made me feel self-conscious, and going up to someone's front door, banging on it, and yelling "Trick or Treat" (while wearing the aforementioned self-consciousness producing costume) was just too much for my sensitive little psyche.

So I dreaded the holiday every year, mostly because of the peer pressure. None of my school friends could understand my antipathy. How could I pass up an opportunity to get free candy just handed to me for no reason?

But I could and I did, year after year. As I got older, their amazement turned to scorn, and even my closest friends weren't above taunting me for staying inside with a book while they roamed the streets. My mother was hard pressed to explain it to the neighbors, who probably thought my failure to join in the Halloween parade was part of her legendary overprotectiveness. After all, what kid voluntarily stays in the house on Halloween night when the entire neighborhood is crawling with kids and free candy?

My son's attitude toward the holiday was a polar opposite. He was three years old on his first full-fledged Halloween, and dressed as a cowboy with his six-shooter holstered proudly on his side. He would have stopped at nothing to get to every house on our street and fill his little sack with candy. There was one darkened house where the owners were obviously away or not interested in feeding the neighborhood's sugar addictions. Undeterred, he marched around to the back door to see if he could rouse someone, while I stood at the curb cringing.

Over the years since my childhood - and even my son's childhood - Halloween has become an extremely popular holiday. People in our area decorate their houses with lights, huge inflatable pumpkins, and scary scenery. There are a couple of places we pass on our morning walks where I actually avert my eyes to avoid a very realistic corpse dangling from a tree.

Personally, I find these kinds of displays in poor taste. But then, I don't love Halloween.

I'm no longer afraid of the holiday, at least not like I once was. It's easy to avoid now- none of the houses on our street even give out candy. There are no sidewalks here, and the houses are far apart and set back from the road, making it more effort than its worth when there are much better places just across the main road at the end of the street. If I were to mark the day at all, it would more likely be as All Saints Day on November 1, the Christian holiday of remembrance for those who have died, especially during the past year. In fact, we did that at our church yesterday, calling special attention to the Memorial Wall where the names of several hundred departed church members have been inscribed over the past 25 years. Our minister read the "roll call" of those who have gone on to The Church Triumphant (which I think is a very fine expression.)

So tonight I'll be inside in my favorite costume - my fuzzy flannel pants and a thermal tee shirt or a pair of medical scrub sets purchased from

http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/categories/Scrubs/Scrubs-for-Men/

.

Of course there will be treats - maybe some popcorn or chips and dip, two of my favorite salty addictions. I'll curl up tight with a good book and tonight's episode of Dancing With the Stars.

No tricks. Not one.

How about you? Do you love Halloween? How do you celebrate?

Bottom Line

The media is rife with stories about "the disappearing middle class" and the "exponential rise in income of the elite." As a card carrying member of the middle class, I can tell you that it does indeed feel as if the rich are only getting richer while the poor get poorer. Bottom line?  I believe we are well on our way to a two layered economic strata in this society - the rich, and varying levels of poor. Unfortunately, I know exactly where I'm going to end up in this scenario, and it's not in a Penthouse on Park Avenue. My father in law came of age during the Great Depression, an event that cemented his inherent mistrust of government and financial institutions. As a young man, he lost his life savings in a bank failure, and he never again trusted banks with much of his hard earned cash. He was a Republican and an arch conservative, and when I first started listening to his tirades on various subjects back in the early 1970's, I thought he was a little crazy.

But although I've never far veered from my own southern Democratic roots, I must admit that the past 35 years have seen several of his prophesies come true.  "The media is going to take over public opinion," he would often say.  Now this was back in the day when all the news available came out of four TV stations and the daily newspaper. There was no Fox news network, no CNN ticker running constantly, no Nancy Grace, or Rush Limbaugh, constantly badgering us with news and expose, yammering in our ears 24/7 about what we ought to believe. With this constant barrage of biased information and opinion, where do we find honest and upright information on which to form our own views?  While we may think we're thinking independently, how much have our minds been affected subliminally by the information we're fed by these powerful media formats?

Just as often as my father in law ranted about undue media influence on public opinion, he pontificated about the globalization of commerce. "If people in this country keep buying products made in China, one of these days the Communists will own us!"  Well, perhaps the Communists don't own us, but China nearly does. Back in 1973 when my father in law stubbornly refused to buy clothes or appliances made in foreign countries, I would never have believed that the US would be in China's debt to the tune over a trillion dollars. And as we continue to outsource much of our labor and technology to China and other nations while failing to promote new business ventures and technologies here in the States, we continue to let huge chunks of our economy further out of our control.

Part of the problem is, in fact, the bottom line. Unless something is directly measurable in the profit column, it's value is discounted. Corporations have little regard for the loyalty of their workers, instead seeking ways to make more money without considering the consequences to their personnel or the larger effects on society as whole.

Bottom line? My father in law was a lot smarter than I gave him credit for. I almost wish he were still around to ask what might happen next.

Then again, I probably wouldn't want to know the answer.

On Schedule

I’m a full-time believer in writing habits…You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away…Of course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place.  ~Flannery O'Connor

Four months ago I quit my job. There were many reasons for that decision, but one of the things I hoped to do was to spend more time writing. Within weeks of making that decision to quit working, I learned that my first grandchild was on the way. This pregnancy was a long hoped for event, and one that was very important to me and to our family. Now I would be able to spend more time with him, help my son and daughter in law in this new adventure. So I felt confident that the gods had lined things up nicely for me, and were in fact smiling upon my decision.

Since it's been over 30 years since I cared for an infant, I started doing some reading about the latest thinking on the subject. During those first few months at home, new parents are advised to let the baby take the lead. Don't try putting them on a schedule, let them eat as often as they want. When they cry, pick them up and cuddle them, give them lots of attention and together time.

Indulge their every whim.

That fits quite nicely with my ideas about infant care. And it also mirrors the relationship I've had with my writing in the past four months. I've indulged my muse, let it take the lead with all this new free time. I've been writing whenever I felt like it, and if that meant three hours one day and 20 minutes the next, that's how it played out.

After three or four months, the child rearing experts advise parents to try and develop some semblance of a schedule. The baby is older now, feeling more secure about his place in the family. It won't hurt to let him cry for a few minutes after he wakes up, leave him alone in his crib while you take a quick shower or put in a load of laundry. Figure out a schedule that works for your family, and ease the baby into it.

I think that's probably good advice for my writing life as well.  "You have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do..." O'Connor writes. Because she suffered from a chronic illness, she "only had the energy" to write for two hours per day. "But I don't let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place."

 Forming any kind of habit takes willpower. Part of that willpower involves creating a schedule - the same time and place - and sticking to it. But I also also have to be realistic.  Although I spent seven or eight hours every day at my office job,  I know I'm not ready or able to commit that kind of time to my writing - not yet anyway. I've chosen to dedicate two hours every morning to writing...not internet surfing, not blog reading/commenting, not social networking.

Writing.

Putting words on the page.

To help me be accountable, I'm putting my blogs on a similar schedule. I'm committing to posting daily, alternating between the three blogs, so there is new content somewhere every day.

Here's to forming good habits for the writing life, and for life in general.

Do you believe in writing habits? Do you have a schedule? What works best for you?

The Countdown Begins...

You all know which one I'm talking about. Not the Halloween countdown.

Not the Thanksgiving countdown.

Not even the Christmas countdown.

It's the Connor countdown.

It's just less than four weeks until our grandson is due to arrive.

"Wow, that went fast!" I said to my husband the other night as we marked the date by buying the baby yet another present.

"Well, it probably doesn't seem so fast to Nantana," he replied.

True. My tiny little daughter-in-law is getting pretty unwieldy these days. The last weeks of pregnancy are always uncomfortable downright miserable. By the time labor begins you want that kid out of there so badly you don't even care how painful the process is.

Throughout the pregnancy I've been thoroughly impressed with Connor's parents, and their level of preparedness. They've completed all the necessary classes, installed the car seat and practiced removing it from its cradle, set up the crib and play yard, arranged all the little clothes in the closet, laid in a good supply of diapers.

They've even submitted the paperwork for Connor's birth certificate and Social Security number. After all we must make sure Uncle Sam can identify him right from the get-go.

But as my friend C. and I discussed earlier today, you're never really prepared for the way having a child changes your life.  Not just the nitty gritty details of everyday living, but your entire perception of the world. You can never quite reproduce the kind of attachment, the deep and abiding sense of love, the awesome sense of responsibility, or the utter wonder of it all that you experience when you bring a child into the world.

I'm not sure I even got the full impact of it until much later, when my son was all grown up and on his own. Looking back over 20 or 25 years, seeing the trajectory of a life you've created and nurtured, you become aware of just how miraculous it all really is.

And now it's about to start all over again.

So let the countdown continue.  I know I'm ready.

Welcome Home

Aside from the plane ride home, our trip to Disney World last week was smooth sailing all the way. We got in right on time, grabbed our luggage and our little rental car, drove out to the resort, got a room in our favorite building with our favorite view, and were even able to check in four hours early. We had a nice lunch on the patio at the resort cafe, exchanged our jeans for shorts and our tennis shoes for sandals, and walked right over to Epcot to scope out the offerings at the Food and Wine Festival, where we enjoyed a roving dinner munching on things like scallops from New Zealand, shrimp on the barbie from Australia, chicken souvlaki from Greece, and lobster rolls from Maine.

The next two days were just as fortuitous. The promised thunderstorms never materialized, we met up with some old friends from church who are seasonal employees at Disney and spend a wonderful day eating and visiting with them. We were able to see our favorite singing group (The Voices of LIberty) at Epcot just before we left, and even pick up a toy for our grandson - his first Disney souvenir.

It was a whirlwind trip, but a good one.

We've been Disney fans since our first time at the parks, way back in 1989. In 1995, we became members of their Vacation Club, and so when we enter any of the resorts at Disney, we're always greeted with the words "Welcome Home!" The Vacation Club properties are spacious and homelike, and Disney really wants is members to feel comfortable. When we're in Orlando, we prefer to stay in the Old Key West Resort.  It's some distance from the parks, the accommodations are much larger than any of the other properties, and it has a lovely, relaxed, Old Florida feeling. Since we were there last year, the property has been renovated with hardwood floors, granite countertops in the kitchen, new furniture and window coverings, and flat screen TV's. Wireless internet is now available in every guest area, so your social network needn't suffer while you're on vacation.

Welcome Home, indeed.

We've been to Disney so many times, we really don't even spend much time in the parks anymore. We enjoy renting a boat and putting around Lake Buena Vista, taking the shuttle over to Downtown Disney and seeing a movie, or just sitting on our little balcony watching the ducks in the river that runs beside it.

We spent a little time talking about the fact that our Disney Vacation Club might

become our main Florida Vacation Home, since we may be selling our house in Naples this winter. We thought we could probably live with that - it won't be quite the same, of course, as having a whole house to ourselves.  But during the cold Michigan winters, a place of refuge in a warm climate can be a very welcome home.

And we're grateful for it.

How about you? Do you have a home away from home? If you don't, where is your dream refuge from the cold winters of your everyday life?