Thanks and See You In 2017

When Boxing Day rolls around this month I will have been posting to this blog for six months. Amazing! That's one post every week for six months, although to be honest I think I missed one week. Some posts have hit a chord with people and been read by many, others seem to fall on their faces and get kicked to the curb. I'm still trying to figure out what makes one post appealing and the other not and will be doing some homework over the holiday season on that topic. To everyone who reads a post of mine, thank you and to everyone who reposts or forwards a post or shares in any other way, a BIG thank you and a sloppy kiss to be collected on at a later date.
A very small group of people have managed to make comments on my blog site and I really appreciate that. Some have commented on Facebook when I repost my blog there. I love to get comments and hope that going forward I might receive more.  If there is a topic that you would like to see me write about please share that with me. I'm always looking for inspiration.  Anyone that knows me well knows that I like to talk and I have an opinion about everything, well, almost everything. Politics are not my strong point but I will still try to give it my best effort.  It can be difficult when sitting down at the computer to come up with an idea that I feel someone might want to hear about so shout it out if you have a suggestion.  You can send an email to me at whatfayesaid@gmail.com.

Special Delivery
by Jill Charuk

I write for my own enjoyment and as practise, leading to what, I'm not sure yet but the more readers I get the happier I am so please read and share as much as you want. Signing up on the blog site with your email is the easiest way to get my posts delivered to your inbox every Thursday evening.

Light Touch by Jill Charuk

Right now is a busy time for everyone so I am taking advantage of that and this will be my last post until the New Year. Now you have one less thing on your "to do" list, cross off  'read Faye's blog this week', and I can go get drunk! Happy Holidays to you and talk at you in 2017.

Christmas Magic Memories

There we are, two quintessential little girls of the Sixties. Drooping knee socks, scuffed Mary Janes, hair curled just for the occasion, sitting on Santa's lap. Oh, my. My  younger sister and I are maybe six and eight in this picture and we look pretty pleased with ourselves.  That was a big day, let me tell you. I have blurred memories of going to downtown Vancouver from our suburban home and standing in line at the Woodward's department store.  I think it may have involved a pancake breakfast, I'm not sure. A very big event for our family.  I remember the anticipation I felt in that line up, sucking on a candy cane to help the time go by. It was nerve wracking. Think of it...Santa! The jolly man himself.  I still believed in Santa at that time, I'm sure, so he was the real deal to me.   Some kids in line were crying, refusing to go near Santa. I think someone threw up. I was nervous but old enough to be over the fear of the red-suited gent. The expressions on the face of my sister and myself are ones of posed smiles without a shadow of panic. We were there to fulfill a purpose, getting our requests for Christmas presents across to Santa. It's all pretty bizarre when you think of it but when as a child you still believe it is so wonderful.  I think that's what makes us lie to our own children about the existence of Santa. We know there will be a hard fall when the truth comes out but we hate to deny them the wonder of that Christmas magic we remember.

Max and a buddy,
five years old.

I speak for myself here as I know not everyone shared the same Christmas magic that I did. Growing up, our family didn't have a lot of money for gifts but I have only good memories of Christmas, and I worked hard to pass along that experience to my own kids. We spoilt our children at Christmas because we could. Huge trees, lots of decorations, fat Christmas stockings and gifts. We had a big family meal on Christmas Day, with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents in attendance, often hosted at our home. The whole thing was a great deal of work but I loved the result. The magic of Christmas came back to me through the kids. I have a few pictures of my children on Santa's lap but I think that our youngest was never too happy about it so it wasn't forced. That event was probably my least favourite to orchestrate, the visit to Santa, so I was happy to drop it. I'd much rather be icing gingerbread men at home with my boys than waiting in line for an overpriced picture.

Now I am in between generations with Christmas. My children are grown but haven't any kids of their own. No little ones to lie to and spoil with presents, and there may not be. That's not my call.  I've scaled back the decorating and baking, doing just enough to make me feel it's Christmas. The tree is smaller, the stockings are gone, the gifts less. One year I gave up on gifts all together and just gave money to the kids, and told my husband not to buy anything for me but somehow that wasn't right, I had scaled it back too far. I'm trying to find the balance now in the new style of adult only Christmas that we celebrate. It certainly has its upside. No more shopping at Toy R Us (HUGE upside!), no late night gift wrapping sessions after everyone is in bed and I am exhausted. No more worrying if there are enough presents or the right presents or an equal amount between the kids.  No trying to put together complicated toy items while searching for the right batteries.  No dealing with at least one child who came down with a horrible cold or flu right before Christmas.

The motley Christmas crew, 1994

My sons, one of whom comes with a lovely girlfriend, and my nieces and nephews have grown into smart, funny and entertaining adults. I miss having Christmas with the parts of my family that I've lost through divorce and death but these young adults make up for it.  The families of my siblings are  growing through the addition of new partners, spouses and babies, and so my siblings and I can no longer all get together for one Christmas meal. Logistics won't allow.  This year as I decorate my tree and bake my gingerbread people I will think of them all. And I think also of the little girl I was in the red coat on Santa's knee, the bored teenager I became trying to get drunk at Christmas, the young wife trying hard to impress, the mother of two overdoing the whole business and the person I am this year at Christmas. I am so very grateful for the wonderful memories of Christmas that I have, the ones I have helped make and the ones yet to come, whatever they may be.

Gird Your Loins!

Stanley Tucci,
The Devil Wears Prada

A friend sent me a text the other day saying that she was about to gird her loins for a stressful upcoming event. I was delighted to see her use that particular phrase as it one of my favourites, probably makes my top twenty list, but it's rarely heard these days.  Growing up it was used around my house, introduced to me by my parents, but I doubt whether my children have ever used it or even know what the term means despite my usage of it. It has sadly fallen out of favour.  The phrase dates back from the bible when men were urged to gird themselves to get ready to run, fight or do heavy labour. This was usually achieved by a man pulling the front of his robe or tunic through his legs to the back and then wrapping two ends  around the front and tying them together in front of the hips. This also protected the manly bits, the loins, a tad more than the loose garment would.  Man up, get ready for battle! Gird your loins! Nowadays we are urged to put on our big girl panties and get the job done. Same idea but so much less oomph. I'd much rather gird my loins than put on some panties when I'm about to do battle, literally or metaphorically. Obviously gird is the root for  girdle, an undergarment that WOULD  provide loin protection in battle when you finally managed to get squeezed into it as opposed to the aforementioned panties!

Now this is protection!

The first time I can recall hearing the bible read aloud was in my public elementary school. I'm old enough to remember the days of the teacher reading a passage from the bible after the class had recited the Lord's Prayer. Every morning. My family is not religious and we didn't attend church so the reading of the bible was very exotic to me. I became fascinated with the language, not the actual stories or the intent but the language itself. I came across a bible at home when I was about ten or eleven and would stand in front of a mirror in private and practise reading the text aloud, playing teacher in my mind. All that "hath, thou and shalt" stuff, it was a foreign language that I could read! Fascinating. I would feel the same way much later, in high school when reading Shakespeare. The bible stories were so stern, so many admonishments, so much drama. The names were long, full of syllables that rolled off the tongue. Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego are three that still spring to my lips whenever I want to summon them. I have no idea of their story, just the names remain.

My apologies to all that read and love the bible for its religious content, I mean no disrespect. But the language...it's so, well... biblical. An eye for an eye, the skin of my teeth, how the mighty have fallen,  they that take the sword shall perish by the sword, skin and bones. Awesome stuff.  At the same age I was reading the bible I was also reading novels voraciously, falling in love with the printed word and the worlds they created. My bible reading was short lived as I just couldn't get connected to the stories but my love of it's phrasing and vocabulary hasn't dimmed. And I know I'm not alone. One day years ago a friend was telling me about how angry she was with her husband over something. She was trying to find the right word to describe her emotion and she finally said that if she could have smote her husband on the spot she would have. Smote! Now there's a biblical word not used in everyday conversation anymore and I knew exactly what she meant. Her rage was so great she needed to reach back and find an Old Testament kind of feel to properly express herself.
The modern day evangelists are wonderful stage actors, in thrall to the dramatic language of the bible, it's rise and fall, it's thundering pronouncements, it's quiet beseeching. What actor wouldn't love these stories as their script?
So many phrases we use everyday have come from the bible, modernized to fit our speech patterns but the essential essence of them remains: forbidden fruit; go the extra mile; a drop in the bucket; a fly in the ointment; the blind leading the blind.  The list goes on. So though I am a heathen and my interest in the bible is strictly a selfish interest in its words and phrases I hope you won't judge me too harshly. If you do I shall have to gird my loins and prepare to defend myself.

Ageless

I have decided to become ageless from here on.  One of those big number birthdays is looming in the coming year for me and judging by the way friends and family have handled theirs I think it might be best to just skip this one.  What is it about the birthdays that end in a zero anyways?  We seem to make such a fuss about them. Are there birthday cards that say "Happy 59th!"?  No, but look for wishes for your 40th, 50th, or 60th and they abound. I had lunch with a long time friend the other day who has a sixtieth birthday coming up in a couple of weeks and when  I asked her about it she cringed and looked furtively around the restaurant. "Don't say that too loud" she whispered, concerned that someone who knew her might be within hearing. Hmm. It appears to be a thing to be dreaded so the best solution to the problem is to be ageless. If anyone asks me how old I am, and let's face it very few people do ask that question of me nowadays, I'll give them my year of birth and let them figure it out for themselves.
Many years ago I worked with a woman who belonged to the Kabalarians, the group that believes in numerology, mostly as it pertains to your name. Change your name, change your destiny is their philosophy. I asked her what her previous name had been and she told me she couldn't speak it. To say the name would be like putting a drop of black paint into a bucket of white, ruining the perfection of her life.  So that's the approach I am going to take, I cannot speak my age. It would be the drop of black in the beautiful white pool of my life.

Enigmatic....

My handsome husband is often taken for being ten years younger than he is so it is even more imperative for me to become ageless. I don't think I can peel ten years off my age but if I become ageless, it's simple, right?  I can hear it now..."Ted looks like he's fifty, how old do you think Faye is?" "Ageless." will be the response. I love it. It is said you are as old as you feel. Well, some days I wake up feeling thirty five, other days it's more like seventy or what I imagine seventy to feel like. So the concept of agelessness dovetails perfectly with that sentiment. My age will flow up and down with how I feel every day, never settling on any one number.  I'm going to have to work at a few things here, no dressing like my children's generation does, no dressing like my mother, just floating somewhere in between, careful not to chase the fads and trends. To be ageless I need to be able to be imagined in any era. I will listen to all kinds of music, get better at technology and read more classics, maybe try to rid myself of generational specific slang. Be enigmatic.
I feel better already about the coming year. When you are ageless you don't age.. obviously. I'm sure that's how it will work. I will just be perfectly myself everyday at whatever stage I am at. There will be some spoilsports, I know, people wanting to throw great globs of black paint into my bucketful of white but let them. We, the ageless are not bothered by such mean spirits. Birthdays can still be celebrated just without the counting of candles and the balloons with big numbers on them floating above my head. You are all welcome to join me in agelessness. As one of my yoga teachers often says, "experience what it's like to drop one of the labels that you carry around." I always think of the labels of mother, wife, daughter when he says that but dropping the label of age is even more liberating. Think of it. Ageless.

The Birth of Venus by Botticelli