Gifts of Christmas

And another Christmas has come and gone. This was a particularly lovely one—I felt a sense of contentment with it all. How many Christmas Days have I spent feeling disappointed, overwhelmed, depressed or all of the above? Not so much recently, but more often than not in my first 30 years. Just a little less than 20 years ago, I had a Results session with Margaret Fields Kean and we worked on my Christmas Day issues. I had always had wonderful Christmas Eve experiences and then Christmas Day would be awful. Every year. For no apparent reason. So we explored it and what my body-mind called for was an age regression. I went back to when I was a toddler when the elderly lady who babysat for us when Mom and Dad went out of town took a fall on our front steps and broke her hip. I had refused to hold her hand (I was expressing my three-year-old independence) and she said (in an effort to coerce me into holding her hand) that she NEEDED me to hold her hand. I refused and the next thing I knew, she was in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the steps and an ambulance came and took her away. After she was released from the hospital, she went to a nursing home and never left.

What Margaret and I discovered is that my hating Christmas Day stemmed from our family’s Christmas afternoon ritual. Every Christmas Day till she died, we went to visit her in the nursing home—a fairly scary place for a little kid. (Heck—those places still scare me a little!). Subconsciously, I believed that she was in that depressing place because I put her there by refusing to hold her hand. I can’t remember now what my body-mind called for as a way to release the issue, but amazingly, when Christmas rolled around the next time, even though I hadn’t even thought about it again or that we had released it, I had the first Christmas Day EVER that was pleasant and happy and fun. Amazing the stuff we store inside and what havoc it wreaks in our lives!

Anyhow…today was wonderful, and I received some pretty cool Christmas gifts. The coolest one is the one that my sister and Rick worked out for me. Ann (sister) is an amazing watercolor artist and I got a fabulous (and huge) giclee print of a rose that she had made from the gorgeous original. Ann gave me the print as a combination Christmas and birthday gift (each print costs her quite a lot because of the intricate process involved), and Rick got the frame and glass, etc. to put together. Because the printing process can’t get the background dark enough, Ann hand paints the backgrounds to get them very black. Giclee prints are amazing. You would swear this is an original. You can see an image of the original (“Illumination”) that the print was made from at Ann’s website. Be sure to click on it to enlarge it--the thumbnail does not do it justice at all. Actually, even the larger image doesn't do it justice. In person, it is so luminous and alive!

The other favorite gift(s) was from Rick: a collection of Crosby Stills and Nash digitally re-mastered CDs—Crosby Stills and Nash, Déjà Vu, and CSN Carry On (according to Rick’s research, a hard to get 2-cd set of the "best of"). I haven’t listened to Déjà Vu in 25 or 30 years and am amazed to find that I can still sing every lyric. CS&N provided the soundtrack for my high school years and I wore out my 8-track copy of Déjà Vu! Anyway, I’ve loved listening to the music (and am listening now). We saw/heard them at Fiddler’s Green (outdoor venue here in Denver) year-before-last and they were SO great—still. Hearing "Woodstock" that evening really tripped a trigger for me. I had already written much of Recreating Eden by that time, but hearing that song again was the kick in the butt that made me know I needed to FINISH it and get it out. (I wrote an article for the Autumn 2004 newsletter about Woodstock and the song and how I believe it activated our memory of our task. “And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden.”)

I guess I’m officially an old fogey. (Heck—just using that term labels me as ancient, huh?!) I really am loving old music so much these days, especially from the ’60s and early ’70s. I love that vibe. And I must confess that listening to CS&N today made me nostalgic for the appropriate corresponding smoky aroma!