Counting My Blessings

 

I have a lot of undertakings to which I give my income.  The shop that I founded, charities to which I donate, gifts for friends.  I used to go to the coast every month, before the shop.  I fly home once a year, renting a car and reserving an AirBnb.  I'm not a saver; I never have been.  I've been expecting to die since 1997, so there didn't seem to be a point.  Never mind that the poor fellow who made that prognosis himself died a year later, and that I have had twenty-seven years to understand his error.  I never learned to save, and that ship has sailed.  Fortunately, I taught my son -- or someone did -- and he will live better for it.

But I have enough, and I know I live a privileged life.  I still work at 69, because I must; but I don't mind the fact of continued employment.  Perhaps it's not ideal.  I grow weary, wearier than a decade ago and more quickly.  I've always been a bit unsteady on my feet, you know; and osteopenia hovers on the edge of my awareness.  Eventually, I will ease my workload, but it suits for now.  

I feel my privilege.  As I filled my salt mills the other day, the news of the day played in the background.  War; the collapse of governments across Europe and the Middle East; the threats to democracy --  all invaded the otherwise easy silence as I poured.  Celtic grey and Himalayan pink.  After I got that done, I decanted two pounds of one of my favorite beans, Mother Lode Coffee.  The counter needed cleaning, so I flicked the water lever and listened while my Precision Temp On-Demand propane water heater activated.  The water heater that my carpenter-builder installed failed after less than two years.  This brand cost ten times as much but has been incredibly reliable.  My small savings took a hit but I have no regrets. 

Christmas approaches.  All of the winter events for which I had responsibility have come and gone with a fair bit of success.  In a week, I will board a plane for Chicago.  I've yet to figure out a winter coat. My usual sources failed me -- Poshmark, ThredUp, the Goodwill in Lodi.  I could have gone to Kohl's while in town, but that's not my jam.  I ordered something semi-warm from Amazon despite its varied reviews.  It might go back; I might instead layer myself in wool until I deplane, and deal with whatever weather I encounter.  I'm sure my son will help me find something decent.  

My son takes me to the best places.  Once we went high above the city; so high, I could barely breathe.  Heights terrify me.  On that same visit, he navigated us to not one but two demonstrations. I watched, and listened, and we talked about the causes which put fire into the belly of his generation.  He grows more fine, more socially aware, more solid every year.  I could not be more proud of what he has made of himself.

  

Only fourteen days remain of this year.  I still have not resolved my website issues, mainly because I haven't had the time or stamina to make the decisions that the web guy outlined.  Time enough for that in the weeks ahead.  In the meantime, I have laundry to do, holiday cards to address, and a pile of scarves to sort through for the donation bag.  I ate a good dinner of gluten-free pasta and a mediocre plant-based sausage made primarily of egg whites and 'natural ingredients'.  I chuckled when I read that.  I suppose it could be arsenic for all I made a point of learning before I tossed them in the pan.  No matter; it charred nicely, and tasted vaguely of what I remember of meat.  I chased the lot down with cold spring water.

As we all head into whatever holiday we each celebrate, I bid joy to each of you.  Whether you believe in some higher power or just credit the universe with any grace that comes your way, I hope you can count your blessings on more than one hand.  As for myself, that goes without saying.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Pie in the sky

 

10 December 2024, near the end of the eleventh year in which I continuously  strive to live without complaining.  Failure grips me; success skips away.

At 69, I should have chosen all the crossroads that fate might present but it seems that more await me.  My patience erodes.  I find myself unable to tolerate patronizing tones, jokes about serious subjects, and the outrage of self-righteous thinkers.  Employing an increasingly slim arsenal of resistance, I purse my lips in the face of any of these.  My mother's thin eyebrow arches; a twinkle shines in her eye; and in a second, my decade of intense study of nonviolent communication vanishes and I snap.  My mother's ghost turns away but not before I spy a little smile and a minute shake of her head.  

A competent web designer deems my sites irreparable -- or in the least, not worth repairing.  We switched into recovery mode as the hull of the ship sinks towards the ocean floor and my words desperately wave their frigid hands as they throw themselves on bobbing lifeboats.  I found a treasure trove on my laptop of the Musings, downloaded one at a time, in reverse, to prepare my manuscript two years ago.  It's the other blog, My Year Without Complaining, that struggles against the waves.  I learned my lesson:  Hire competent help; keep back-up files; update, update, update.  Those plug-ins won't mind themselves.

My friend Candy came into my shop the other day and asked when I would write another book.  She lives in the park where I landed seven years ago next week.  She and her husband have a 5th wheel with nearly twice the room of my tiny house and two yappy dogs, one of which likes me.  She bought my first release and even read it.  For that, if nothing else, I hold her dear.

Here's the thing:  I don't have to write another book, unless my focus changes.  I have years upon years of weekly missives that can be edited into a manuscript that I could shop on the strength of my first, self-published collection.  Nor would it be difficult to actually author fresh  material.  Rather than struggling to write, I must cudgel myself into doing anything else.  I can write; I find it easier than breathing.  Whether someone will underwrite the project remains to be seen.  

My unsettled emotional state might be the only impediment.  My inability to tolerate folks who treat me with an air of dismissal sends me into a tailspin now and again.  My faith in myself erodes. I question everything.  Last week, I even considered pulling stakes and hiring a flatbed to take my tiny house to my cousin Kati's land south of St. Louis, if she would still have me.  I'd hear that comforting blend of east and south in voices at the local diner.  My son would be just a five-hour drive to the north.  Three of my siblings would be in the metro area.  I could live in quiet seclusion, occasionally strolling across the way to have coffee on my cousin's porch and talk until dawn.

I'm tempted.

But then:  I get a call from the incomparable Tim Anderson, standing on my porch to claim a sleeping bag that I no longer need.  In his cheerful voice he asks if I would like an apple pie with or without caramel.  Before I can tell him that I shouldn't have sugar or gluten, he tells me that he'll leave both.  He thanks me for the sleeping bag which I had in turn gotten from our mutual friend Michelle Burke.  He says he can always use a sleeping bag for himself or one of the many friends who come to visit him in the Delta.  He closes with his usual, I'll see you always, ending the call almost before I can agree.

This evening, after a simple supper, I warmed one of the two pies.  The other easily slid into the small freezer in my tiny fridge.  With a pie server that I do not think I have used in a decade, I cut myself a modest serving.  I sat down to a piece of pie on a pretty plate, which I ate with a fork from the tableware that my sister sent me.  It's the pattern of my mother's everyday silver.  I find myself smiling.

The sun sets at five these days.  My son told me informed me that we are in Jupiter opposition.  I don't know if that impacts my mood but I've been crying and laughing in turns apropros of nothing discernible.  My spirit might be preparing for another crossroads.  I should tighten my shoelaces. I might have to choose in a hurry, and make a dash before I change my mind.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Thankful Every Day

 I haven't activated the heat since coming home from work.  I still marvel at the weather in Northern California, not quite seven years after moving here.  I imagined myself living by the ocean but also in warm weather, despite having embraced hours of fog and rain during my visits.  Here in the Delta, it does not quite freeze but it will drop to forty, and I think it's hovering at fifty outside as I write.

The rain overtook the Delta just a few weeks ago.  Migrating fowl fill the air and fields.  Smaller birds, tremendous flocks of them, settle on the wires.  Our lights flicker.  We  message each other and ask, is your power off? Is it the whole island or just our park?  We stand outside our houses and stare at the torrents of water falling from the black skies.  My first two years here saw nearly no rain.  Five years later, people still suspect that drought will again grip the land.  We might bemoan the dark and cold as we wait for the utility company to restore service.  But we do not loathe the bountiful showers which raise the water table and nourish the crops.

 On the night before American Thanksgiving Day, I find myself wondering for what I am thankful.  In my childhood home, I would be third to pronounce my gratitude in the youngest-to-oldest round of the table.  After the silly stuff by my little brothers, I would titter, My mom, or my family. In my son's childhood, I usually gave the penultimate nod, though in between marriages, I got to go last.  By my turn, I always found myself in tears.   No one could understand my sobbed words.  

In years when my health had flagged, I expressed thanks for surviving.  In the blush of wedded bliss, my spouse and son would both get mentioned.  Always, I would tell the dozen folks gathered that I was especially glad for their presence in my life, for my family by choice.  Smiles, laughter, a touch on my arm; everyone acknowledged my sentimental heart.  I'd wipe my tears, announce that dinner was served, and gesture for the assigned volunteer to carve the turkey.  I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching as people whom I had known for my son's entire life pass bowls, pour wine, and tuck napkins under the chins of little children as time passed and precious new families grew.

The year has sorely taxed my patience.  Most recently, yet another scammer has hacked my websites so I've been forced back into the less than optimal blogspot.  My health has hovered at the edge of poor; like Yossarian in the hospital, I haven't yet gotten sick enough to cure or well enough to release.  I work too much, sleep too little, and I still need to lose fifteen of the thirty pounds that I've gained since moving here.

But no bombs fall on my village.  And in the city of Mona Chebaro, my son's godmother, a cease fire has been achieved at long last.  

Tomorrow I will dine with a new family by choice, my neighbors at the RV & Tiny House Resort at which I live.  Today they gathered for a class on making pie dough given by a sweet woman named Robin whom we know as the "Tiny Bakeshop" lady.  One of the fabulous women who lives here told me that she's doing a gluten-free crust for me.  She asked me if I like apple pie.  I definitely do.

I hope to talk to my son and maybe some of my siblings.  I will ask each, "For what are you thankful?" and listen to whatever they say, whether funny or serious.  When the call ends, I will stand still for a few minutes, lost in memory and perhaps a little homesick.  But someone will call to me. I will turn, and move towards the cluster of happy people.  Someone else will hand me a glass.  Another will pull a chair over so I can join them.  Waves of conversation and laughter will wash over me.  

This, I will think.  I'm thankful for this.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

Why Me? Why Not Me?

 It seems that I have not learned my lesson.

I started blogging in 2008 with a weekly missive to the Small Firm Internet Group which morphed into the Saturday Musings.  Those Musings eventually became a book:  Mugwumpishly Tendered:  Essays from the seasons of one woman's life, © M. Corinne Corley, 2022, Write The Future, Spartan Press.  

While still recording my life's experience in the Saturday Musings, I started My Year Without Complaining, at which site I have diligently accounted for my quest to live an entire 365 sequential days without uttering one disparaging word.  That quest continues.

Now, for the second time, all of my websites have suffered an egregious attack.  With a holiday looming, I desperately seek a web developer who can work with my webhost to recover the data and repair the sites.  Barring both, the former would be sufficient because -- it must be said -- I directly write into the blog sphere and have no on-board copies of ten years of Complaint-Free Endeavors.

I just logged back into blogspot for the first time since 2017, the last time I got hacked.  On that occasion, Russian bots (I kid you not) had taken over my site.  Then, the webhost repelled the attack.  This time, a sneaky company called me while I was driving to Stanford.  They pretended to be my webhost.  They hijacked my site and under the guise of an expiring security certificate, tried to extort me for a hundred bucks.  I pulled over to the side of the road, called my real webhost, got a refund from my bank, and thought nothing more of it.

We think they left a little Easter egg which hatched last week and starting spewing thousands of spam emails in my name. If you got one, my grave apologies.

Accordingly, my dear, kind webhost purveyors have disabled these sites:

• myyearwithoutcomplaining.com
• mubdies.com
• themissourimugwump.com
• corleylawfirm.com

Why me??  Ah, but, conversely -- why not me?  I've had so many chances to succeed, and yet I continue to overlook lessons that might have helped me forestall disaster.  (I say, as I gently touch the little tiny lump under my skin which I know records my heart beat 24/7.  Just breathe. We do not want the monitoring nurses to sound an alarm.)

By and by, we will either salvage data and re-start the pages, or just re-start the pages.  This time, I will hire professional help to load and maintain the platform.  With any luck, we will be able to shift my accumulated blog entries to the new site.  But if we can't, I promise -- I won't complain.

Stay tuned.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The Missouri Mugwump®

04 February 2017, Here We Go Again

Good morning,

Well, folks, I'm coming to you from the blogspot again because 3 of my 4 sites have been completely restored but themissourimugwump.com still has a glitch.  I can't go another week without my blog, so, I'm here, I'm awake, I'm blogging.  Life continues.

It's frustrating to be sick.  I've wrapped myself in a warm robe and slid my feet into slippers.  The doctor listened to my lungs, declared them clear, told me to take Vitamin C and Tylenol and to drink plenty of water; and sent me home.  Now I'm thinking of every time I've ever curled myself into a ball in a hospital bed and wondering why I keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The pile of tissues grows as I blow my nose and cough.  I don't like February.  I always get bad news in February and I would be fine if they eliminated the month.  In the quiet of the house this morning, I'm remembering the February that I spent in St. Luke's hospital, in 1982, with a crushed leg and resentful attitude.  The saga began on 09 February 1982 at 4:55 p.m. when I stepped into the path of VW Cirrocco driven by an Iranian citizen without insurance.

"My roommate snores," I thought, as I lay miserable on the hard mattress with my leg encased in something intended to stabilize it.  The ER doc counted 32 breaks in the X-Ray.  "More will appear by tomorrow," he hazarded.  "No operation until the swelling goes down."  From flat on my back, I would have rolled my eyes except for wave after wave of pain rippling through my body.

Now I lay beside a snoring old woman in the peculiar semi-darkness of the medical world, surrounded by a curtain, on the other side of a closed door.  Muffled sounds drifted around me:  Beeps, murmuring voices, the faint wail of a distant siren.  I closed my eyes and beckoned sleep, but she taunted me and slipped away.

"My roommate snores," I repeated, out loud this time.  But no one answered.

On my first morning at St. Luke's Hospital after the accident I met Dr. Frederico Adler, a short brown wrinkled ortho guy who seemed positively delighted that I had catapulted through the windshield of a moving car.  He described the breaks with a gleam in his eye, nearly rubbing his hands together.  When he left the room, I leaned back on the thin pillow and contemplated the potential of suicide.  But no:  These damn folks would probably save me and then stick me in the psych ward.

My roommate snored through the whole exam.

Because of the curtain, I never saw the woman for a long time.  The patient techs would talk to her in loud voices but hers barely rose above a stage whisper.  She didn't get any visitors.  I had a lot of them those first few days.  Classmates and professors from the law school brought me contraband food and lecture notes.  "Quiet," I'd caution.  "My roommate is sleeping."  And she snores, I'd add sometimes.  They'd smile.

The three Davids spent the most time by my side in that first month:  David Frye, David Stever, and David Boeck.  One from my class; two LLM students.  We had formed a quartet and spent a lot of time together during the prior semester.  Frye brought me tapes of our shared classes.  Stever stood in the framed doorway and cracked jokes.  Boeck sat silently beside me, occasionally uttering a short sentence but mostly holding my hand and shaking his head.  

Through it all, my roommate snored.

I learned that she had broken her hip falling at the nursing home where she lived.  She had a little dementia, just enough to cause confusion in the mornings.  Since the fall, she barely spoke and the nurses figured that her mental state would quickly decline.  They kept her comfortable, worked her muscles, and waited for the decision that she'd gained enough strength for surgery.

In between ministrations, she dozed and snored.

Three weeks into my stay, I woke with a start in the middle of the night.  "Did someone speak?  Is someone here?"  I uttered the words in a quiet voice, not sure if I had been dreaming.

"Water," came the reply.  "Water."  The hoarse voice had to be coming from my roommate.  I pulled the nurse's button on my side and waited. When the night aide came into the room, I told her that my roommate had been asking for water.  She disappeared for a second and came back.  "She's sound asleep," the aide informed me.  She snapped the curtain back to show me the huddled form before leaving the room.

My roommate snored.

A half-hour later, I again woke with a jerk.  "Water," croaked the same voice.  I struggled to find the button which would lift the back of my bed, helpless myself.  The plea repeated.  A water glass stood on my bedside table, melted crushed ice really, cold and plentiful.  If only I could take it to my roommate.  

At that point in my medical odyssey, I had only been out of bed with assistance, someone to hold my leg while I lowered my body into a wheelchair.  The chair stood a foot from my bed where Boeck had left it.  He liked to sit and roll back and forth.  Boeck was like that  -- a little OCD, into repetitive motion.  

It took ten minutes to scoot my butt to the edge of the mattress, the bed already lowered with a press of that magic button.  The noise had made me wince.  What would I say if they caught me?  "Just had to go to the bathroom," I'd insist.  They would roll their eyes and point to the call light.  I'd shrug.

I can't describe the pain which wracked my body as I lowered myself into the wheelchair.  I doubted the wisdom of my decision.  I should have called the nurse again.  I'll probably lose my leg.  How in God's name will I get back in the bed?  I grabbed the water, tucked it between my knees, and started to manipulated the chair by grasping its wheels and jerking it around.

I got tangled in the curtain and nearly spilled the water, but I made it to the lady's bedside.  Her snores continued.  I studied her face, with its wrinkles, the stray hairs that plague us women as we age, ashen cheeks framed by limp hair.

Suddenly her eyes popped open.  "Water," she whispered, and I held the straw to her lips.  She drank, long pulls, the whole cup.  One solitary tear slid down her cheek.  "Water."  She uttered the word like a prayer, and then slept again, snoring gently, adding her night-song to the others flowing around us.  I sat in that damn wheelchair no longer caring if I ever got back into bed.

When I'm sick, I want a warm robe, and a hot drink.  I need clean sheets, a good book, a quiet house.  And water.  Lots and lots of water.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

Happy birthday to my shared daughters, 

Kim Fariello (Feb. 08th) and Tshandra White (Feb. 09th).

I love you, ladies.  You redeem February for me.

  

31 December 2016

Good morning,

It's just my luck that I finally get my new website properly configured and this morning, the entire webhost where it will live has gone dark.  Punctuate this paragraph with a heavy sigh and pour another cup of coffee.  Ah well, I tell myself.  Next week for sure!  I surf over to my law firm's site which of course, cannot be loaded because the webhost itself is down.  I try anyway.  I stare dejectedly at the empty screen with its pixelated frownie face telling me this site cannot be loaded.  No kidding.  Meanwhile my cursor jumps around the blogspot, my coffee cools, and the dog stares dejectedly at her empty dish from which she's just inhaled 3/4 of a cup of $10/lb. dog food.

A Hershey's kiss leftover from last night's snack rolls across the tile on which my mug sits and I pretend to ignore it.

New Year's Eve.  The dawn of a new chance for whatever I might be able to snatch from the jaws of the old year and plant in fertile ground.  I pad around my house on the scuffed leather of the hand-knitted slippers which I bought in Half Moon Bay and think about all the repairs this house needs.  The chores loom large:  A broken window that's been pouring air into the upstairs bedroom since 2006; wooden slats dangling from the blind across the room; a faulty garage door opener; flimsy screens that jump their tracks; finish worn clear-through to wood at the front stoop where the dog tends to tinkle on days that I oversleep.  I pour another cup of coffee and close the broken cabinet door over the wall from which old wallpaper peels under poor priming and the wrong kind of paint.  I add "salvage the kitchen" to my mental list.

I cannot suppress another sigh, but a laugh quickly follows.  I hear my mother's voice admonishing me to marry a physical therapist.  At this juncture, I might adopt a carpenter.

New Year's Eve.  I'm thinking of all those midnights standing on our front porch banging pots and pans.  My brothers take to the stairs by the street shouting Happy New Year! at the passing cars.  My mother's silhouette in the front door holds a green melamine cup full of hot Lipton tea.  I'm on the sidewalk with a pie pan and a heavy spoon. My face flushes from too much hot chocolate or the excitement of the moment.

Fireworks start in the distance, just ahead of the ball-drop in Times Square which flickers on the black-and-white set in the living room. No one watches it.  My father has gone to bed and my sisters have all gone on dates.  Only my brothers and I see the turn of the year in Jennings, dancing in a gentle shower of silent snow on the icy street.  We shiver without coats; the pink rises high on our cheeks.

New Year's Eve.

Today I will clean my house and sort the papers that I've shoved in the drawers, junk mail mostly but also a clutch of Christmas letters from people who remain clueless about the drift of my life.  I run my fingers along the gilt edges of the greeting cards and put myself in their places.  I don't send Christmas cards.  I used to comb the stores for the perfect message and scrawl a personal note on each one, signing my name coupled with those of anyone else living in my house at the time.  I stopped a few years ago.  It doesn't seem bearable any more.  The physical act of addressing all those envelopes and writing my solitary name might kill me.  I think about my old high school friend Jan Lemond whose husband died last year and shake my head.  Stop your belly-aching, Corley, I say outloud, hoping to convince myself.

New Year's Eve.

I'm told that I'm remembered fondly and I guess that's good enough.  And Jeanne Serra said yesterday that I looked "ding dang cute".  To be fair, she said that Hope, Patrick, and I looked cute in our group photo taken on the balcony at Cindy's in Chicago, but I'll claim it as a compliment anyway.

I walk along the driveway and stare dejectedly at the brambles and the scraggly bushes in my yard.  I've let myself and my surroundings go to hell again.  I aspire to be memorable, at least for someone, at least for something.  But all I've got are the words on this page, and they run cold and meager in the end.

In a few hours, I'll have coffee with Jenny Rosen.  She'll tell me to get my act together.  She'll kick my butt and pinch my cheek.  And afterwards, I'll sweep the cobwebs from the corner and dust Joanna's piano.  I'll spray that sweet-smelling freshener on the green couch -- the couch I despise, the couch I never wanted -- and fluff the pillows.  I'll re-arrange my rocking chairs and sweep the kitchen floor.  By the time the new year rolls round, I'll be so tired that I'll sleep through the dawn of 2017.  In the pale light of morning on its first day, I'll bang my pots to herald its coming.  The old dog will cast her baleful eyes in my direction.

I'll tell myself it's a good enough start, and I think, maybe, it is.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

"Tell the truth about your wound, and then you will get a truthful picture of the remedy to apply to it. Don't pack whatever is easiest or most available into the emptiness. Hold out for the right medicine. You will recognize it because it makes your life stronger rather than weaker."

-- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Post-script:  Next week, these Musings will be posted for the very first time at the new website. 

 You will be able to go directly to it and subscribe.  You will find it at: themissourimugwump.com.

Happy New Year, my friends. 

 Thank you for your patience, your loyalty, and your kindness.  

My wish for your 2017:  

Peace, prosperity, and joy.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Be well.

--  CC

Saturday Musings, 24 December 2016

Good morning,

On waking, I saw that I had slept through til nearly first light with my tablet lying on the futon beside my head.  I had been reading an odd novel poorly translated from Norwegian. Its premise had been promising, but I had read several earlier works in the series and steeled myself for clumsy phrasing.  It made for a good bedtime distraction but left me wondering if it read better in its native tongue.

I had thought the noise of the trains would bother me but I fought sleep for the time it took to settle.  Then at dawn, the intermittent rising and retreating thunder of the cars on the tracks sent a reassuring hum into the window. As I pulled myself from sleep, I remembered.  Christmas Eve. A stack of gold-wrapped presents stand on a table in a corner of my son's living room.  I'm nine hours from Kansas City and a lifetime north of home.

My mother and I stand in the doorway between the hallway and the living room where the lights of the tree wink their rainbow glow on the window.  I'm past the point of believing so I have spent the last hour wrapping the gifts from Santa to my little brothers.  At ten, I've already developed a slight maternalistic sheen towards my little brothers Frank and Steve, who at seven and six still reverently carried the plate of cookies and glass of milk for Santa.  Frank lit the Mary candle to light the way for the Christ child; Steve placed the baby Jesus in his spot in the creche.  I stood behind them feeling smug.  Then they got sent to bed while I rummaged in the wide closet between my mother's room and the breakfast room for wrapping paper, scissors, and tape.

My mother carried the gifts from the North Pole to her little boys and gently placed them on the breakfast room table.  She gestured to me to move quietly so the boys could not hear through the curtains on the French door to the sunroom where they slept.  A little thrill rolled through my body.  I felt so grown -- let into a private club of people who know that Mom is Santa Claus.

I made the corners of the presents sharp and crisp, securing each flap with tape as Mom taught me.  I averted my eyes as Mother wrapped the presents for me.  I knew that the labels would bear a special message in her writing:  "Merry Christmas to Mary Corinne".  She never forgot, like the little kiss before you go off to school in the morning with a belly full of warm cocoa.

It took a half an hour to carry all the boxes into the living room.  My father sat in his chair with the evening paper while we worked.  He had read the Bible story before the boys scampered off to bed.  His Christmas duty extended no further.  Mother and I arranged the presents, heaviest in the back, smallest on top, the ones from me to my parents to the side.  We kids drew names for gifts to each other, so eight small gifts already stood under the tree.  Mother carefully lifted those to make sure they could be easily found, for each gifter would present to each recipient.

When we had finished, we stood in the doorway surveying the lot.  My father hoisted himself out of his chair with a grunt and moved between us to go into the kitchen and rinse his coffee cup.  Mother lifted her arm and wrapped it around my shoulders.  Neither of us spoke.  The Christmas tree rose nearly to the ceiling, its shower of tinsel glistening in the warmth of the twinkling lights.  

I don't know what thoughts weighed heavily on my mother's heart but I  felt a long shuddering sigh course through her body.  She finally broken the silence and said, "I hope everybody likes their presents."  I turned and hugged her, nestling my face against her shoulder.  "Oh Mom," I exclaimed.  "They will!  They will!"  And so we lingered, mother and daughter, until my father came behind us and said he thought they should be getting some sleep.  

I lay in bed until I heard the older children trooping home just after midnight mass.  The murmur of their voices lulled me to sleep.  Right before I drifted off, I realized that snow had begun to fall outside my window.

Five decades later I know so much more about my mother, though not from anything she told me.  I've worked so long with domestic violence victims that her stress and worry have finally found  a name.  I've also met enough returning veterans to understand the trauma which my father suffered as he drove his mule through the muck and mud on the Burma trail in 1945.  The vagaries of war ravaged his young mind, sending his neuro-pathways in directions that his DNA had not been programmed to traverse.  I'm not excusing him.  Nor can I say that my mother should have rebelled against the milieu of 1950s America to leave her abusive husband.  But from this distance, I have a little empathy for them.  I have an inkling of the quagmire my mother's fears, and the mess behind my father's gruffness and his fury.  On some level, that sigh on Christmas Eve makes so much more sense.

As I lay in bed awake this morning, my mother's face rose in my mind.  I hear again her voice above my head that Christmas Eve so long ago as I stood snuggled against her slim body.  Merry Christmas, Mary Corinne, she whispers.  Merry Christmas, Momma, I tell her.  And God bless us, each and every one.

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley

The commuter train on its way to Wisconsin, early this morning outside my son's window.