Gratitude and Joy: Reading and Advent Calendars

Gratitude and Joy: Day 5

I am grateful for:

Reading

I am happiest when I can read for at least one uninterrupted hour every day. Some days I get a lot more than that, and most weeks there's a day or two (or three) where I'm lucky to manage ten minutes. Reading is one of my chief joys, and I've realized (not really for the first time) lately that it's also one of the most important ways that I take care of myself. Reading allows me to pause, to rest, to reset, while it also exercises my mind and entertains me. Long stretches without sustained reading time (even when those stretches are otherwise happy or fulfilling times) are invariably times when I feel out of sorts, not quite right with the world or myself. 

In the last nine days, I have only managed a proper sustained read once. I'm right in the middle of the harried part of the preparation for Christmas, the two weeks or so when all the decorating, buying, wrapping, card writing, post office going and last-minute yarn-craft-gift finishing happens, and I simply haven't had the time (or sometimes the energy, when the end of the day comes and I only have enough brain cells left for television). The absence of sustained reading makes me realize how much a I love it, how much it does for me, and how grateful I am that I have the ability--through literacy and leisure--to engage in such a sustaining hobby. 

I am made joyful by:

Advent Calendars 

We always had an advent calendar when I was growing up. The one I remember best was a 3-D jobber of a cathedral. You had to walk around the whole thing to find the right door for the day. I delighted in it every morning. That particular calendar kind of died at some point and we had others in my teenaged years. My high school German teacher always incorporated a German advent calendar into lessons in December. (Those had chocoloate behind the doors, a thing which until that time was unheard of in my world, though it seems to be very common here now.) I've had one every year of my adult life too, supplemented in the last few seasons by a nifty animated one on the computer that involves music and activities. They are a simple treat, a small thing to look forward to , and the prospect of opening the door each day still sparks that little joy in me that it did as a kid. Now, too, it helps me slow down and notice the passing of each day rather than letting them all congeal into one great seasonal clump.

Gratitude and Joy: Thursday and Ceehke

Gratitude and Joy: Day 4

I am grateful for:

Thursday:
Thursday is my golden retriever. She is a year and a half old, and she is made of equal parts adorable, twirl, and buttface miscreant. I can just about remember not having a dog as a kid, but only just. I was six when we got our first one. But when I moved out, I wasn't in a position to have a dog--apartment living and long, looong hours away from home in graduate school. I got a cat as soon as I thought I could manage one financially, and I adore her. But I missed having a dog. So once we got a house and got settled into it and got a proper fence in the back yard, the search for a doggo began. Thursday is work, I'll tell ya. She has all the energy. Have you been feeling run down lately? Mmmhmm, it's because my dog took all the energy for herself. And she wants all the attention, always. And, oh hey, did you know that a dog has to be taken outside to do its business where a cat just saunters off to its box and leaves you alone? But I wouldn't trade her for the world. My mom calls pets our "furry blessings." That couldn't be more true, and every evening when I get the dog settled for bed, I try to remind myself how grateful I am to have the Blonde Wonder in my life. 

I feel joyful watching:

This scene from episode fourteen of season two of All Creatures Great and Small
The set up! The unhurriedness of it all! The constant mooing and birdsong in the background! How serious they all are!

Gratitude and Joy: My Neighborhood Church and Trees

Gratitude and Joy: Day 3

I am grateful for:

My Neighborhood Church:
We didn't go to church growing up. My parents grew up Methodist and were not "lapsed" so much as intentionally "nah" by the time I came around. Both sets of grandparents went to church and nearly all of my childhood friends did, so I went sometimes if I was staying over the weekend with someone who did. Recently I've become interested in exploring my spirituality and religion, less because of any kind of newfound belief and more out of a desire to see what's what and find out what I believe and what a spiritual community and ritual might have to offer me. I'll go from there. 

I did some research before picking a church to attend, and boy, did I luck out. The Presbyterian church I've been going to--still very sporadically--is literally in my neighborhood (which feels important somehow, and beyond the pleasantness for a newbie to a Sunday morning get-up routine of a less than ten minute round-trip), the service is traditional without feeling out of touch, the sermons are excellent and on point, the music (my single favorite part) is lovely, and--most important--everyone is genuine, friendly, welcoming, and *not pushy.* I don't know yet whether I will become a regular attendee of this (or any) church or if my attendance will change anything about what I believe or my relationship with faith, but I'm so grateful to have found a place to explore it that I enjoy going to and where I feel welcome.

I feel joyful around:

Trees:
You've probably seen one of those articles of foreign words for things we can't say in English and come across the Japanese word shinrin-yoku, which means "forest bath," and refers to a contemplative walk through nature. They're always accompanied by pictures of beautiful trees, these articles, and every time I come across one of them, something inside me goes "Yep." I've always been a lover of trees, and lately I've been trying to go for a short walk through our neighborhood as near to every morning as I can manage. We're right on the edge between the end of the city and the beginning of the country here, and we have a lot of trees and almost, almost, a forest just up the road. For a joyful start to the day, nothing beats a quiet walk under sunlight dappling through the trees.

Gratitude and Joy: Extras and Pentatonix's Hark the Harald Angels Sing

Gratitude and Joy: Day 2

I am grateful for: 

Extras:

Today was tree day in our house. We drove our SUV ten miles to the edge of town and bought a freshly cut Christmas tree and brought it back to our spacious house and decorated it with lights and ornaments while we listened to music on our fancy entertainment system. Yesterday I went to Target and bought a fair amount of nice things that are pretty and pleasant to have that we do not need, like a new pillow that says "Merry Christmas" on it and some new tree ornaments and a spiffy plastic box designed to keep your light strings from getting tangled up in storage. I derive a lot of emotional security and real, but surface-level, happiness from having pleasant things, but in the end, they are extras. Because they do make me feel genuinely good, I am grateful that we are in a position to provide them for ourselves. But today I'm using my gratitude to challenge myself to remember more often those who live without the extras and those who struggle without the necessities. We support a number of causes that are important to us, but it's been a while since I've put my body where our money is. I've been thinking about finding a soup kitchen to volunteer at regularly or training to help out at our local literacy initiative, which largely helps refugees who have relocated to our area learn the English they need to help them rebuild their lives in our country. In light of the extras I'm glad to have, it's time to commit to one of these inclinations to help those who don't.   

I feel joyful listening to:

"Hark the Harald Angels Sing," by Pentatonix

The first verse of Penatonix's "Hark the Harald Angels Sing" brings tears to my eyes. The harmony! The bass! I'm going to let this one speak for itself: go listen. If you have a good pair of headphones you can plug into your device, do. Trust me, it will be worth it. 

Gratitude and Joy: The Bookternet and The Moon

Gratitude and Joy: Day 1

I am grateful for:

The Bookterweb
As an eighties kid, I kind of grew up along with the internet. It started out for me as a thing you got on to do a specific thing, like check your email or read a fannish bulletin board. It remained a novelty for quite a while, a thing I sometimes did (not so much used) just for the sake of doing it. Hey! I'm internetting! How cool is this? It's morphed by now, of course, into an ever-present entity, a thing I kind of can't really get through my day without and which I find myself doing brain hacks to lessen my reliance on. My relationship with it has soured, in other words. But there's one piece of it that invariably improves my life, and that's the bookterweb.

I've always been a bookish person, and for long years my desire to be a part of the book world was satisfied by being a college student and later a graduate student in English. Book people everywhere! But those days are behind me now, and I miss having bookish people wherever I turn. But the bookish parts of the internet do an excellent job standing in for a large circle of book-friendly acquaintances. (Sometimes it's better than a large circle of book-friendly acquaintances. The bookterweb will always be more diverse and cater to more niches than any group of humans gathered in one place can hope to be.) It's only been in the last four years or so that I've really sunk elbow-deep in bookish places online, and I've realized lately just how much all of those places add to my intellectual and emotional life. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I saw that a day does not go by where I am not brought happiness by bookish websites, forums, podcasts, or Youtube videos that I would not find anywhere else. They say the internet makes it easier for people to find their tribe. I've found mine, even if I might like to interact face-to-face more than the internet allows for, and seriously, how cool is that?

I feel joyful around:

The Moon
The moon is just a sliver shy of full tonight, and as I was walking the dog, trying to hurry her along a bit to get us inside the nice, lit-up house and out of the dark road, I caught sight of the moon through the bare branches of a tree in our yard. And it stopped me cold. It often does. I glance up and it catches me, hanging there in all its certainty and improbability. I'm not the first person to feel small gazing up at it or the first person to get kind of warm in the chest and break out in a grin at the sight of it either, I'm sure. It takes me a minute sometimes to identify that feeling I get, because it's so big, and tinged with something just a bit fearsome, but it is joy. Hanging right there in the sky.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

In a previous iteration of my blog, some six or so years ago, I did a post about how Christmas can get all snarly and tangled up, what with all the extra stuff we "have" to do; and the financial, familial, and other stresses that can come with the season; and the expectation to feel joy now, right now, regardless of where you are emotionally otherwise. It was ultimately one of those "concentrate on the bits that actually matter" posts (you know, like, count your blessings and all that stuff). And in yet another iteration of the blog (years and years ago now, back when Livejournal and the like were still really, really popular, a whole bunch of my friends and I all had blogs on one of those platforms and it was like one big verbose interwebby family for a brief, wonderful little while), I did an "advent calendar" series, where I recommended a holiday thing or tradition each day and talked about why they mattered to me. (Alas, that blog is no longer extant, so no linky for you.) 

I feel a pull toward that kind of post again this year. I had a half-formed notion to do a quick post every day in November about something I’m thankful for, but then it was halfway through the month and I hadn’t done it at all. And I like the idea of sharing the things that *do* make me feel nice and warm and fuzzy and blessed at this time of year. So, starting on Friday and going on through Christmas day, I’ll be doing another advent calendar series of sorts. I’m calling it “Gratitude and Joy,” where each day I’ll share one thing I’m thankful for and one thing that brings me joy. In keeping with the season, many, though likely not all, of these things will be related to Christmas in some way. 

I hope that these posts will bring a little light and happiness into this season for you, whether Christmas has meaning for you or not, whether you are tending toward joy yourself or not in these last weeks of 2017.

When You're Afraid to Reread

While I'm not a big rereader, I do have my favorites that I come back to over and over. I seem to be perpetually in the midst of another Harry Potter reread, I come back to half-remembered books from my childhood occasionally, and I do a ritualized reread of A Christmas Carol every year (one stanza each evening from 20th December through Christmas Eve). I reread more often as a child and a teenager, possibly because I had fewer books available to me than I do now but I suspect more because I had less expectation that I "ought" to be reading certain things and just happily re-immersed myself in the stories I liked best. 

So I'm no stranger to the reread, but I have a handful of books I've been avoiding rereading, books that I loved so much at a certain moment in time that I'm afraid to go back to them lest they turn out to be less than wonderful and the memories are tainted. These are the books I would come back to precisely because I wanted to feel the same thing I felt last time but fear that feeling was singular and the memory of it is better than finding out I can't step into that particular textual river ever again.

Here are four books I hesitate to reread:

Number the Stars, Lois Lowry

I first read this World War II middle grade chapter book in fifth grade, and while I suspect I read it repeatedly around that time of my life, I've never reread it as an adult. I loved the story and the friendship between the main characters. It was probably one of my first experiences of enjoying a book while also understanding that it dealt with serious, real topics that were outside of the realm of what was entertaining. Ironically, it is my fear that my fuller, more complete adult understanding of the Holocaust will keep me from enjoying the book at all that keeps me from coming back to it now.

Heir to the Empire, Timothy Zahn

I no longer remember whether this is the first Star Wars book I ever read (I don't think so?), but it was early in my deep dive into Star Wars fandom early in high school. Every summer I spent a week or so with my grandparents, and I remember so clearly lying on a patio chair in their breezeway just inhaling this book. While the book itself was good and certainly helped cement my growing love of Star Wars, it is more the memory of reading it that I do not wish to disturb with a reread. Maybe if I read it again it would be just as fun as the first time and I would just add another layer to my memory of the book. But what if I was bored? Better to let it alone.

Circle of Friends, Maeve Binchy

I loved Maeve Binchy as a teenager and read several of her books. Circle of Friends was always my favorite, though. I loved all the characters, the setting was fascinating to me, and I found the way the book didn’t end with everything all tied up neatly and predictably happily both disturbing and refreshingly realistic. I’ve tried reading some Binchy as an adult, and I always wander away from them, finding them too loosely focused and a little too twee. It’s entirely possible that her writing style changed since Circle of Friends and I would find that one just as grabbing as I did at fifteen, but I’d rather not risk finding out I don’t.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Of all the books here, this is the one I’m most likely to reread despite my reservations. I *love* Jane Eyre, and I have since the first time I read it, at sixteen, largely on the bus coming home from school. I was completely caught up in the gothickiness and the moors and the mysterious Mr. Rochester. I loved the way Jane stood up for her sense of what was right and that she didn’t take the safe, secure option. I rejoiced in its happy ending. I have reread Jane Eyre at least once since that first time but not recently. I know so much more about life now, and about the world, and I’m much more aware of the flaws of Jane’s time period. The way I would think about and react to so much of this novel will have changed so much. Bits that were just great story when I was younger will now have troubling things to say about mental health and race and misogyny and colonialism. And all that is good and as it should be. I have just not yet been willing to tramp through my love of this book with my adult, open eyes. That I get to waffle about “ruining” my initial innocent read of this book is, of course, a result of my own privilege, and I doubt that I’ll be able sit around without properly interrogating my memory of this book for much longer.

There you have it! Some of my favorite books I’m hesitant to reread. What are some of yours?