A Live Van Gogh

I'm at an age where I have more aches and pains than ever. I've also noticed I feel them less when I'm happy.
And the pain isn't all age-related. I was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis at age 10, and my rheumatologist told my parents that while my prognosis might be good, I also might wind up using a wheelchair more than my legs. 

Flash forward a few decades, and I'm in good shape considering. Still, my knees tend to ache and my back can get testy, so I'm focused on losing weight to take unnecessary strain off them. 

One weekend, I took my kids to Northern Michigan and we spent a day on Mackinac Island. I'm a native Michigander, and Mackinac Island is my restoration place. Cars are not allowed there unless you're a police officer or emergency responder, and horses, carriages, bikes and feet are the only means of transportation for regular folk. I was struck by how joyful I felt and by how gratifying it was to reintroduce my kids to a place they hadn't been since they were barely more than toddlers. 

We walked everywhere that weekend - up and down streets, up and down hills, and up and down long stretches of beach. That's when it dawned on me: I wasn't in much pain. 

Could it be that my mood was overriding my pain? The only place I drew the line was in climbing Castle Rock in St. Ignace, Michigan. I don't know that it was as much a pain issue as it was stamina, since Castle Rock is almost 200 feet high. My son did it though, and I vowed to him that in 2021, we'll climb it together. 

But I'm meandering, as one does in Northern Michigan. 

I was thinking that if I were awarded an all expense paid trip to Paris, and it rained for most of the trip, I'd probably still be thrilled just to be there. I'd be thinking how picturesque Paris is with its streets all shiny and wet and how fascinating Parisians are to watch, darting in and out of shops and clutching their umbrellas. Of course the Parisians, there all the time, would be all down in the mouth because it's raining. Maybe they'd be wishing they were in Miami Beach. 

So if Parisians can get bummed when they live someplace fabulous, maybe the rest of us can
be expected to when we live someplace mundane - mundane to us anyway. Could it be as simple as choosing to find what we need from our surroundings, and, by extension, our lives? 

Van Gogh painted pastures and stars and flowers and life until the day he suddenly didn’t. While he lived, he breathed color into his lungs and exhaled it onto canvass. He gazed at starry skies and walked through fields as yellow as the sun.

I choose to be a live Van Gogh every day I possibly can. 

The Watched Pot of Winter

It’s been winter for weeks now and I’m still trying to catch up to the notion that winter is a good and natural thing, a thing needed by the earth, a time for nature in my part of the world to close its eyes and rest; a time for things to take stock and catch their breath before the bustle of spring returns.

Like his mother, Jon gets a  
little flaky in the winter. 

Winter never was my favorite thing, but years ago when I was about to drive from Michigan to Colorado, my view on winter took an uptick. It was January and someone remarked that it was a shame I wasn’t making the trip in a few months when the scenery would be prettier.

“But winter has its own colors,” a friend replied, “and they’re beautiful.”

On the trip I appreciated the landscape more than I would have had my friend not made that observation. Winter’s sepia and olive tones became nearly as appealing as the purples, greens, yellows and reds due to burst from the soil come April.  

Why then has winter become so unappealing to me again? Why can’t I think my way back to that long-ago road trip when winter was cold, bleak and barren, yet beautiful nonetheless; when it was something to love despite, or even because of its harsh embrace? Why can’t I get back there again?

It’s not as if I have no good memories of winter. My son was born in the winter, umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, his first cry the bleat of a newborn lamb, raspy, plaintive, yet raging, simultaneously helpless and furious. 

That little bleat told me my son had arrived and that he planned on staying, despite the scary start, and his grandmother’s first thought at the sight of him was that he should pick up a hammer and help the other elves. He was a minikin, but he was my minikin and he was healthy.

And one of the things I laughed at the hardest in this life would never have happened had it not been for winter.

One morning my mother landed on her fanny after slipping in the snow, her coat leaving a nubby-textured imprint next to a Nike-esque swoosh from where her boot had shot out from under her. If I’d seen her fall, I’d have been upset, but walking up on the plop and swoosh, and knowing she was fine, made me weep with laughter. Mean-sounding, I know, but she was laughing, too.

Maybe I'd feel better if I just stopped fighting winter and stopped staring at the calendar as though winter were the proverbial watched pot. Maybe I need to remember my son’s first wails, picture him as he was the other day, wind-whipped and thrilled, barreling down a hill on his sled. 

Maybe I should think about moments like those and stop fighting what is as inevitable and as necessary and as natural as death. At least winter is temporary and there will always be another spring. 

There will always be another spring, right?

Jenny and the Christmas Vomity Mess

In early December my house was a Christmas vomity mess, then it looked lovely, then it was a Christmas vomity mess again. I hate it when Christmas vomity messes go full-circle - and they always do. 

Kitt, our cat, staking her claim in the
Christmas vomity mess. Copyright,
Teece Aronin. 

The Christmas vomity mess is that stage of home Christmasness characterized by ornaments scattered across floors and ornament hooks that hide among carpet fibers and don't come loose until they hitch a ride out of there embedded in the sole of your foot. 

The Christmas vomity mess is scraps of gift-wrap strewn like confetti - your house looking like New Year's Day, six a.m. It is also whole hanks of gift-wrap curled up on the floor like victims of a war on gift-wrap because someone didn't measure once and therefore cut twice. 

The Christmas vomity mess is every construction paper decoration and tree ornament your children have made since pre-K, now flung across the dining table from which the table cloth hangs, all catty-wompus and drunkenly grazing the floor. 

The Christmas vomity mess is all your Thanksgiving paraphernalia co-mingling and canoodling with the decorated plates, candy dishes, hand soap dispensers and towels which must be trotted out or it just wouldn't be Christmas. 

I first heard the term Christmas vomity mess from my smart, sparkling, optimistic friend, Jenny. Even though it can't always be easy as a working, single mother, Jenny has a gift for seeing the good. 

Jenny is the kind of woman who can tell you that someone just graffitied her truck and manage to spin the tale so that it sounds like the sun just flooded her garden, every flower turning its little face toward the light - and that it was adorable when one of them sneezed. 

When Jenny sees a Christmas vomity mess she sees fun-loving elves playing peekaboo in the debris. When I see a Christmas vomity mess, I see elves dressed as Chucky dolls. I don't perk up until the Christmas vomity mess is downgraded to at worst, a Christmas hiccuppy mess.  

I first heard Jenny use the term on Facebook right after Thanksgiving when this post appeared next to her pretty, smiling face: My house is a Christmas vomity mess! 

'Oh, my God!' I realized, 'So is mine!' 

This year I did almost all of my holiday shopping online, causing my Christmas vomity messes to expand and include cardboard boxes, stacks of them; a small-scale homage to Citizen Cane and the crate maze remains of a life spent grabbing, grabbing, grabbing. And spilling from the boxes to tumble all over the room were tiny air-puffed packing cushions equally useful as floaties for little baby rabbits. 

And because ninety percent of this stuff was intended for my kids whose last scraps of holiday innocence I'd like to protect by keeping at least some gifts a surprise, the Chrismas vomity mess has spread into my bedroom in a big way. This gave me pause one night as I turned out the bedside lamp. Normally, I navigate my dark bedroom like a fish in black waters. I know every curled corner on every throw rug and gracefully sidestep the tiny three-legged stool near my closet door.

But this Xanadu microcosm could send me tush over teakettle if I connected with it in the dark. I could fall, break a hip and become a burden to society when I'd be perfectly happy just burdening my children someday. Then a Scroogey voice inside my head nagged, "And you'll keep Christmas by losing your independence!" So, even as I told Ebeneezer to shut his figgy pudding hole, I got up and shoved the boxes out of the way.

But almost enough about me; Since the Christmas vomity mess is a multi-stage phenomenon, I manage to clean it up in time for Christmas morning and holiday guests only to witness it reinventing itself during the gift opening phase like an antibiotic-resistant bacteria. 

This year I found these cycles exhausting and so did my Christmas tree which eventually refused to light whenever the place was a shambles. Like me, it can't seem to get turned on when the house is a mess. 

So that's it for this year's Christmas vomity mess. I might feel nostalgic for Christmas from time to time but never for the Christmas vomity mess. 

And Jenny - smart, fun, light-hearted Jenny - what planet are you from and may I spend next Christmas there with you?