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The Celestial Smooch

JT Twissel 27 Comments

It’s rare to glimpse the moon in the morning where I live, especially this time of year. If it’s not the fog hanging about, it’s the haze. But the other morning I arose just in time to see the sun bid the moon adieu in a clear blue sky.

Kind of a blurry image but I only had only seconds to catch the first rays reflecting off the the moon’s surface.

It’s the third day of the New Year and I should be making plans, right? On the first day we can be forgiven for dawdling about. On the second day, well, we’re getting over the first day but on the third day there just aren’t any excuses. Time to get motivated like these blokes from one of my favorite feel-good movies (which I watched in honor of the recent death of one of its stars, Tom Wilkinson.)

I was surprised to read that this low budget flick did far better both critically and financially than expected. A group of unemployed steel workers decide to become strippers. Only one of them knows anything about dancing; only one of them is particularly handsome (or “hung”); and none of them are what you’d call “buff.” I mean, really! Who wouldn’t want to cheer them on? 

I’ve been working on a story about a family I once knew, which is probably why I’m having trouble getting motivated. It was a family that thrived on doing good deeds. They literally went to Mass every morning and fed, clothed, and sometimes even housed the transients loitering the streets of Reno Nevada. They rescued many lost and hopeless kids like me and always had a menagerie of pets, both domesticated and wild. On the surface, a wonderful family always joking and having fun.

But all Catholic tenets were indisputable. If you dared to doubt any of them, you were going to Hell. Even if you were as loving and giving as Jesus Christ himself, you had to accept all the tales in the New Testament as truth or you were going to Hell. As you can imagine, when the children became adults they all suffered from either schizophrenia or substance abuse. Not because they believed those stories but because they feared going to Hell if doubt crept into their minds. I see a lot of that fear in the world today and it’s frightening. Perhaps that’s why I’m entering 2024 on tip toes.

Fly Away 2023

JT Twissel 19 Comments
Goodbye to a year of grief for so many

Aside from attending a memorial in Reno, we didn’t do any traveling this year and so, on our yearly Christmas visit to the San Diego area, we splurged. We stayed at a resort a few blocks away from my daughter’s house.

For us, this resort was a splurge but it was actually one of the cheaper places to stay in the area. Across the street is a campground full of families barbecuing and playing loud music while they dangle on a cliff over a rocky beach. Given the humongous waves hitting the California coast these days, I’m not sure I’d camp on a ledge. Would you? But the resort had a bar and friendly bartenders, who, after a day spent making and decorating Christmas cookies and shopping for last minute gifts, were a real godsend.

It’s hard to enter 2024 with any optimism at all. Nothing to do but …

Join me, will you?

Best wishes for a better than expected year for us all!

How things change

JT Twissel 22 Comments

Today it took me less than an hour to decorate for the Christmas season and I didn’t break a sweat. I really didn’t need to decorate. We won’t be here. I did it out of habit. And nostalgia. The only ornaments I’ve hung onto over the years have some sort of special memory attached.

My sister made this ornament the year her son was diagnosed with leukemia and she had to sit in the children’s ward for hours. It reminds me of all the innocent children who suffer through no fault of their own.

We used to have boxes and boxes of ornaments, reindeer with blinking red noses for the front yard, Christmas villages surrounded by model train layouts … and a massive artificial tree that Joel found one year – half off! It had two thousand mini lights woven in its branches and, since nothing says Christmas like a tree that can be seen from outer space, he had to have it. Of course, the two thousand lights only worked if you found that one that had burnt out. What a pain in the patootie! I hated that tree!

Not really sure which child made either of these two priceless Santas. Our current tree has no greenery. Just fake and barren birch branches.

Back then all of the children (we’re a blended family of five) descended on our house Christmas Eve, had dinner, spent the night, and then left the next morning to celebrate the rest of the day with their other families … after a Christmas breakfast of waffles and strawberries, of course. I don’t know how we managed to find a place for everyone to bed down comfortably. I don’t know how we managed all those last minute trips to find stocking stuffers that weren’t complete junk, or to make sure we had enough food, enough wine, enough wrapping paper, enough tape, enough toilet paper, enough aspirin. But I do remember that feeling after all the children left and the house was quiet once again. I didn’t even mind the clean up. I’d take one task at a time, have another glass of champagne, and listen to some dumb Christmas movie on the tube.

One of the last times we were all together on Christmas. This was the best of many, many shots! The two squiggles in the front had eaten way too many Christmas cookies and could not sit still.

Would I return to those hectic days of Christmas Past? Only if I could be in my forties again and since I can’t, this Christmas Eve we’ll be sipping cocktails while watching the sun set over Moonlight Beach. Our only stress, the long drive down the coast.

Shell ornament given to my children by their globe trotting godfather. I believe he bought them (there are others) in Bangkok

In case I don’t get inspired to post again, I hope you all can spend the holidays doing something you enjoy, whether entertaining a mob or just sitting on the beach!

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.

R. Tagore

Walking again #ThursdayDoors

JT Twissel 33 Comments

Earlier this week we had a couple of nice days and so I took a walk to the Farmer’s Market. Sadly there are fewer and fewer vendors this time of year but I did run into a few utility doors.

I don’t know – a stork?
Trail Birds
Looks like a birdhouse on the utility box
This is actually a magazine stand for the Christian Science Monitor that sits in front of their church.

Check out doors from around the world at Dan Anton’s place!