A Wonderful Life

Its A Wonderful Life

I have always been a woman who honors and celebrates tradition... and I will probably go to my grave being an old fashioned traditionalist. This is never more apparent then at Christmas time.


To me, holiday traditions are sacred and when Doug and I first married, I began bringing those traditions to life in our family... something he initially shyed away from as he did not much care for Christmas back then but which, in our later years, he came to love and got into the spirit with.. It is traditions that keep memories alive and lets them be rekindled with each holiday, birthday, anniversary... or something as simple as a walk in the park.

When the children were small, we would bundle up on the day after Thanksgiving, and head out to the country to cut down a Christmas Tree... Doug was highly allergic to pine (hard on a hunter and hiker) but always cut one down (chosen by the "special" child that year) and helped me get it into the house. I would have them string popcorn and make ornaments while we watched movies and sipped cocoa and I strung the lights (one light on every branch, carefully wired).  My oldest son, Douglas, became a wonder at untangling and testing lights for me... something I know he hated but did with love for the season.

One of my favorite Christmas holiday traditions is the watching of holiday movies from A Charlie Brown Christmas with the playful snoopy and philosophical Linus, to Garfield's Christmas which always makes me think of my children growing up and turning the lights on our tree for the first time, to The Bishops Wife and my all time favorite Its a Wonderful Life ( one of my greatest memories is of my oldest son Douglas as a young adult yelling out "ZuZus Petals!!"... how I hold on to those memories).

In 1946 Frank Capra had no idea his sentimental small town "fantasy" would become a seasonal favorite of our age. In this movie, it is Christmas Eve, the night of miracles, and George Bailey certainly needs one. After a life time of helping others, he is giving up on his own life. He is broke, disgraced, facing prison, and in deep despair over a savings and loan shortage that truly is not his fault. After angrily wishing that he had never been born, he is about ready to throw himself off of a bridge into a raging ice cold river, when he is rescued by his guardian angel who temporarily grants him his wish by showing him what the world would have been like if he truly had never been born.

George, like to many of us, truly believes he has never had a lucky break but when he steps back, away from himself, and see things as they really are, he realizes that all of his choices, as painful as some may have been, were the right ones. He is also a wealthy man... oh not in material things but in the important things of family, healthy children, work, and more friends then his house can ever hold at one time. He realizes that, quite frankly, it is a wonderful life he is about to throw away.

So today, admid some major turmoil and health issues, I too am stepping back to take another look at my life and I invite you, dear reader, to do the same. We can step back and take a look at our lives and the lives of those we have touched. One of the unexpected blessings of writing my latest book of poetry has been in going back over what seems like ordinary moments in my life and mining them for meaning. Writing a poem about an encounter, mistake, regret or a conversation is very revealing -- probably even more so then keeping a journal. Every day while writing that book I have had a topic to meditate on, usually a title or a quote and always a fresh clean blank page. Generally, I find out what I am writing about only AFTER I am well into it or even revising the poem for the fourth of fifth time. And, in this process, what I have learned, as can you, is that I truly have enjoyed a wonderful life. That knowledge resonates within me today, as I work on writing my first novel,  and for that I am deeply grateful. Obviously, there are many things I wish I had not done and crisis I have brought upon myself; but now I see that experience is nothing more then a loving teacher, much like my friends and neighbors.

So in this Christmas season, and for those yet to come, I hope you will seriously consider writing your own meditations and gratitudes of life. Start slowly. Write just one a week or even once a month. Search for the sacred in the ordinary for it is there... present in all things. Nothing in a life is too insignificant to be a source of inspiration.

We do not write in order to be understood... we write in order to understand.

If you start out writing your own thoughts, meditations, and gratitudes, what you will remember, recognize, and understand is that Its A Wonderful Life!!!

Remember to enjoy each wonderfilled day to its fullest!