Alhamdallah for the New Year!
A fresh new year, and a fresh new start! I’m not going to make any resolutions, other than to try to get more exercise, and to be more faithful in my spiritual life.
Meanwhile, this is the view my sweet niece has from her room with her new baby:
They will have a perfect view of the fireworks that will go off at midnight to celebrate the coming of the New Year.
Farewell Old Year
I’m ready for a new year. I’ve read your blogs, I can see that most of you are ready too, we are all ready for a new start, new hope, a better tomorrow.
2006 was a full year for us – a move to Kuwait, our son’s wedding to a wonderful young woman, and several trips back to take care of family business. My husband and I looked at each other and laughed – this year we haemmoraged money. We thank God we had the money we needed when we needed it, but the sheer volume of it, going out, stuns us. We hope this will be a better year, a more stable year, as we squirrel around, hiding our nuts for the winter of old age.
By the grace of God, my Mom is doing well, and thank all of you who have expressed concerns for her. She is grieving, she misses him so much, but none of us would choose for him to suffer one more minute on this earth when he could be in a better place. She spends her time right now surrounded by family and friends. We know she is going to have some bad moments, but she is amazingly resilient, and we see all sorts of signs that she will do well, once the grief abates.
Here is a photo of the photo I told you about earlier in the blog – Dad holding me up so I almost look like I am sitting on the mountain. Those old black and white photos were SO crisp; they enlarged without any serious loss of resolution.
I tell my friends this set the pace for my life of thrill seeking behavior . . .(just kidding, folks)
I wish you all a great day, tieing up loose ends, and a wonderful new year.
Beautiful MidWinter Day
Today was my Father’s Memorial service. My Mom chose to invite old friends, relatives, people who knew and loved my father on a boat ride. In the midst of a gloomy, dark wintery week, the morning dawned bright, clear and bright. The sun made everything crisp and clean, if not warm.
Our guests arrived, and the boat departed. People spoke of my Dad, and told stories about him – how he had influenced their lives, funny stories from his childhood, things they remembered about him. Then we shared a buffet lunch. The weather held. it was a beautiful day.
This is a photo of the freezing fog to the south, and a shadowy Mt. Rainier:
This is a photo of the Olympic Mountains, in the other direction from Mt. Rainier:
This is a photo of a boat on Lake Washington – I loved the RED against the neutrals:
After the boat ride, the family went back to my sister’s house, where I am staying, where we watched a hysterically funny movie, Kung Fu Hustle, and then went out for Thai food. As we were eating dinner, we got a call – my sister’s daughter had just delivered a baby boy!
We celebrated the full circle of life in one day – my father’s passing, a new life, the joy of being all together . . .it’s been a full day.
The Family Gathers
The flight from Amsterdam to Seattle runs around 10 hours – more or less depending on headwinds and tailwinds. Thanks to my almost-fully-flat seat, I was able to get about 6 good hours of sleep, just exactly what I needed to face immigration, customs, car rental and a drive through Seattle (four to five lanes of traffic in both directions) to a northern suburb.
It is COLD in Seattle – like the high is about one degree above freezing. It is also a damp cold that makes you shiver, and when the wind blows, it feels freezing. It is supposed to drop down below freezing tonight. I just hope it doesn’t snow again; driving can get problematic in the snow.
Grabbed a quick Pepperming Mocha (I don’t know why they don’t do these in Kuwait, but they tell me there would be no market. How do they know? Have they ever tried it?) and headed for my Mom’s. One sister, her husband, and Little Diamond were also waiting for me there, Little Diamond’s sister, Precious Diamond (sometimes called Pregnant Diamond; she is due to have a baby any minute!) and my other sister, her husband and son came by a little later, and we all had dinner together.
Mom has asked me to make a kind of photographic tribute to my Dad for the service on Saturday, so we got out all the photo albums, collections, boxes and had a lot of fun going through and remembering all the good times with Dad. I have a stack of photos from different times in his life, and will take them in to get them copied, enlarged, etc somewhere where they can do it FAST. Little Diamond will help with the graphic design and Fonts – she wrote the obituary for the paper and did a truly masterful job.
Thanks to the sleep I got on the plane, I was fairly fresh . . . well, I did fall asleep for a while after dinner, but rallied and got another couple hours of work done.
I am guessing I will get a good night’s sleep and dive in to all the work that needs to be done tomorrow. With everyone in the family taking a part, it should all work out smoothly. I found the photo of me sitting almost on top of the mountain. I will see if there is a way I can blog it.
Seaside Bride
My son and his wife married in April, on a beautiful white sand beach in Florida. Between trips back to be with my parents, I made a wedding quilt for them. This pattern is very difficult. All the pieces are curved, and putting them together requires focus and perserverance. Aaaarrrggghhhh!
The main fabric is not white – it is a white sand color, with seashells! All the colors are the colors from the beach on that beautiful wedding day. And it was finished just in time for Christmas, alhamdallah!
Chinese New Year’s
Today I am busy packing for my upcoming trip back for my father’s services, and taking down the Christmas decorations. Why now? I won’t be back until after New Year’s, and I don’t want to have to face it all then.
My son and his wife left late last night, and will be meeting up with me again later this week. As soon as they left, I stripped the bed, threw the sheets in the wash, started taking down the tree. My method of coping with grief is to stay busy.
But I also have another agenda. And I am going to tell you something that may change your life, as it changed mine. So if you are very very happy with your life right now, stop reading NOW. It’s a Locard Principle kind of thing – if you read this, it will leave a trace on you. OK. You’ve been warned.
I have a very good friend, an amazing woman. She was born in Hong Kong, into a wealthy family, and married an American. Not only was he American, but he was in the Navy, and he was a Mormon. So she had to learn three cultures at once – American, Navy/military, and a new religious culture. I tell her I am amazed that she survived; that is a lot of new information and new ways of doing things to do all at once.
Who knows why people become friends? All I know is that friends like this, you keep. From the beginning, we were like sisters. For all our differences, we never had a problem making conversation – we both liked investing, and we talked money, real-estate, stocks endlessly. And we had sons the same age who became – and still are – best friends.
We settled in the same area, and while I am living in Kuwait, she has visited my parents, called them, and frequently sat with my Dad while he was recouperating from his latest debility. She would take him flowers from her own garden, and magazines, and keep him distracted. She has been a blessing to us all.
Several years ago, in one of our conversations, she told me about Chinese New Year. When the New Year comes, your house must be sparkling clean, your bills must all be paid, and you must have money in your pocket, food in the refrigerator, and friends in the house. The way you start your New Year is the way your new year will be. So if you want order and prosperity, you have to be prepared.
I’m not Chinese. I’m not superstitious. And what if she’s right?
Every year, I have to have the tree down and everything put away by New Years. (Traditionally, the tree can stay up until the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th, when the Wise Men come to visit the Christ child, and should be taken down the next day. Especially when using live trees, you want to anyway, as the tree is dried out, all the needles are dropping and it becomes a fire hazard.)
What if the Chinese are right? I make sure all my bills are paid, and I pay a little extra on the mortgage. I make sure we have money in our pockets, and plans with friends that include good food.
I’m not Chinese. I am not superstitious. But why take chances?
From time to time I think about NOT having everything done by New Year’s, but if I try that, I get too nervous and end up having to do it all on the last day of the year. My friend says you do NOT want to start the New Year cleaning your house!
She told me. I just told you . . . are you starting to get nervous? (wicked gleam)
Christmas Eve Day
This is my favorite day of the year. I love Christmas Eve Day. We had a dinner last night, here, with good friends. We all worked together to get all the foods prepared, and as we sat at the table, I could see conversations going on, full of lively interest in all the candlelit faces – it was a beautiful moment. It was such a good mixture of people, the food was good (well, maybe I oversalted the rouladen a little) and plentiful, and in spite of the sorrows of the year, we are greatly blessed.
We have done all our shopping and wrapping, we will run some errands today – fun ones – and have lunch somewhere, it will be a fun, relaxed day. Tonight we will go to church, to welcome the birth of a tiny, vulnerable baby who made such a difference to so many lives here on earth.
So much pain! So much sorry! And one small ray of hope, that in our hearts we can truly love one another, and somehow this sad, troubled world can find the peace for which we all yearn.
Today is a day of pure anticipation, of hope, and belief that goodness matters, and that goodness is possible, and that we have redemption.
Our holidays of Christmas and Eid al Adha are joined this year. I wish all my brothers and sisters peace, joy, and the blessings of love and family for the coming year.
The image is from The Image of Christmas – The Nativity Represented in Art by Dr. Catherine Lawless December 2005. I chose it because Joseph and Mary and the baby look more like Semitics, instead of pale white Europeans. It is by the Sienese painter, Sano di Pietro, painted around 1445 and now in the Pinacoteca Vaticana.
Holiday Greetings from your Bank
Can anything else go wrong? Fortunately, I have a great sense of humor. But here is my worst nightmare come true.
Money is protection, right? Credit is money where carrying cash could be dangerous or inconvenient. Living overseas, we use our credit cards often, because it is easy to pay it off every month from the bank.
I am a little obsessive, I pay the bill, and then I check to insure that the bill has been paid. I saw my credit card register the recent payment, and then, a couple days later, to my astonishment, I saw the payment disappear. It was “reversed”.
Long story short, the credit card bank refused a BANK CHECK from my bank. The credit card bank said it came back saying “unable to find account” but the bank says the credit card bank failed to endorse it. Everyone agrees this is not my fault but meanwhile – I have a large check that is neither in my bank account nor has it paid off the credit card.
The credit card company says they submitted the check again, with their endorsement (they agree that they didn’t endorse it) and that the bank sent it back again. The bank says that didn’t happen, that the check was only submitted once. I believe some clerk somewhere made one little mistake and created this problem, but meanwhile, it is tying up MY money!
Meanwhile, snow storms hit Denver, and the credit card company has been unable to do any customer service for days, since all the banks, etc. were unmanned – people couldn’t get to their jobs. And now starts the Christmas holiday season when . . . the banks will be closed for at least three days.
And my father dies, and I need to quickly have an airline ticket, car rental, all the usual expenses of travelling.
Fortunately, we have stashes here and there we can draw from, and are not too worried about this. We know it will be resolved eventually, but I am insisting that the two banks work it out and make sure I don’t have to pay any charges on the amount that I PAID with a BANK CHECK. The bank calls daily to keep me up to date – up to date meaning that there is no progress.
Happy Holidays to you, Uncle Scrooge!
Two Photos
I have a photo of my Dad and me when I was only five or six months old. I am in my snow suit, with a big hat on my head. My dad has lifted me high on his right hand, high above his head, and I am oblivious to the danger, and out of my mind with delight – you know how babies are. I have a look on my face of delerious happiness. I am almost as high as the mountain in the background. I am – almost literally – on top of the world. My Dad is young and thin and strong. He was a great skiier in those days.
The second photo is of my Dad and my Mom, on a visit to Germany, only eight years ago. Dad was 80. They flew to Germany and rented a car to visit us, and to tour some of their old haunts from their own ten years of living in Heidelberg. He and Mom crawled up on the fountain at Deidesheim to stand behind the bronze costumes for a photo. Their faces are effused in smiles; they are still young in spirit if not in body, and having a wonderful time.
In recent years, my Dad was less and less able. His big project every week was to program the video recorder to record two tapes a week of prime time American television for my husband and I – we would watch it whenever we wanted and had time. He was known at the post office as the man who came in twice a week mailing these videotapes to us, and he loved it that he was so well known by the folks at the post office.
Dad died last night. He was 88. I’ll be going back for a short time. Dad, I know you’ve gone to a better place. Alhamdallah.
Rape in Kuwait
This is a very difficult post. Rape is a terrible subject. Coolfreak in his blog IheartKuwait wrote a heartbreaking post about a young woman raped recently in Kuwait, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
Rape has been the subject of several editorials in the Kuwait Times. Rape of children, abduction and rape of young women, abduction and rape of domestic servants, rape of domestics on the job site, abduction and rape of young men. . . rape is prominent DAILY in the crime column. Rape is epidemic in Kuwait, so common that people seem to think that there is nothing that can be done.
People can wring their hands. People can moan about how wrong it is. But what is being done for the victims of rape?
In California, volunteers put together rape crisis centers. At first, these centers were totally staffed and funded by volunteers and volunteer fund raising. The volunteers, with their own funds, established a 24 hour hotline, with an answering service, that rape victims could call and reach a rape counselor.
Counselors would accompany victims to the hospital, explain procedures, and explain the victim’s options. Counselors would help the victim on the long journey to feeling safe once again, and to feeling some remnant of control over their lives.
Members of the rape crisis centers created education programs, and worked with both police and hospitals to establish procedures working with rape victims. Police were counselled on how to work with the traumatized victims, and police worked with the crisis workers to create new, enforceable laws against the rapists. It was the beginning of the victim advocacy program that is now common in most western countries. Most law enforcement agencies now have paid staff to work with crime victims en route to criminal procedings against the “perp” and subsequent counselling. Victims can testify at parole hearings against probation.
Rape is an outrage – against the individual, and against the community. Rape is less about sex than about power and humiliation. Have you noticed when serial rapists are caught, they turn out to be pathetic losers? They carry a huge burden of inadequacy combined with feelings of entitlement. The most appropriate penalty is their exposure through the court systems, and imprisonment, with those who, like themselves, think like predators.
But we must do what we can do to help the victims, to provide them with counselling and resources to speed their recovery. To create strong laws which protect the community by keeping the predators off the streets. To create procedures where evidence can be gathered and stored, and DNA samples compared so that offenders can be charged, and tried, and convicted.
Hats off, by the way, to the young man Coolfreak with the courage to first blog about this outrage. I find his blog brave and creative and refreshing and amusing and stimulating. Check it out.
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