Christmas for Me

     Christmas is almost upon us. We all tend to view the Season a bit differently depending on where we are in life.
     As a child  I looked at this time of year as being full of the bright shiny things I dreamed about having for my very own. That new two wheeler or a pair of skates. Going to see Santa was a huge deal in my family. Our tree sat on a platform and there was a train that went around that tree. The platform had chimney paper tacked on the sides and the space under it and behind that chimney paper was where presents got stored so there was enough space to walk through the living room.
     As teenager I looked at Christmas as a time away from school. A time to be shared more with friends than family. For a short time I got to play assistant Santa for my youngest sister. Helping to buy and hang decorations and setting up the tree was a step toward being an adult. And family traditions changed too. Gone was the platform and trains and now the tree was much taller (for a while it was even aluminum) and actually went up before Christmas eve. I met my friends for Midnight Mass and we all trooped back to one house where the parents welcomed us freezing girls into their kitchen and plied us with hot chocolate and cookies. There was a lot of laughter. The joy now came because we were focused more on others than ourselves.
     I got older. My friends became parents and we all got to that point in life where staying up late to kick up our heels became the exception rather than the rule in our lives. We also began to lose those closest to us. People moved and contact was lost. A classmate passes away and a parent dies far too soon. Keeping Christmas became something done for the children that came into my life. I decorated and shopped and wrapped presents and tried to make sure that those I loved had a good Christmas.
     Now my nieces have children of their own ranging from seventeen years to two months old. There is less decorating than there used to be and we are back to a short tree that sits atop a cabinet. Less lights are strung than in the past and there are fewer decorations gracing the rooms of my home. When you're in your sixties getting out that second or third huge container full of decorations just doesn't seem quite as necessary as it used to.
      I do my shopping online and my siblings and I stopped exchanging gifts because we've gotten to that point in our lives where if we want something we buy it for ourselves. We don't have the patience or the budgets that we used to. We still buy for the children in the family but the newest member is too young to know what is happening and the others no longer believe in Santa. A bit of the luster has gone off the day.
     Midnight Mass is a thing of the past too. My sister and brother-in-law and I have friends in on Christmas Eve and we eat delicious food and chat and catch up on each others lives. Come Christmas day we'll travel to my youngest sister's home and we'll all be together in one place. That is the best part of Christmas now. One niece with her husband and daughter will be there from Massachusetts and her brother will drive up from Virginia. My oldest niece and her three will be there too and most of the people I love most in the world will be together under the same roof. That is the greatest present.
     I will share time with my friends. The women who have been part of my life for decades that I'll sit down and share a long chat with, be it face to face, by phone or by video chat and the new friends that I spend a part of every day with in the virtual world online. All the lovely, strong, vibrant females that bring joy to my life simply by being a part of it.
      So Christmas has changed for me. It changes for each and every one of us as we grow older. If Christmas is not your holiday I'm sure there is another day or occasion during the year that means as much to you. Whatever that day or occasion is I hope you enjoy it and treasure it as much as I do Christmas.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

A Few Thoughts on Guns and Loss

     A score of children were lost on Friday to a young man, not much more than a child himself, who obviously had problems. He took his own life after ending the lives of twenty seven others. There is so much to blame that you don't know where to start. Access to firearms, check, access to the technology that can turn a gun into a means of massacre, check, lack of access to a mental health system that could have helped the gunman, check.
     There is no solution that will easily solve these problems. Funding is needed to make access to weapons more difficult. Funding is needed to provide care to those people who could commit such crimes. And where do we get that funding?
     We know that the NRA spends a huge amount of money every year lobbying to protect the rights of gun owners. Maybe a percentage of their budget should be appropriated to safeguard the public. I've seen figures from $200 million to more than $300 million as their budget for 2010. That is just the budget for one year. Imagine how much better our mental health system might be with that influx of funds. It wouldn't cure the problem bit it sure could help.
     Now this part is all me...based on what I know of the way things work. Make gun owners carry insurance. You carry insurance for your cars and your homes and your boats. What if every registered gun owner had to buy a policy that would cover them for use of their firearms. The law in most states makes sure you have a policy in order to drive a car in case something goes wrong. Well what if something goes wrong with a gun? Make sure there is a pool paid into for the damages that are inflicted to the families and community when these horrors happen. Because we all know it will happen again. It has happened time after time and public grief and the call for action will not keep it from happening again.  
     If responsible gun owners were going to have to pay for the losses caused by the few they may force better rules to be in place. Rules like mandatory trigger locks and the banning of military style weapons  sales to individuals. They would turn to the NRA and demand action be taken. There are safety labels galore on a ladder or an extension cord but I've never seen a warning label on a gun.
     It is true that people kill people. but people with guns can kill a lot of people in a very short period of time. People that might be six or sixty. Lets make it harder for this to happen. Please.