Dear Mom.
It’s Christmastime andI think I’m going crazy.
I’m getting ready to hang the kids’
stockings and it’s been murder
decorating the tree so tonight I’m gonna have to knock myself out
to finish up before I go to bed. I have a sharp knife
to trim the extra branches and a loaded gun
of hot glue for the ornaments. I’d like to end it all
by around 10pm before I go on a rampage
cleaning the kitchen. I’m sure you’re just as sick
of the holidays like me and will shoot me
a return email in the New Year!
Meanwhile, tonight I need to be committed
even if it kills me.
Merry Christmas!
Your son.
All posts by Don Miller
Joining ranks, giving thanks, and better things.
I hit the jackpot.
Double nickels.
At 4:21pm this Thanksgiving day, I officially join the ranks of a population I’ve served for the last two years at a job I love. It’s a cohort which has inspired more stories on my website than any other life experience to date. And I’ve had my share.
Butch (my dog and resolute Facebook icon) shares my birthday, entering his third year on four legs. Our “Thanksbirthday” celebration (I tried “Birthgiving,” but it sounds like a bloody placenta–which is kinda gross–though I understand there are some cultural traditions known for eating one now and then, and if I don’t stop here, I’m gonna barf a pumpkin pie) will be with family and friends…and festivities most will enjoy and appreciate this holiday.
Most.
Across town, generous Thanksgiving workers will be sweating the stuffing that matters. St. Thomas More Catholic Community is carrying out their part of a huge mutual tradition we began together 20 years ago delivering meals to 800 senior citizens who have neither family, food nor invitations elsewhere. Casa de Luz is feeding 600 families, ministering deep within the district of the desolate Naked City. Indeed, across America, prompted by the abundances in their ovens and on their tables, kitchen cooks will find themselves inspired to extend spontaneous invitations to strangers and almost forgotten others, and will send them off with leftovers and homespun experiences most never had and many never will again.
Every breath I take is a moment growing older. I hyperventilated once in February and lost count but I still calculate 55 years breathing and I am more alive today than ever before. This past year, some have lost that gift and the many who remain will spend some part of the day and much of the ensuing season lost in fond memories and teardrops that will decorate their brittle little Christmas trees. Older now, I find life is a lot less a celebration of another year or another holiday than the simple thankfulness that I’m still very much alive to write this short story for your Thanksgiving day.
Writing stories for people is my passion. Today, this one marks the 150th on my website. And as usual, I’ll be posting shorter ones on Facebook for followers to catch a laugh or two. I will also be thinking about my dad and others who will enjoy breathless feasts in a faraway place somewhere at a table which will soon hold a place setting bearing my name, and indeed, will take my own breath away and not make me fat.
But while I’m alive, I write my stories and breathe life into those around me just as are those servants across town at this very moment.
Stories sparked by inspirations are gifts to those who need reminded that someone cares. The season for making memories is now in high gear. For me, it’s not because it’s our birthday, my official entry into senior citizenship and the dreamy discounts at restaurants, nor is it because it’s Thanksgiving. It’s because I’m not yet a corpse. And that’s pretty remarkable if you ask me considering the life I once lived.
So, as the parishioners of St. Thomas, the servants at Casa de Luz, and the many quiet summons from early morning cooks in country kitchens everywhere, I will extend an invitation to the uninvited, hoping to breathe life into someone and to write a truly unforgettable chapter in their lonely life.
Indeed, bigger things are happening in our world today. Much bigger than birthdays or birds on dinner tables. Yet in the midst of the daily news, the best human kindness begins with an invitation and a pen to author generosity in the life of someone who really needs some. That’s how love works.
I tell my stories using words as tools to warm breathing hearts.
Yours can easily be with a place setting a hot meal.
Happy Thanksbirthday to my dog and me, and happy human kindness to all who still have breath and life and a hot meal to share with someone.
LMSM, Don
Tragedy begins at home.
Paris is burning, but Megan is on the bus home from her second job at 2am and hardly knows today’s world news. She’s thinking about what she can make for three school lunches that need to head out the door in a few hours, how she will pay her overdue rent and if she can get just three hour’s sleep before leaving to her other job.
Important things are happening in the world tonight.
I know John has been up most of the night not because he’s a night owl, but because he’s an 81 year old vet whose gas was shut off last week. He’s cold and can’t get a warm meal until next week sometime when his $700 check arrives to pay the bill, the rent and a ride to the food bank to pick up leftovers others have donated.
Important things are happening in the world tonight.
And here I sit in shiny black shoes and a borrowed suit at 430am at my office, because I know they’re awake and they are the important things and because I think I’ve crafted a plan that might help their tragedies.
Important things are happening in the world tonight.
I’m always in the office at this time of the morning. It’s quiet and I’m alone to think about these important things. I’m not generally wearing a suit and shiny shoes, but tonight I will be at an event with over 400 people who need to hear about what’s important.
I honestly don’t care about winning, but I do care about the possibilities it may bring to our little non-profit in old Henderson and how, if translated correctly, some important people tonight might pause and hear about people like Megan and John and 10,000 more like them. And maybe they’ll give a dollar to help.
Our agency was nominated for Outstanding Non-Profit of 2015 and the winner will be announced this evening over a gourmet dinner in a room full of suits at a luxury hotel. Win or lose, all nominees will win something for the people they serve every day. A voice.
People don’t like sad stories, but sad stories can move the right people to do the right things to help make fewer sad stories. I believe that’s important.
So I’ll sit there for a few hours, maybe win, likely not, but I’ll have the captive ears of a privileged few who need to know the important things that are happening in this world, right here at home.
And taking off this suit and uncomfortable shoes, I can sleep well tonight, knowing I went to bat for the tragedies which begin at home and end with charity.
LMSM, Don
the uninvited.
Uninvited, he slipped in. Undetected.
It could have been any unguarded entry but at this point, it didn’t matter.
He was unwelcome.
But he was insidious.
Scanning the surroundings, looking for place and opportunity, he found both.
It was there he began his evil conversion, enveloping others, a serial killer, slow enough to go without notice, fast enough to do the job.
His host: clueless.
His strategy was brilliant. He was a fast mover, acting like he owned the place, which indeed, given time, he would.
All seemed to be okay for a while, but he would soon become the most feared and hated guest at the party, and far from the life of it.
The silent intruder gained momentum and his impact was first noticed on that Friday morning by a man in white who recognized him and called out his name for the first time to my father, who was told this party would soon be over.
“Cancer.”
This coming Friday, Mike Miller will have been gone from our family for his first year. Ultimately, the invader was unsuccessful, for dad’s legend and legacy are still very much alive and celebrating at a party which never ends and where every guest was invited.
Life means so much.
Accept the invitation.
Invisible.
I’m not online, in a tweet or on a post in Facebook.
I’m not at the store, don’t shop from home or at the mall at all.
I’m not on the road, in the car, catching a bus or ride to anywhere.
I’m not at work, on the job, working hard or hard at work.
I’m not at a movie, out to eat, at a friend’s or having a drink.
I’m not around and nobody is looking.
I am invisible.
I haven’t much time, but enough for you.
Rich in history and stories true.
I haven’t much money, but I’ll give to you
A rich adventure before I’m through
If you seek me out with time to spend
To make me visible before the end.
And you might find that I am priceless.
Enrich your life. Make a new friend and hear their story.
Friday August 21st is National Senior Citizen’s Day.
checkered flag
Big drops,
falling,
landing.
Faster now,
they race
for
standing.
And driving down
in revving sheets
in bouncing frenzy
each competes,
then
I
lost
count
when the river won.
So I sat
and watched
the cool summer rain
applaud the earth.
it’s a coupled world
It’s a table for two or a couple of drinks, with pairs everywhere, sometimes it stinks.
Always plural or double, left unjoined in a nuptial, in a bubble, being single can be trouble.
There’s two-fers and deuces, running short on excuses, rarely place for the Ace, no space.
Twosomes are winsome and duos harmonious, it’s teams making sport while one comes up short, erroneous.
Talk on the phone? You can’t do it alone. Pairs are a duo, never uno but deux, oh the groan.
Lovers make love, pairs of gloves not one glove, to cuddle or spoon is once a blue moon, no cocoon.
Twos can schmooze mixing booze and at parties they mingle but the one’s in the corner with the blues, very single, no tingle.
But pity them not, for they still have a lot, Though they ain’t tied the knot, it might not be sought and alone isn’t lonely. It’s not.
empathy
I would have placed you masked on a dark journey to understand the perils of blindness.
I would stuff your ears and send you into a noisy world to understand the piercing silence of the deaf.
I would strap you to a wheelchair to navigate a busy street to know the traps of the disabled.
But to understand the plight of the truly homeless, hungry and impoverished,
I would simply leave you alone and invisible to die in a blind, deaf, immobilized world
where nobody sees you, hears you or comes to your aid.
Happy 76th Birthday, Mom!
I first encountered this poem by Jenny Joseph 30 years ago when I was in college.
And while 99% of all the stories I publish here on my website are my creations, original and true, occasionally I will pass on something like this one that changed my life in some way.
Today, I present to you a special gift to my mother on her 76th birthday.
Warning: When I am old I shall wear purple
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
-Jenny Joseph
Almost buried treasures
Almost Buried Treasures.
24,000,000,000 computers in the world and not a single one will ever carry the story of Lois, the 91 year-old award-winning poet, prairie woman, and mother of ten. The ranch is gone, the children are gone and her binders of rhymes on the living room shelf will soon be tossed in the dumpster behind her studio apartment, as forgotten as the unclaimed plastic box of her soon to be cremated remains.
Underneath, people, like icebergs on a slow melt, aren’t always as they seem. White and pale for years on the surface, so many layers of translucent centuries-buried colors are concealed, rarely seen by mankind. Like pages of a novel dissolved away by a surf of disinterested waves, the iceberg and its colors will soon be no more. And no one will know any different.
I had done her a small favor.
Lois had lost most of her sight in her old age and had tired of pouring watery canned julienne carrots over her pasta, mistaking it for a can of sauce. Her tiny food pantry was mostly proceeds from food banks and she could no longer tell the difference between a label of carrots over one of marinara. So I’d printed 48 point Helvetica Bold stickers and arrived to organize her pantry so she could now tell the difference with a flashlight and the large magnifying glass she kept within easy grasp at the window sill.
She offered me toast and marmalade as her thank you which I declined mostly because I didn’t have the heart nor stomach to eat what she believed she was serving me. Mental note for a return visit: refrigerator labels.
While I needed to soon return to my regular post at the senior center outreach where I’d left a note “Back in 45 minutes,” I didn’t know then it would be at least two hours before my return.
A slow stroll behind her walker toward the sofa for a brief chat before leaving was almost unbearable until I noticed the many white notebooks of poetry on the shelf, labeled Olivia, Jenny, Christopher and names of several others. Inquiring, she invited me to take ‘Christopher’ home for the weekend knowing I was also a writer though somewhat less a poet. “I think you’ll like that one, Don.”
She went on to explain she’d written poetry as a young woman and had been published more times than she could remember. Many of her poems had become greeting cards for Hallmark and before that, smaller card companies across the nation and abroad. The bookends bracing her impressive collection were various trophies for writing and poetry whose engravings had long since blurred and tarnished over the many years since she lost her sight. She could only rub to read them, which she’d done probably thousands of times since.
We talked of many things, including her ten children for which each of the white binders were named, her little farmhouse on the prairie, the brevity of her fame before losing her sight, and her enduring fondness for capturing inspirational moments in recitals of prose. So immersed in her colorful stories of the past, I looked at my phone to see time had already come and gone to return to my post. We said our goodbyes and it was my Friday, so I took Christopher and headed back to the office to pack up and enjoy my three day weekend.
The saddest story in all of history will always be the one which went undiscovered and untold to no person nor pen and was buried alive eternally in an old soul.
These were the words that came to me while I sat on my bed and had coffee with Christopher for three hours that Friday evening. Reading the poems and prose, I didn’t cry once, but a half dozen times or more. The richness and antiquity of the words of that 91 year old prairie woman melted my soul, imagining that someday, with no one to claim them, the orphaned binders Christopher, Olivia, Jenny and the seven others might end up in a dirty dumpster and a landfill, and probably very soon.
It was the weekend, and the days when I take care of my own aged mother .
Though 15 years Lois’ junior, I wondered what stories I will have missed of my own family history if I hadn’t taken the opportunity that weekend to chat with Mom on her on the sofa that rainy afternoon. I primed the pump with a few nostalgic recollections of our family and we had a few laughs as she played solitaire on her Kindle. I could tell I’d begun brewing something more. Her game slowed as small oral vignettes of her own family history emerged piecemeal and at random until she was telling me complete stories of times growing up in Storm Lake, Iowa on the farm. Each story she told seemed to revive another she’d perhaps never told another. The kids she played with in the church across the street and a scolding from the pastor for playing hide and seek among the pews on a Saturday afternoon. The memories of her parents and aunts and great grandparents were flowing in alternating waves of sadness and laughter. Though they weren’t poetic, they were the stories of her life, and by distant relation, those I were valuing as my own.
Each of us has a story to tell. But in these electronic days, few take the time to listen in the way stories should be told. Indeed, storytelling, the old fashioned way that families passed on their histories, values and expectations to the next generation, is a lost art. And out of 24,000,000,000 computers in the world, only a handful will find it important to pass on the stories of people who will otherwise soon be buried with them undiscovered and untold forever.
It was Monday morning again, and my day to return to the low income senior center where my outreach first introduced me to Lois and her shelf of many children. With Christopher tucked neatly under my arm, and a handful of refrigerator labels, I closed up and affixed a note on the door.
“Back in 2 hours.”
There are so many older Americans whose fame was never counted by measures of celebrity, celluloid screens or column inches in fabulous magazines, but whose life stories are noteworthy nonetheless. And I have found that the aged ones who never sought audiences for them, sometimes have the most engaging stories to tell..
Especially if you will take the time, ask, sit back with a coffee, marmalade toast, and listen.
And bring your computer.