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Posts tagged ‘Elizabeth II’

Dec 25

41 Comments

A Christmas Hallelujah

For the remainder of this week, I am writing a series on specific Christmas songs and the memories they invoke for me. It’s unapologetically the holiday I celebrate, though I enjoy reading and hearing about others in the spectrum. Throughout the week, please leave your favorite songs from the daily genre in the comments. At the end of the week, I will draw a name, and the winner will receive a CD or download of one of the genres mentioned to enjoy next year (and I will up the ante with some Cootchie Hooch.) The more you comment, the greater your chance to win.

Where Her Majesty is today.

Our Christmas tradition. For nine years running, MTM and I have spent Christmas in Montreal. The same room at Hotel Gault. The same Christmas Eve gastronomy. The same Christmas Day routine.

(For those of you wondering which one of us has family in Canada, neither of us do. Our secret to a happy marriage is not spending family holidays with family.)

Christmas Day, we tune in to Radio Classique Montreal. They always broadcast a version of the complete Handel‘s Messiah. (To download the best one ever, follow this link to the Dunedin Consort’s Grammy-winning version.) Without Handel, Christmas is incomplete. The whole pomp of it has come to represent the day for me.

We listen to the Christmas speech by Queen Elizabeth II, recorded prior to her decampment to Sandringham House and broadcast on Christmas Day. Always, we order room service, sometimes breakfast and dinner, others breakfast only. Movies are always on the agenda. This Christmas, MTM is suffering through the entire BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. I take a bath or two. We nap, and we watch the snow fall. With all my being, I try to beat MTM at cards and Yahtzee.

We never leave the room. Nue de Noel is the only way to celebrate the day. :) If you’re around today, please share your Christmas traditions in the comments.

Merry Christmas, Dear Reader. May peace, happiness and prosperity follow you throughout the coming year and in life beyond.

Jul 8

21 Comments

Postcards from the Edge

When I was five or six, my next-door neighbor, Beth, went to Niagara Falls. I really don’t know why her family chose that destination for their vacation. Perhaps the grownups in the house wanted to see the thundering whitewater and throw pennies into the swirling cataract.

Or, maybe they thought the gaudy entertainments on offer would occupy the kids so they could get busy.

The whole time she was gone, my little girl imagination was occupied with Niagara Falls. What did it look like? Where was New York? Why was part of it in Canada and part in New York? Could she ride over the edge in a boat? How close could she get before she got wet? How did Niagara Falls happen? Would they have ice cream in such an exotic, faraway place?

Lucky for me, Beth sent me a postcard on that trip. I still have it. Both the American and Canadian falls strutted there, finally giving me an idea of what in the world a waterfall was. It still seemed like Beth was visiting another dimension.

In fact, for much of my growing years, that’s always what travel seemed to me: a disruption of the space/time continuum. Whenever someone sent me a postcard, I salivated over it like it came from outer space, like the image on the front couldn’t possibly be a place I could (or would) visit. I didn’t understand why the Grand Canyon looked like a gang of people dug it out with pick axes, or why Queen Elizabeth II lived in such a big house. Those scraps of paper with bland “We’re having so much fun!”s scrawled on the backs sent my poor childhood brain into a frenzy of wonder. I probably owe those people a debt of thanks for sparking an overactive interest in the far flung world beyond my front door.

Even though it’s old fashioned, I try to do the same thing today. Whenever I go somewhere, I send postcards to all the children in my life. They’re paper seeds with pictures, enticements to be inquisitive, to dream about people who are different, to embrace the joy that can come from getting lost in a foreign place. I hope a few of them bear the fruit of finding me shuffling to my mailbox someday and pulling out an old timey postcard from a place I inspired.

Live life, little ones.

Too Much is Just Enough: Inspiring Curiosity in Others

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