What would you do if you knew this was the last time that everything would be what it was.?  Would you choose your clothes differently?  Would you change your location?  Would you weigh your words carefully?  Would you savor each moment and imprint it in your memory because one day this memory would be all that you had?

What if the last time you visited your family was the final time in fact you would ever see them again?  Would you have done different things knowing it was the last visit?  Would you have paid attention more closely to what each one said?  Would you have said the things you felt be they love notes or explanations why…?

Had you known that the birthday party a few years back was the last time your two children would talk to each other, might you have done something differently?  Could you have changed what happened after?

When those words flew out of your mouth, had you known they would have caused a fissure that turned into a wound that would not heal (although it has been scabbed over only to be hurt another time)– would you have chosen your words differently?  Might you have chosen silence instead?

Because today is the only day we have, this moment is the only moment that is real and look it’s already gone.  How can you make something so fleeting stay?

Pay attention because you just never know when you’re speaking the last words, making the last love, or leaving never to return.

Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow has been in the news a lot recently because he prays before games.  This got me to thinking seriously about something that I’ve been mulling for a while now – what should one pray for? What do I pray for? Why does it bother me when I see what to me are frivolous (or offensive) prayers? 

Here goes a few of the things I’ve mulled about prayer.

Mull # 1 – Faith and the slow cooker
The most recent occasion for me to mull about prayer was when a friend was telling me about finding a slow cooker at Morgie’s* for $14.99.  She had seen a slow cooker she wanted at Targets but it was too expensive.  She prayed about it.  Then one day “faith told me to go to Morgie’s” and there it was.

Hmmm.  Since she goes to Morgie’s on a regular basis, I don’t believe it was faith that led her to the slow cooker.  I think she just wanted to shop…yet again.

Mull #2-20 – Prayer circles before performances

There are any number of crude and rude entertainers who pray with their crew before performing.  As if God is really interested in helping someone do the best violent, sexist, and/or vulgar performance possible.  I'm not even sure that God is interested in the most sublime performances.  I sorta think you're given the talent, you nurture the gift, and you perform.  Although I must admit that sometimes the stars align and music can feel transcendant.

Mull # 21+++ - Prayers to hit the lottery

Hitting the lottery is a want not a need and nobody deserves to hit it more than anyone else.  (Including me!)

Mull # 100 – Prayers to win a football (or any other) game

Doesn’t God have more important things to do than to help anyone win a game?  A game!  I don’t even think God cares football (or hockey or basketball or figure skating or any of our human distractions).

I figure God has any number of true prayers to answer and big picture items to ponder – like whether it’s time to be done with this planet and humans in general.

To me it makes sense to: thank God and recognize the blessings already present in your life and then, perhaps, to pray for:

 Ashmont Market and Liquor Store, a short five-minute (if that) walk from my house, is being sold. I first learned of this from my husband, who saw one of the Georgeoulopoulos brothers showing the ropes to a non-family guy – [presumably the new owner).

Whine.  I like it just the way it is.

After returning from my Christmas vacation, I ran up there for something (they have a little bit of everything and always have what you’ve run out of to cook some new concoction) and asked one of the brothers if the rumors was true.

He said, “Yes.”  (man of few words)

I said, “Ohhhhh.  I’m gonna miss you.”

He said, “ Yeah” or something like that.

I said, “It won’t be the same.”

He didn’t say anything just had a brief look of something like sympathy for my feelings cross his face.

“I hope the new owners keep it like you run it.”

“They seem nice,” he offered.

I fear the change in ownership.

The Georgoulopoulos family have been dependable, stalwart, friendly if not effusive (at least not to be but then I’m a newcomer to the neighborhood only having lived here for 8 years.)

 
I first noticed the store while waiting at the bus stop in front of another small neighborhood store.  There were always   cops stopping  by for the deli sandwiches in the back of the store.  I went back to investigate and discovered they also sold meat.  This was where I discovered some of the juiciest pork chops I’ve ever seen.  I hadn’t cooked pork chops in more than 10 years until I was tempted by the looks of theirs and bought two for dinner.

Ashmont Market and Liquors  been a neighborhood fixture for 30 years.  They gave the facade and signage  of the store a much-needed and attractive facelift a couple years back. Brothers Harry, John, and Peter Georgoulopoulos run it. (Two of them are twins but I don't know which two.)  I believe they inherited from the father who passed a year or so ago. 

Observation:   I sometimes loathe change.  (Who me?  Yes, me!)

Realization: I am assuming that the change in ownership would be a change for the worse; it could be a change for the better.

Decision:  I’ll be optimistic.  I mean it would only be in the new owner’s best interest to keep/maintain what has made the store work for the neighborhood.

Right?

Here's hoping. 

This could be the year
This could be the year, you know. 
Right now, you can believe and/or decide that this is the year that: 

• You find the love of your life (or renew the one you have).
• You get the job you want (or a job that will do).
• You sign that book/music/movie contract.
• You snare that scholarship.
• You forgive the person you need to forgive.
• You forget the things that aren’t important.
• You start that exercise program that you know you should.
• You welcome that new baby who represents new hope for the world.
• You lay down you weapons.
• You              (fill in the blank)

This could be it, you know.  This year.

Oh the delightful possibilities of a brand, spankling, New Year.

Yeah, I’m corny.  I admit it. Especially this time of year.  I am jingling all the way this holiday season.

I adore the Christmas lights and holiday carols.  I called them holiday carols because in addition to Christmas carols, I love and sing Seven Principles, the Kwanzaa song (lyrics & music by Bernice Reagon, recorded by  Sweet Honey in the Rock*) as well as winter carols like Frosty the Snowman (lyrics & music by Steve Nelson & Jack Rollins) and Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (lyrics by Sammy Cahn, music by Jule Styne).

I love carols so much, I actually joined the throng at Pops Goes the Holiday Season on December 3^rd in the World Record Breaking Caroling Attempt at Christian Science Plaza in Boston.

I dig Christmas movies, old and new.  I watch these every year. My favorites are:

• It’s A Wonderful Life (no surprise there)

• A Christmas Story (also no surprise)

• Home for the Holidays

• Scrooge (various versions including the one with Bill Murray and they all still spook me a little bit)

• Grand Canyon (not a holiday movie but has the holiday spirit in it to me)

I treasure Christmas accoutrements - trees, ornaments, wreaths, garlands, holly, poinsettias, wrapping paper, Santa hats and reindeer antler headbands and car ornaments.  I have a red velvet lounge set that I wear every Christmas morning.  Call me Mrs. Santa if you want to…I am.  Having granddaughters and a (step) grandson give me license to Mrs. Santa-it-up.

I love-love-love holiday shows particularly sharing the experience with my fellow audience members and becoming of one positive mind at least for a brief time. This season, I’ve seen:

• Black Nativity (41^st annual production put on by the National Center of Afro-American Artists) in collaboration with Roxbury Community College) – It lifts my spirit and celebrates the birth of Jesus and the struggle of Mary and Joseph to find a place for her to give birth.
• Anthony Williams' Urban Nutcracker by Ballet Rox – An exuberant production!
• Holiday Pops – A time-honored Boston tradition featuring the Tanglewood Festival  Chorus. 
• The Christmas Revels – This year the songs and skits were mostly French (with a couple of numbers from the Middle East) and I didn’t know any of the music (although the music was provided) but most of the audience seemed to.  I was still able to experience the glow emanating from the exuberant performances and the enthralled audience. (I preferred Christmas Revels in 2009 which featured traditional American music, including Appalachian folks songs and African-American spirituals because this music was more familiar to me and I could more easily participate.)  

Next year, I hope to have my granddaughter with me in Boston so I can share these holiday shows with her and take her to her first high tea.  Meanwhile, I look forward to Christmas Day with family and friends.  We’ll cook, share stories, laughter, and delectable food (especially cakes, pies & cookies).  We’ll exchange gifts (tokens of our esteem according to our means), we’ll sing carols (on key and off), we’ll go to church (Jesus is the reason for the season after all), and we'll give thanks that we are all together once again and anticipating a great new year!

Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa, Happy Hannukah, and a Feisty Festivus (for the rest of us).
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This Christmas

(*From the album,  B’lieve I’ll Run On See What’s the End’s  Gonna Be.)

I read Two Thousand Seasons years ago and this quote has always stuck in my mind.  In the novel, this philosophy and practice of reciprocity is credited as a seminal Pan-African belief system by the Ghanaian author, Armah.  The breaking of this practice when the Europeans arrived then plunged the African people into a period of utter devastation that will last for 2000 seasons.

This explanation of reciprocity has always spoken deeply to me because I believe in and like to count on reciprocity.  Through helping and supporting others, I believe I am building an account that I can withdraw from when I need help or support.   

The fact is that the circle of reciprocity has to start somewhere.  Someone has to give first.  Someone has to keep account or the giving.  You want to be able to go to the people you’ve given to and know that you can get back when you are in need.  You want to be able to give to people who’ve given to you when  hey are in need.

Reciprocity doesn’t often happen as an equal exchange or in a straight line.  Rather, it happens that you give to someone in your sphere and they return the gift to someone else within your (or a different) sphere.  The sphere might be as small as your family or as large as the world.  Generosity will be given to you, sometimes from people you don’t even know.

I often wish for straight lines.  They are neater and speedier.   It’s easier to keep account.  In my time of need, I find it difficult not to keep account when the account I thought I’d build within a certain sphere is depleted of resources.  However, this is not often how life works so I am having a renewed lesson that generosity, payback and/or support won’t always come from people you expect or even people you know, but it will come.  Your job is to be generous when called on to do so.

I have realized, however, that being generous and showing support doesn’t require one to keep giving to specific people if they’ve proven themselves non-reciprocal or appreciative. (I’m all about showing appreciation.)

I must confess, I wrote another post about support and reciprocity that was a raging, get-people-told rant.  I drafted it late lone sleepless night and sent it to my husband and asked him what he thought.  He made a good argument for my not posting it.  In fact, writing it, expressing my hurt and dismay actually dampened those feelings.  So let’s give a round of applause to Tessil for keeping me from doing the wrong thing (even though it would have felt so devilishly delicious to have posted it).

As a blog friend from Australia wrote me recently “remember to take your own advice and Believe!”

I will.  I am.

As my Mom often says,  “One monkey don’t stop no show.”

“Don’t change a hair for me, not if you care for me.”*

When you live away from your family-of-birth and only get home to see them once a year or so, you hope that all the things you love about them will be the same when you see them.  This was my wish for my Thanksgiving visit home.

You want the loud laughter and the recounting of family stories, even the ones that feature you.  You hope  the cousins will sing songs from the church you grew up in and imitate the singers and the classic shouts of particular church members who you remember so fondly.

You want your Mom to be as fabulously beautiful and appointed as she has always been.  You want your brother to be the stalwart, kind and dependable man you treasure.  You want your sister to be as bossy and directive as she has always been. (Everybody thinks she is the older sister because of her bossiness.)

You want your younger aunts (who are more like cousins) to be as funny, boisterous and loud as they’ve been your entire life.  You want your jewel of an aunt to have on another of her fabulous sparkly accoutrements – hat, jewelry, sweater and or wig.

Don’t change a hair for me not if you care for me.

The core of these things remain, I’m happy to report.  But change, change happens, of course.   It is impossible to stop.  Some of the changes are incremental and more visible because you don’t see them daily:

• The physical change of a niece growing into a thoughtful and accomplished teen in a young woman’s body who drives now!  
• The slight bend of your still fabulous and fashionable mother’s shoulders and twisting of her fingers by arthritis.

• The graying hair among those family members who do not heed the clarion call of Miss Clairol or Dark ‘n’ Lovely.

Other changes are dramatic:

• The change in bodies from lithe and lovely to bloated and leaden.
• The transformative weight loss of the heavy brother into a sleek, stylish man.
• The continued signals of mental illness that is devouring the personality of the once brightest light in the cousins.
• The calamity of divorce breaks apart the bonds of a couple and thrusts their children into a landscape of ever-changing allegiances and alliances confusing to everyone.
• The death of a matriarch and a beloved uncle who strong personalities, opinions and ability to bring everyone together are lost.

There are positive changes:

• New & rediscovered love and marriages, which the family expands to embrace.
• Cousins doing well, traveling well beyond the original geographic strictures of the family and doing good work.
• The quiet ones now raising their voices to be heard (and having something to say).

It is good to come home to the people who made me, who are the foundation upon which all that I am was built.  In many ways, they have changed little – I am comforted by this.  In other ways they (and () have changed so much.  Older, frailer, but mostly unbowed.

We are family with our long memories, unrelenting love, highly visible but unspoken fissures and secrets, legendary lore, and grand gossip. 

Don’t change, don’t change, promise we won’t  change before we meet again.

(*Lyric from "My Funny Valentine" by Lorenz Hart)

I am feeling appreciative that I’m an appreciator of the bounty of this world.

I appreciate the arts events that I’ve participated in over the past 2 years courtesy of my gig as marketing consultant with Door2Door to the Arts by SCM.  In this capacity, I put together seasonal calendars of arts events.  This fall I’ve attended:  a BSO rehearsal with YoYo Ma, a trip to the Museum of Russian Icons, a concert by the Cantata Singers, a talk by Malcolm Rogers, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,  and  Candide at the Huntington Theatre.  I look forward to attending Martinis and Merriment at the Jewish Community Center in Newton tonight and Singers’ Night at Berklee College of Music on Tuesday.  (I am a culture vulture in case you can’t tell.)

I appreciate other arts events like Roxbury Open Studios and a talk by author Walter Moseley at Roxbury Community College recently.

I appreciate living in Dorchester.  Last night it was my pleasure to attend the latest talk of the Dorchester Speaker’s Forum:  50 Years Later: Jane Jacobs and The Death and Life of Great American Cities.  More than 125 people gathered at All Saints Church on a crisp Friday evening and listened to the wisdom of the panelists:  Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, Glenna Long (author of Genius of Common Sense: The Story of Janet Jacobs and “The Death & Life of Great American Cities”, M. David Lee, a partner of the architecture and planning firm, Stull and Lee; and Frank Keefe, a Boston developer, who served as moderator.   It was a convivial evening that featured rich discussion during which the panelists, especially Gov. Dukakis, shared the hard-won battle to prevent what Boston might have been if the continued path of so-called urban renewal that decimated the West End of the city had been allowed across the city.  (While some skirmishes were lost, the battle was won.)

I appreciate facilitating two successful workshops in the past 2 weeks.  The first was “Selling Yourself on Paper” (part 1 of Pick-Up Your Power and Use It to Get a Job). The second was “Discovering Who I Am: Guiding Young Children as They Learn about Their Racial/Ethnic Identity” at the A View from All Sides Conference in Marlboro.  I appreciate Parent University of the Boston Public Schools and Children’s Trust Fund respectively for selecting me to do these workshops. 

I appreciate the deliciousness of the fall soups that I’ve begun making in earnest.  Nothing is more soul-warming that homemade soup on a crisp fall day!

I appreciate an unexpected payment for work done voluntarily.  (It came right on time.)

I appreciate receiving a Roxbury Pudding Stone Award at the Heart of the Hub fundraising event from Discover Roxbury.  I stepped down from the board after many years of service in June 2011.  It is affirming to get an award from people who know you!  (Thanks, again, everyone.)  And I appreciate that DR has taken over Roxbury Open Studios, an event I founded, thereby ensuring its continuance.

I appreciate the people who’ve ordered copies of two my two booklets, Pushing Through Shyness: Networking Tips when you’re shy, slow-to-warm-up, inexperienced or just don’t feel like you belong (a mouthful if ever there was one) and Handling Rejection.*  Thank you.

I appreciate having many irons in the fire and the possibility of an additional iron or two because of 1 recent and another upcoming interview.

I appreciate holding on to love despite a recent rocky time in my marriage.

I appreciate:

• the comics who provide laughter.
• the writers who write so many incredible novels, stories, memoirs & poetry that I will never lack for material to read.
• the musicians who provide music to dance to, groove to, make love to...
• food, glorious food. 
• my life despite occasional turmoil and uncertainty. 

I appreciate my faith and my doubts.

I truly appreciate my family:

• the children I birthed,
• the granddaughter I adore,
• the husband I found (and who found me),
• my mother who is unfailing in her love, and
• my sister, brother and the rest of everyone in St. Louis who know me from the beginnings of my journey.

And I appreciate you, my readers, some known to me, others unknown to me.

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*Copies of my booklets can be ordered via my website: under the putlications button.

ON SALE NOW:

Pushing Through Shyness: Networking Tips when you’re shy, slow-to-warm-up, inexperienced or don’t feel you belong by Candelaria N. Silva

Networking can be useful or a waste of time.  It can be painful or it can be fulfilling.  It can be drudgery or it can be delightful. You hold the key to what the experience is for you. 

Pushing Through Shyness gives you tips and tools to work a networking event to your advantage.  It is useful for novices and for professionals.  The 9-page booklet is illustrated and printed on high-quality stock and would make a practical motivational tool or gift.  An order form is attached for your convenience.

Candelaria is also available to do a workshop on this topic.  Contact her if interested. 

(Also available for purchase is  Handling Rejection, an inspirational essay.  Watch for upcoming booklets including How to Design and Facilitate a Workshop and Real Issues to Discuss with Teenagers about Sex.)

Thank you for your support.

 
Order Form for Pushing Through Shyness

Please note, there is a PayPal link on my website (candelariasilva.com) under the publications heading.

If you like this post, you might also like:

Handling Rejection: An Inspirational Essay by Candelaria N. Silva

Were you making an observation or lodging a complaint?

Are you noticing or criticizing?

Am I informing or bragging?

Am I sharing or lauding?

Does silence speak volumes or are the meanings so much background noise?

Where did the music go? 

Does the music go down when life gets too loud?

It's one thing or another.  Either/or, neither/nor, or both/and!

It depends... on our history.
It depends....on the state of our relationship.
It depends...on my mood at the moment.
It depends...on the condition our condition is in.

This or that. This or that.

The words might be the same but the way they're delivered will change the response.

This or that, tit for tat, good or bad…it all depends.

(I’ll try to remember my inclination to sort for the good.)