Just Another Pic on the Wall

still standing! ish...

So the 3 Kings have come with their presents, and Valentine’s Day decorations are popping up in stores large and small. Most of our post-Christmas returns have been made (except for one sweater that the saleslady convinced my spouse to EXCHANGE instead of return…I guess he’ll be going back to Sears, the sweater still doesn’t fit quite right), and even the mega-stash of cookies is down to a manageable 4 Tupperware.

But my house still looks like Christmas.

Santa Claus REALLY comes to town at our house.

Ok, so it’s January. And yes, the prickle-fall of the tree is starting to become noticeable, I know that this weekend the tree and most of the Nativity sets might have to get put away. But my wall of Christmas cards is going nowhere.

And not just because the wall is kind of structurally important, I mean the cards fun-tacked to the wall are staying.

There is something about seeing all those smiling faces that makes me happy. So many of the cards this year are casual snapshots or collages of family pics. Ours certainly was, mostly because I couldn’t get all 3 kids and dog to look in the same direction in any single picture. I love seeing these moments in the lives of people we hardly ever get to see.

To quote that Master of Verbiage, Billy Crystal," You Look Mahvelous!"

I have mentioned our shrunken social circle before (like shrunken heads but not grotesque, just unusually small), between family moving away and friends moving on and our own post-brain-tumor reclusiveness combined with kids getting older and thus busier, we are like Hermits of Suburbia. So getting those cards full of pictures of people we never get to see is a joy.

Some folks on the wall are family far away, some of whom we haven’t seen in years, but we  always vow that We Will Get Together With This Year! Some are old friends from college and before, with kids galore that all look like mini-versions of their parents. Those cards are cool. Some are friends we have only briefly met through brain tumor or NF work. Pics from the beach, on Santa’s lap, on trips or in the yard…the lovely crowdedness of the wall just makes me happy on these gray January days.

I know, too, that this isn’t REALLY like having contact with people…my wall o’ cards is reminiscent of the concept of facebook “friends”, the 400 people you allegedly are close to. But you know, those facebook friends (ok, not hundreds, I admit there are folks on the friend list who are more connections within the support communities we lurk in than friends), a lot of those facebook friends ARE real friends, people I know are there for us at any hour of the day or night (the benefit of having friends in other time zones, it’s always daytime somewhere!). So my card wall is maybe only a point of connection, but it makes me inordinately happy…like a little “hey, we didn’t forget you, and you didn’t forget us, even if we never see each other! Huzzah!”

That said, I do have some guilt, as I realize that my mental card list never fully translated into my ACTUAL MAILED card list. I have about 5 people I feel awful that I never actually MAILED THE DARN CARDS TO, I don’t know what happened, I seriously still have those cards here—to Deedy, and our Lake George friends, and other bt/nf friends…sigh. I am sorry. Maybe I will wite-out the “Merry Christmas” and put “Happy Groundhog’s Day” on our cards and mail them in a few weeks.


ok,  I figured out the issue I was having with photo uploading.
So  behold, a picture of Wite Out!

Heck, if I did that on the wall…just taped over the holiday greetings with seasonally appropriate woohoos, that crowd could keep smiling at me all year, right? ;)

So thanks, card sending folks, there is particular joy each time we add another pic to the wall…for in each of those we feel a little hooray from each of you. And the wall of the Hermitage is looking pretty snazzy.

 

 

 

Jersey Lament

from Tuesday, 10/30

I type by the light of 2 battery “accent lights” from a 6 pack I got at Costco on Saturday, my back vaguely warmed by the sea of candles lighting the rest of my first floor. I cannot even upload this post, since we are without power, like most of New Jersey, and without power, I have no wireless internet…but I still have some computer battery left…so here I am.


Hurricane Sandy was, for us here on my street, a big storm punctuated by four hours of Really Scary --think 40 foot willow tree bending sideways in my yard as we heard pieces of our house peeling off. We lost power about 8 p.m. on October 29, just after the storm made landfall far to the south of us, near our beloved Cape May…where my onco kid conquered her exertion anxiety and climbed all 199 steps of the famous lighthouse just this past June. Within an hour of the power loss the winds picked up, the air sounded like a freight train even from the safety of our candlelit living room. From our somewhat protected back deck we could see the sky lighting up as transformers and wires danced explosively. The sound of it was something I have never really experienced before….


And we are miles and miles from the nearest coastline.
This morning I was afraid to look out the window…but in the breezy stillness and light rain I could see that the willow, while maimed once again, was still standing. We lost 2 gutters and 3 pieces of metal trim literally peeled off the roofline of our house (the longest twisted piece of metal is about 7 feet long)…but aside from that, and a carpet of branches, we were remarkably unscathed. Our entire neighborhood was remarkably unscathed, one dead tree had fallen in the space between 2 neighbors’ houses, but that was about it.


The three gourds someone lined up on our deck railing remained in a neat row this morning.

We are so lucky.

My spouse went out in search of coffee and a real bathroom (we have well water, so no power=no water, and only late this afternoon a neighbor with a generator hooked us up to their well so we can at least flush toilets and wash hands), and saw the extent of the damage near us…trees down everywhere. Wires down everywhere. Houses hidden by fallen trees. Poles and wires tangled and blocking roads. It’s a mess. We found out that a good friend who lives about a ½ mile away had significant damage to their home and property. My work (a school) had 14 trees down on the campus, and the streets around it are impassable because of downed utility poles. Friends around the country were texting me, but I could hardly get my texts to go out, the networks are overloaded here or something…

And then we managed to find some radio coverage of what was going on…

Our poor New Jersey got flattened.

Being disconnected from information NOW is so frustrating, so deeply frustrating. See, Jersey is a really small state. Freakishly small. So when news reports talk about Hoboken or Jersey City, we remember when we went to dinner there…or a reporter stands on a windy beach in Point Pleasant, my youngest remembers when Daddy got to chaperone her class trip to the aquarium there…or the camera pans to Atlantic City, I think of the fun I had with my sisters on my 40th birthday trip there, or how I went there with a friend on my first grown up vacation when I was barely 21. Seaside Heights? My first NF Endurance race. Lavallette? Where my parents vacation every summer. Newark? Great time at a Devils game, or where my girls got to see Taylor Swift in concert. Hey, that reporter is right by where we did the Polar Plunge for Camp Sunshine last February!


Jersey is small. If somewhere is on the news, unless it’s the far southwestern portion (that’s a tad less accessible to northern Jersey folks), we’ve been there, and generally had fun there, or we have friends who live there, or a neighbor works there….

Sigh. Sandy threw a smackdown on our neighborhood, both locally and our little state.

Getting specks of information, not being able to get cell phones to connect, not seeing what is going on…knowing that all of our favorite places are not just struggling but likely obliterated…it’s appalling and frustrating and scary.


I know we are tough here, it’s what Jersey is famous for, in some respects, that “fugghedaboudit” attitude that is so easily parodied. But under that, just like under any tough shell, is a deep love for this crazy little state. We accept being the punchline of jokes because we know the truth about the gems that lie just beyond the famous Turnpike. We know that we have invented all sorts of unique and impressive forms of corruption here, of double dealing, of stupid laws, of personality stereotypes, of insane home prices and cost of living, of food (ok, our food is awesome)…but beyond ALL of that ridiculousness, we love this place.


I know I will cry when I finally see the pictures, the pictures of this state I love, this state I call home. I don’t have it in me (in the dark of my powerless house) to burst into inspirational song about triumph over adversity…this one hurts. It does. The scope of this is so huge, and our state is so small, it’s our home, every corner of it is kind of in our backyard.

But we are Jersey proud. And we will get through this, even if it seems sooooooo clichéd to say that right now. So Sandy…we know you threw your best at us, and you knocked us down, and yeah, you flattened us…but are we going to just lick our wounds and hide in the Meadowlands with Jimmy Hoffa somewhere?

Fugghedaboudit.