I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually do...

          This Christmas was incredible. I love my family so much. That is the phrase that keeps running through my head over and over. I'll be honest, I thought this Christmas would be a major struggle, that making it through it without Grandma would be an impossibility, but this Christmas, her memory spurred us on. There were a few tearful moments, of course, but these for me were behind closed doors, and short-lived, and they were born only of a desire to share these great times with her.
          As I have reflected on the merriment of the season, it has brought me to remember why it is that Christmas is my favorite time of year. I have always had amazing Christmases. It feels like nothing can go wrong...and if something does go wrong it really doesn't matter because it's Christmas. I can remember the magical, and somewhat materialistic moments of Christmas which stand out most to me, like the Christmas morning Santa brought me a my-size Barbie, and the morning I trotted into the living room to find the orange truck with logs on in that I just HAD TO HAVE sitting in the living room.
          The pictures and home videos from Christmastime speak a lot to why it has always been so wonderful too. We have a video of every family member opening their Christmas stocking, a favorite of our family, every year for at least the last 22 years (literally my entire life). On days when I don't think it will be too painful, I go back and I watch these videos. I see the smiling faces, the laughter, and I know that the family God sent me into was not a mistake. These are my people. I have always belonged with them and I always will. We change in number and relationship more frequently than I would like. It seems like every Christmas we have said goodbye to one more. On the other side of the same coin, we seem to be adding to our number a new blessing every year, which I have to admit, I love. Having always come from a fairly small family, nothing makes me happier than feeling like we have welcomed another to be a part of us.
         There are photos of me in front of our Christmas tree almost every year. As I watch myself age through these photos I see all the phases of life I have gone through in my short life. Ghosts of boyfriends past, shadows of family that have left to be with Jesus, short hair, long hair, matching pajamas, and formal dresses all flash before my eyes. in front of that SAME tree. My family's Christmas tree. This was the 25th and final year for the artificial tree that has adorned the living room of 1914 N 75 W for a quarter of a century. Every time I think about the idea of getting a new tree, it breaks my heart. Why am I so attached to this inanimate object? I think it is because it has been the backdrop, the constant in all these memories. When loved ones have left us, when new people have joined us, whenever the situation at Christmas differed from the year before (which, as I said, was admittedly nearly every year), I could look at that Christmas tree, saturated with homemade ornaments, collectibles, and icicle lights, and KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that Christmas, with my incredible family, was here.
            As I say goodbye to our time-honored tannenbaum, I shed a few tears for the physical that is lost, but I will look back at the pictures of that beautiful tree, and smile. After all, laughter through tears is perhaps my favorite emotion. I hope you all had a wonderfully Merry Christmas, and as you ring in 2011, I pray a joyous new beginning, dotted with sweet memories which motivate you to make the next year even sweeter.

               Some of my family...playing reindeer games (haha bad pun) in front of that wonderful tree
                                                                    Love you all!!!

A Surprising Refrain

Last weekend, I had the joy of traveling to Butler for the Indiana Jazz Festival with Matthew and 4 of his students. I was definitely excited to be going to this as a chaperone, but I also had some reservations because I knew it would be difficult to be at the festival, but not participating in the music.

So, while I sat through SEVERAL hours of rehearsal this weekend, I thought back on the 4 times I went to the Indiana Jazz Fest. Memories of great songs, and incredibly talented clinicians, among them Bobby McFerrin, Marvin Hamlisch, and Rockapella, filled my head. These thoughts led me to a realization that, though I didn't acutally attend Butler, I have had so many life-shaping experiences there.

When I observed the Jazz Fest as a high school freshman, I was given the gift of real jazz music for the first time. I saw how excellent people could be when they made music together, and how joyful making music could be when we saw Manhattan Transfer and New York Voices perform. I learned the beauty of expressing yourself through music, and a person's ability to take on a character in a single song when a member of the Jordan Jazz sang "Daddy's Son." She sang with such passion that you would believe she was really the tortured mother she portrays in the song. I knew when I heard her sing that music was something that could be so personal to anyone who had a passion for it. When we worked with Bobby McFerrin, he taught us how to create one of the most beautiful musical phenomena I have ever experienced. "Circle Singing" is an exercise where a group of people improvises a piece on the spot by each vocal part making up their own melody while individuals solo over it. What's incredible about it is that once the song stops, it is gone forever. In a span of 5 minutes something went from being unknown, to a performance, to gone and almost impossible to remember or recreate.

Another major role Butler plays in my memory is that it was the homebase for the Music Leadership Institute, the group I went to Hong Kong with in 2005. I have memories of our friend Jeremy trying desperately to communicate that he needed a place to stay in the states for a week without actually inviting himself so as to stay in line with his Chinese culture, I remember making my first ever CD recording, I remember a communal nap that the whole group took in a classroom in the middle of the day when we were too exhausted to continue. We walked by a knoll this weekend where the MLI gave an impromptu outdoor concert. The sight of it made me remember how for those few weeks, we were all happiest when we got to share music with unsuspecting people. Music is such a gift. That's what Butler reminds me of the most.

Something else I learned at Butler that is really helping me work through these nostalgic feelings is a saying I have heard from Dr. Brimmer (the professor at Butler that made all these experiences possible); "When you walk out of the best, most riveting lecture of your LIFE, you lose 82% of it as soon as you walk out the door." Thinking on this, I am starting to realize that my quest for nostalgia, and the feelings it creates may be connected to a desire to hold on to the remaining 18%. The idea that I have lost so much of these amazing experiences makes me want to desperately cling to what I have left because I cannot imagine losing more of the experiences that have shaken me to the core, and even shaped my personhood and faith at times. So, that's what I think I have discovered for today about me and my desire to reminisce.

(The group of U.S. students who were in MLI)

Billy Joel Provokes more than Catholic School Girl Rebellion...

Hello reader...whoever you may be. If you have been gracious enough to take the time to read the "About Me" section of this blog over there on the left, you will already know this, but in case you didn't, let me fill you in.

I have decided to dive into the world of blogging for the first time, and see where it takes me. Actually...where it took me. This will be a blog where I reflect on some fond, and perhaps not-so-fond, memories of the experiences in my life that have shaped me into who I am today. Nostalgia is the name of the game friends. It is something I cling to in times of despair or stress or lonliness. I need to figure out why remembering things "back when" is almost a self-involved, self-indulgent security blanket in my darkest hours. I am also exploring why "walking down memory lane" is one of the first things I do on my best days. Sometimes it seems as if the present does not matter near as much to me as the past...whether in good times or in bad.

So...to the title of this blog. Many equate Billy Joel with racy numbers like "Only the Good Die Young," "Captain Jack," and "Big Shot." Our toes tap while our inner soul gasps at the uncensored look we get at some "hush-hush" topics through these songs. Yes, Billy Joel is known for his piano playing, and his lack of tiptoeing around the issues. It's so much his facade that people often skip past the true gems in his lyrics.
The sentence I am using to define my quest in the blogosphere is one such gem. Tucked deep in his song "The River of Dreams" is this really beautiful line that I have latched onto in recent weeks: "I am searching for something, something so undefined, that it can only be seen by the eyes of the blind." It just hits me like a ton a bricks every time. So many of us, myself included, feel like we are constantly on a quest for something. Something. It's just out of our reach, can't put our fingers on it, but feel as if life would be complete if we just could figure out the identity of that something. This lyric points out to me that so often that something we are searching for cannot be found by finding it. Paradoxical yes, but my quest is to touch, taste, hear, smell my way through this phase of my life because, honestly, a blind person is more likely to see what I am looking for than I am. Searching with my eyes is not enough. Metaphorically speaking.

Now for those of you who are avid bloggers, or avid blog stalkers (admit it...there are those of you who are in fact just that) I apologize for the choppy writing style. It may not be on the level of Shakespeare, Whitman...or even Stephanie Meyer (That's right...Twilight slam...it happened) at this point, but I hope you will stick with me on this quest, and I hope, for your sake, my writing style improves. For now, I leave you with the assignment of listening to the song "River of Dreams" by Billy Joel if you never have before. What are you searching for?