The Best Wrap Session Ever

I've been doing some volunteer work in December that is not "work" at all. I wrap presents for one night for D.C. Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation, an amazing Washington, D.C. metropolitan area support group for families who currently have or recently had children with cancer, or have been touched by cancer in some way.

I say this is not work because I love, love, love to wrap presents. I beg my friends to let me wrap their gifts. I have a ribbon habit that is hard to keep under control, I buy wrapping paper when I have too much already, and I am a firm believer that a beautifully wrapped package makes a birthday or anniversary exponentially better. If there were a 12-step program for obsessive wrapping, I would be standing up in front of the group telling how I backslid - again - because I couldn't pass up a Costco deal on an industrial-sized spool of holiday trimming.

So when a pal asked me a few years ago if I wanted to wrap for the Candlelighters, I said "yes" before she finished her question. And it's my favorite thing to do before the holidays, because in the rush of getting my home ready, making holiday plans with friends I don't see often, and shipping my own gifts off to family in California and Arizona, it makes me stop and appreciate the lives of people who are facing fears and medical issues most of us can only imagine.

D.C. Candlelighters creates many warm and wonderful moments for the families they help - throughout the year, they do such good deeds as creating new patient care bags, providing age-appropriate books about cancer, and sponsoring family "meet and greets." For the Gift Wrapping Party, the organization makes it a very special night - parents bring their gifts to be wrapped and then they gather for dinner, fresh-baked cookies and a relaxing massage or reiki treatment, while I and a few other elves cut and tape and attach bows and gift cards to their presents. It's one night out that relieves a little stress and removes a task from a long to-do list for parents who are burdened with worry about their kids, both the sick and healthy ones. It's one night that I, too, am just as grateful for D.C. Candlelighters, because they honor me by sharing the exceptional stories of these brave moms and dads, and allowing me to make their holiday season just a little bit easier. And that's a gift that doesn't need a bow to be beautiful.

Can I Call You Mom?

There are few things that break my heart - in a good way - like a crystallized moment with a child I love. I am an aunt to five great kids - three over 18 and two under 10 years. Recently, my 6-year-old niece "J" and her 9-year-old brother were visiting, and I got them all to myself for a weekend. We spent Saturday at my pool, and all around us, children were yelling for their moms to get them a towel, to come in the water, to throw them a toy. J swam over, wrapped her little self around me, cupped her hands to my ear and whispered "Can I call you Mom just while we're at the pool?" Oh, geez. What a rush. (I told her it might hurt her mother's feelings if she called me Mom, but I sure would love to have a little girl like her.) Later, driving to a store with the kids in the back seat, buoyed by the earlier "Mom-ent," I'm listening to the Jersey Boys' "Oh What a Night," and rocking out as only someone with my hidden talent is able to. The kids are having a blast, I can tell - they're laughing up a storm together. Then I glance into the rear-view mirror and see J making fun of me with her brother. And in that instant, I really did feel like someone's mom.

Are You Still Writing It?

I don't know why I stopped writing my blog last fall - I think the holidays intervened, or I used up all my words with my daily business writing, or some blog-interrupting thing happened at some critical blog juncture and that stopped the blog train. Yeah, that's it - that last thing.

So when a friend sent a note today and said, "Are you still writing it?," I didn't want to say no, because in my mind, I still AM writing it - I just haven't crafted anything in months. But it's all up here, my friends (I'm pointing to my creative instrument, that pocket of gears and thoughts and brilliance that resides at the top of my noggin, and because I just got a new 'do last Saturday and my hair is all perfect and shiny and soft, I took the opportunity of my hand being close to my head to give it a swipe and think, again, how much I love this haircut). I know, I lost you at "noggin."

Anyhoo, I'm back. Without fanfare, and like a friend walking right into your kitchen to visit because I've done it before and I think I'll be welcome back. Or I hope I will. And if not, remember that you're the one who left the door open.

You're My Cocoa

It might be a winter scarf, or a pair of glasses, or a handwritten card  that brings your memories flooding back. In my case it was a can of Hershey's cocoa. It's the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm picking up a few additional items, and I see this damn can of cocoa staring at me from a grocery store shelf... and all I can think of is my mother, who has been gone almost three years now. Why cocoa? At first I didn't make the connection, but all of a sudden I remembered a Christmas many moons ago, when my mother wrapped up a can of cocoa each for me and my three sisters, with one of her favorite dessert recipes. At the time we thought it was silly - a mom thing - and I'm sure we also felt gypped out of one of our "real" presents. Today, I see the love behind it, the desire to give something she did well (baking) to her girls. Today, it seems that can of cocoa held all kinds of messages and affection. And today, the day before we will gather without her (again), I'm thankful to have had a mom who was a little quirky and offbeat, but also generous and funny and sweet and unpredictably delightful.

It makes me think of all the other people in my life, here on earth or peacefully departed, who have helped shape my intellect and heart, and made me laugh or made me funnier; who have given me such gifts of kindness and knowledge and indescribable kinship. The longer I live, the more magical it is to have had a lifetime of such riches. So if you're reading this, you're in my life for a reason, and there's something you should know: you, too, are my cocoa.

A Brilliant Conversationalist

I talk to myself. Not like an insane person (I don't suddenly rise out of a reverie on a train and scream things, and then quiet down again). But I'm a bit of a mutterer, and it gets worse when I'm anxious about work or have too much going on in my personal life. Which is just about all the time.  

I tried to trace back when it started, and I think I was around 27. Or 21. Or 15. It started simply, maybe with me saying, "Now where did I leave that jacket?" and has evolved into entire conversations that go way past the location of a missing garment. 

I don't always realize when the dialog that's happening in my brain finds its way out into the world. Like when I was traveling with a colleague, and she called my hotel room (she was next door) to ask who I was speaking to. Or when I thought I'd finished a cell phone call with my sister while we both were driving (before the crackdowns), and she and her passengers listened to me continue talking for two minutes (yes, it would have been nice if she had shut off HER phone, but reverse the situation and I absolutely would have eavesdropped, too—how delicious to catch your sibling in a lapse of normalcy). Or in the ladies' room at work, which is especially tough to carry off—sometimes I find myself speaking (to be fair to me in this confession, I'm just listing the things I still need to address that day, and not reciting lines from Monty Python or wondering aloud how many miles are left before I need an oil change) and—gasp!—I hear someone else come in.  Then I wait behind my stall door so the intruder can't identify me. Like they would never recognize my voice, or my shoes, or my name on the datacard I left on the sink.

I know that this was cute 20 years ago, is mildly concerning now, and will be de rigueur if I make it to 90. Provided the actual chatter stays at a minimum, I can keep the crazy at bay. But to be safe,  if you ever see me on a train, you might not want the seat right next to me. Just in case...

Fun With Facebook

I started visiting Facebook frequently earlier this year because social media moved from a back burner to a front one in my job, and I needed to understand the communication options it offered.

Like others, I reconnected with school friends and family members. I knew better than to try to friend my 18-year-old nephew, even though I'm dying to see what he puts on his page. (Or not...yeah, probably not.)

I even suffered for awhile from Facebook envy - you know, where everyone else's life looks so much better than your own that you want to either jump off a bridge or start staging pictures of yourself in gorgeous locations, surrounded by people who look like they adore you and find you absolutely hilarious (and who, by the way, are not nearly as attractive as you are).

But I'm over that, and now I revel in the unintended humor and the inadvertent hiccups from people's posts. Like the dad with his 8-year-old daughter sitting on his lap who titled the photo "Date Night." Or my colleague's young son who didn't know the full meaning of his observation when he wrote, "Facebook is like jail, you sit around and waste time, write on walls, and get poked by people you don't know." Or the guy who congratulated a female pal on the new fellow in her life after seeing she'd posted a different profile picture, and she said, "What? That's my friend Emily!" (Note to Emily: I might have made the same mistake. Except that the necklace and earrings tipped me off.)

And don't even get me started on the uproar that occurred when a few fastballs were thrown at us with the "new Facebook," and oh, the torture: we all had to LEARN something else about how to post on a FREE service. If we could have harnessed that indignation and energy, we could have changed the world. In a week. 

Still, it's good to know that this platform is there to immortalize pictures of our drinks and appetizers; count the days down to our vacations; increase the audience for YouTube videos of salsa-dancing dogs; and help us publicly humiliate ourselves, because lord knows we weren't doing a good enough job on our own. Ah, Facebook. Can't live with ya, can't kill ya.

She's So Vein

Now showing: Shawshank Redemption

On many a weekend morning at 7:00 a.m., I head out to Parklawn Drive in Rockville for a film fix.

If you're a treasured friend or close acquaintance of mine, you likely have received one of my "go give blood!" e-mails over the years. I'm a big proponent of blood donation: it helps cancer, burn, sickle cell and other diseased patients, as well as accident victims and newborns; it doesn't take long; our bodies replenish quickly; and if you are someone with the best intentions toward volunteer work (who doesn't get to it as often as you'd like), it's a big check mark in the charitable outreach column.

I've been donating since I was 18, when my friends and I would go out for drinks afterward (precisely because the nurse told us not to). About a year ago, I was asked to switch from whole blood donations to platelets. It's more of a time commitment - about three hours from intake to finish, instead of the hour or so it takes to give whole blood. And you can give platelets every two weeks, rather than two months. But the person who called me must have known my two soft spots:
1. Flattery: Apparently my blood has so many platelets that just one of my donations is like 2.5 or 3 of another person's. So of course I must share my riches with the universe, right?
2. I get to watch a MOVIE!: Turns out my Red Cross visit isn't much different from the kid who goes to Cartoon Cuts and doesn't squirm under the scissors because he can have a dose of Tom and Jerry. Put a good movie on, and I wouldn't notice if you drained me dry. Until, of course, the movie's over.

There are some other benefits, too - the Red Cross staff I see on my platelet mornings are some of the nicest people I know, and I can call for blankets and drinks of water and to have my shoes removed and my head scratched and my headphones adjusted in a way that doesn't work for me at home (maybe because both of my arms aren't hooked up to IV lines there).

But at the root of it all - no kidding around - I love knowing that over the years, no matter how flawed I may be as a human being, something of mine that was so simple to give may have helped out in such a remarkable way - perhaps in a national emergency, or for a child battling leukemia. And in a world where we can find so many differences between us, I am grateful that our blood doesn't make those distinctions. It just heals. And that beats watching a movie any day.

©2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Wherever you are in the world, please give blood as often as you can.

It's much harder on the people who need it than it is for us to give it.