Merry Christmas.

Except it doesn’t feel so merry yet. Last week I had dental surgery, to the tune of $6,000. Robert has come home from work today . . . with Shingles. Grandma wants to die and talks about it incessantly. A plumber is upstairs right this minute completing a $700 repair. Last week we had to buy a new dishwasher.  

Sigh. Life happens, even three days before Christmas.

Still, there is balance, even when the scales tilt. After a stressful preparatory season, the choir program at church was beautiful. They sang well and the listeners seemed moved. The singers watched me and responded to what my hands were trying to communicate. We made music together. That alone is a minor miracle.

Other events might not be called miraculous, but they are joyful. While eating dinner last night with friends, a group of carolers stopped by. What could be better than smells of spiced yams wafting through the kitchen while listening to “Silent Night” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” And did I mention we join together as friends and family every week for Sunday dinner? Laughing, discussing, solving the world’s problems.

Then yesterday I had lunch with some of my favorite women in the world. We call it therapy lunch, because we have a tacit agreement to talk about anything and share each others' lives in a unique way.

And I can’t forget the gift delivered by my neighbor. After having the tooth procedure last week, my post-surgical instructions said I shouldn’t have carbonated sodas. I called the dentist’s office, and the receptionist told me I should refrain for two weeks. Really? Two weeks? That seemed like a long time.

On Sunday morning, I asked a dentist in the choir about this (who also happens to be an excellent tenor). He said that didn’t sound right and mentioned that his instructions said nothing about carbonated beverages. Later that day, he came to my door with a brown paper bag wrapped in a red ribbon. Inside . . . a can of diet Coke. It may be my favorite present of the year.

So . . . even though life is messy, bills never end, and health can be fragile, the little joys of life and minor miracles are enough. Merry? Maybe not. But Christmas always brings the promise of better things ahead.

Merry Christmas.  

Work, Life, and Goofing Off

I like work. I like earning paychecks and having someplace to go and meeting the challenges that come with a job.  I’ve never wanted not to work.

And yet … now I have retired friends. And they’re happy.

I’ve been contemplating work for the past few weeks and asking myself questions about it. Would I be happy if I didn’t work? Would I like endless flexibility to have lunch with friends? Would my house be cleaner if I didn’t work? (The answer to that one is easy: NO.) If I didn’t work, would I finally finish the scarf I’ve been knitting since July? Would I make it to the mountains more often to snowshoe? Would I hang out in the Denver Art Museum on weekday afternoons?

Or would I start wearing pink Snuggies while bonding with the couch and bags of almond M&Ms? Would I rattle around my quiet house, jumping when the phone rang? Would I become intimately acquainted with NetFlix?

The answer to these questions is not clear … except that one about the clean house. I don’t know the answers because I have always worked in some way.  

I came by it honestly. I remember the lectures my dad used to give me about the nobility of work. Frustrated by my lack of desire to clean my bedroom, he’d pontificate about how good it feels to work hard and earn one’s keep. How work brings rewards. How success is the result of hard work.

I thought he was crazy. I was 10 … and 12, 13, etc. Work was tedious; chasing boys and goofing off was fun. But now I’ve turned into my dad.

He was right about the rewards. Last week I got an e-mail from a student. She told me that she’d been in the university for several years and had never had an instructor “who was completely prepared, ready to teach, and quite as caring as [I] have been.” She went on to say that she left my classes excited and fulfilled. All teachers get these kinds of notes – my point is not to self-aggrandize, but to make the point that this note was a better payday than the check I received for teaching that course. It’s the kind of enrichment that is hard to find outside of doing a job that I love, and working hard to do it well.

So I’ll keep working. Honestly, I don’t have a choice unless I want to drastically alter my lifestyle (and I don’t). I still want to pay the light bill, buy groceries, and have money to travel. But I also need to feel like I’m offering something to the world. And to myself. I want the energy and stimulation of doing my best and meeting new challenges. I guess that pink Snuggie is going to have to wait …