Peace

 

Serenity at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

On Wednesday morning I woke up at 3:30 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep.  Normally my wake-up time is between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m.  For some reason unknown to me I was wide awake at 3:30 a.m.

Rather than try and go back to sleep I decided to take advantage of this opportunity.  I would get up, have my breakfast and take an early morning walking on the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach.  I haven't taken an early morning walk "on the boards" in Rehoboth this year.

Rehoboth Beach is about ten miles from where I live right off of Route 1 which is also known as "Coastal Highway."  I have found out that if I get on Route 1 early enough I miss the early morning rush.  I leave in the dark and arrive at the boardwalk just as the sun rises.

Last year when I got my new 2010 Subaru Forester, I used to go down to the Rehoboth boardwalk almost every day.  I did that for about three months until I noticed that I was really racking up the miles on my new car.  This car has to last me so I decided to cut back on my trips to Rehoboth.  Plus, I didn't like the heavy traffic when I left Rehoboth after my walk on my return home.  By the time (7 a.m. and later) the traffic has picked up,  I'm back "driving with the crazies on Route 1."  No, it's much safer taking my daily walk in Oyster Rock, the development behind where I live.  Maybe not as interesting and certainly not the ambiance of the rising sun, the squeal of sea gulls, and the splashing of the waves of the Atlantic Ocean rolling onto the Rehoboth Beach, but I still get my exercise in.  Still, I miss walking on the boardwalk in Rehoboth.  I think this year I'll go down once or twice a week.  I always enjoy mingling with the early morning board folks and being one with the sights, sound and smell of the edge of the eastern continent which is Rehoboth Beach.

At the beginning of this post I feature a short video that I took of what I experienced last Wednesday.  Watching and listening to this video of the sun rising over the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean at Rehoboth Beach this past Wednesday perhaps you can share my sense of serenity that I often enjoy here in southern Delaware.

Christmas Eve 2011

This is the first Christmas that I am not working in ten years.  I don't mind working Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day but I don't mind having it off either.

I feel like a kid set loose in a candy store right now.  I have this Quiet Time to myself.  You see, this is how I like to celebrate Christmas, Quiet Time.  By that I mean I don't get involved in all the Christmas Rush and craziness.  Oh I used to years ago.  I bought into the usual rush to get everyone presents and the whole shopping thing.  However, some years ago I decided that wasn't for me.  Not that there is anything wrong with that for other folks.  The way I feel about Christmas is that whatever way you want to celebrate the Season is what you should do.

For me it is sending out Christmas cards.  I've always loved sending Christmas cards.  I try to keep in contact with favorite old friends I don't see any more.  It is also my way of keeping in touch with relatives that I no longer live nearby.

Another tradition I developed over the years was spending Christmas Eve by myself.  I like the quiet of Christmas Eve.  If the night is clear, I like to look out my window to the black infinity that is the nighttime sky and search for the North Star among the other thousands of other sparkling stars.  Maybe that's why my favorite Christmas cards are the sparkly ones, they remind me of the Christmas Eve nighttime sky.

Christmas Day I like to take a ride around the neighborhood.  I love the deserted streets.  It is eerie.  Almost like a mysterious bomb was dropped and caused everyone to disappear.  I absolutely love driving down the wide open highways.  I'm always surprised at how wide the roads are once the other vehicles are off the roads.  I wish the roads were like that year round.

I wasn't sure what kind of picture of video I was going to put on my Christmas Eve blog entry.  I always like to put something original.  I think I found it today.  A friend sent me this link of a video of a Texas family feeding breakfast to...deer!  Yes, you read it right...deer!  Where I lived in Pennsylvania we had plenty of deer.

This hunting season I have seen many pictures on my Facebook account of my cousins who hunt holding up by their antlers the bloodied heads of their trophies.  What really saddens me is the 9, 10 and 11 year old cousins with their "trophies."   While I realize hunting is probably necessary to keep the deer population down I will admit that I feel better about seeing this video of a family feeding deer.

I'm all about peace and love man.  That may sound Goody-Two-Shoes to some but that is just the way I roll.  I love this video.  It makes me feel good as I hope it does for you too.

I'll be back later with another post (since I have the WHOLE DAY OFF) but I did want to share this video for those of you who feel as I do.

I think there is way too much hate and violence in this world today.  Isn't Christmas supposed to be about Peace and Love?  At the risk of being too preachy, I'm all for those Christian Principals and not so much for all the "Ye Must Praise Him" principals.

There, I've had my say.  Merry Christmas to everyone and Peace and Love to all!

Below are Christmas images from pictures I took in 1979 at Girard Bank in Philadelphia where I worked at that time.  The bottom picture was taken at the Drury Lane Bar (a gay bar) in Philadelphia.  I hired a singing telegram messenger to surprise my friend Tommy Murray (the bartender and longtime friend) with a surprise Christmas greeting.  Those were the Good Days!

Backyards

Me in my backyard this afternoon - peaceful bliss - 2010

Ask me what my absolute favorite pastime is and I'll tell you it is working in my backyard.

Sometimes it seems as if I've been working my whole life to achieve the peace and tranquility of working in my own back yard.  I know to some this seems odd but I've always loved working in a yard.

Perhaps my overwhelming desire had to do with where I grew up.  I spent most of my school years living in a second floor apartment.  Our family's first apartment was on Washington Avenue in Downingtown, PA.  It was a cockroach infested apartment that rented for $22 a month (this was in the Fifties.)

2nd Floor Front - our apartment on Washington Ave., Downingtown, PA - 2001

Our family sitting on the steps at Washington Avenue -our "backyard" - 1953

When I was eleven years old our family moved to a second floor apartment located over a office at a trailer manufacturing plant where my father worked on Boot Road, on the outskirts of Downingtown, PA.  We paid no rent for that apartment.  In lieu of paying a watchman for the plant, our family was the "watchman."

Our apartment on Boot Road, Downingtown - that's Mom on the "porch" -1956

When I was a senior in high school my parents brought three acres of land four miles outside of Downingtown and built a small ranch house.  Our family of five with four males over 6'4" tall moved into that tiny ranch house.  I remember well bumping and scraping my elbows on the stucco hallway walls walking to my first ever bedroom that was mine alone.  I had been pestering my Mother for my own bedroom as long as I could remember. Since I was the oldest I felt that it was my due plus I didn't like sharing a bed with my two brothers.  I wanted my own bed.  To this day I sleep alone.  That is the way I prefer it.

My parents home on Hopewell Road, Downingtown, PA - 2001

All during my growing up years I always envied my friends and schoolmates who had their own backyards.  None of my friends realized what a treasure they had in having their very own back yards.  I don't know of a one who liked to work in their back yard.  Something really seemed wrong with this picture because I was the one who wanted my own piece of land.  Now that our family finally had some land, I still wasn't satisfied.  The land was my father's.  He was a gardner and he called the shots.  He only believed in planting vegetables.  Whenever I suggested planting flowers or other plantings his usual response was "You can't eat that!"

I only lived on that parcel of land for a few months.  After graduating from high school, and with a six month detour for a hernia operation and the subsequent staph infection that I got form the hospital, I joined the Army in January of 1963.  No more back yard for me for years.

After leaving the Army in January of 1963, I moved to Pittsburgh, PA in.....you guessed it....an apartment.  Actually, I moved into a room.  I didn't even have my own bathroom.  I had to share a bathroom with five other apartment/rooms in the old Victorian mansion that I lived in on Roup Street in Shadyside, Pittsburgh.  You couldn't beat the rent at $8.00 a week but the bathroom accommodations sucked.

After three months of living in Pittsburgh, I has homesick for eastern Pennsylvania and Downingtown.  I moved back to Downingtown and got an....you guessed it...apartment in Coatesville, PA.  Still no backyard.  I lived there for 2 1/2 years.  Then I met Bill, my Life Partner.  About six months after meeting Bill, I acceded to his wishes and moved in with him at his....you guess it....apartment in Pennsauken, New Jersey.  Still no backyard.

Bill and I lived at the Penn Manor Apartments for a few years then we moved to Philadelphia so I could be closer to my job at Girard Bank by City Hall in Philadelphia.  We moved to ........Cheswick Square apartments on Ridge Avenue in Roxborough, PA.  Still no backyard but I did have a pool now.  Progress.

Bill and I lived at Cheswick Square for a few years and moved when I decided that I wanted to partake of the night life in Philadelphia without the worry of driving plus I could walk to work.  We bought a townhouse on Naudain Street, on the very edge of center city, Philadelphia.  The row house was 16 feet wide and 50 feet long with a back yard!  Finally.  Actually, it wasn't much of a back yard.  More like a postage stamp back yard.  No grass.  The surface of the backyard was patio slate with some small raised beds for flowers.  But I finally had some space, limited as it was.  In fact it wasn't enough space so Bill punched a hole in the roof and we had a roof deck with container pots.  That worked somewhat but it still wasn't a back yard.

Our townhouse on Naudain Street in Philadelphia, PA - 1972

After eleven years I decided I had enough of the city life and we bought land near my parent's home in Downingtown.  Six point eight acres.  Now I had a yard.  Actually, I didn't have a yard as much as I had a opening in the woods.  But still, it was my (our) land.  For twenty five years I purchased plants and shrubs and competed with the deer to see which plants would survive.  The deer won.

Me and Bill's home on Crawford Road, Downingtown, PA - 2001

In 2006 I decided I had enough of our wooded paradise in Pennsylvania.  As beautiful as it was I couldn't see how I could survive long range paying the ever escalating school and personal property taxes of Pennsylvania.  I decided to realize my life long dream of living near the ocean, in a neighborhood, with a back yard.  And that my friends is where I am now.  It is wonderful.

Home - 2010

Tis Christmas Eve at the Inn

It is all quiet in the hotel now. The guests have departed to visit their children and grandchildren, bearing their gifts as they go. The silence of the lobby is punctuated by the clatter of the ice machine turning over new ice cubes and Christmas music playing on CD’s in the background. And here I am, exactly where I want to be on this holiest of all days in the Christian calendar, by myself.

Many years ago I discovered the special peace of Christmas Eve. When I was young I was all caught up in the tradition of our culture to rush about getting just that right Christmas gift. I would be oh so careful in wrapping the presents in appropriate Christmas paper, just like I saw in the movies and on TV shows about Christmas. I would take my profit sharing bonus from the bank where I work, and spend it all on Christmas presents for everyone from the mailman to my nieces, nephew, friends and coworkers.

These days I only buy Christmas presents for my Mother. Her 85th birthday is today, one day before Christmas. My Mother’s mother died when she wasn’t quiet two years old, shortly before Christmas Day. My Mother has told me many times that when she did receive a gift, it was usually lumped together with the explanation “This is for your birthday too.” Her mother wasn't around to protect her from such insensitivity. I always make a special effort to separate the two days. That is why I have always taken special care in selecting gifts for my Mother, one for her birthday and all the others for Christmas. I always made sure her birthday present would be wrapped in birthday paper.

This year I wasn’t able to visit my Mom this week to deliver her Christmas presents AND birthday present in person because of the weather. However, I did call her this morning and sing “Happy Birthday” to her, which has been our tradition for more years than I can remember. First nice sunny day, I’ll be on the road to take that 2 ½ drive to Pennsylvania to deliver her presents in person.

For now though, I will take in the special pleasure this night affords me. Working or not working, I have always been able to experience the promise of peace of this one time of the year. I believe that promise. Those Christmas Eves, when I did not work, I would turn down invitations to visit or party and instead I would stay at home alone. That is my way of celebrating Christmas.

In the past, when I was at home, I would stay up until midnight. Shortly after midnight I would look out of my bedroom window to the cold, dark night sky. Sometimes the stars would sparkle like sequins on a flasher entertainer’s jacket. On other nights, clouds would roll across the nighttime sky. But, even on those cloudy nights, the clouds always seemed to part and the moon would shine through, illuminating the cold landscape below. And, if I looked hard enough I could see one star that shone brighter than the others. Perhaps that star is Venus , perhaps not. But it is there, shining brightly, silently beckoning to me.


Tonight, as I drive down the road to my nearby home, I will look again up at the cold, December nighttime sky and feel that inner peace that I only feel this one time of year. That is the gift He has given me. I am at peace.