Remembering Ruth among other things

 

From the world of free clip art

This holiday season life on Planet RantWoman has been all about time travel: the cold and dry of Colorado winters, paper chains, very tall Christmas trees to fill the bay window, paper chains, nothing breakable at floor level to protect the tree from both cat and children. In the Montana years, besides all manner of music and special schedules,  the musical arrangements RantDad made every year for great unmanageable musical ensembles involving all his music students and his children. There was the year RantWoman and Ferrener Husband went to Russia, Irrepressible Nephew's first Christmas and many Christmases besides.

This year, RantWoman has been especially charmed by Spanish language children's carols. So look for several, possibly with irreverent cmmentary: "The Little Drummer Boy? What if a kid banging on drums is the LAST thing a woman just getting used to motherhood wants to hear, never mind the foreshadowing of toddlerhood and the toys (intentionally) misguided aunties sometimes give children

Even though Quaker Honorary Auntie had not spent holidays with the Rant Family for many years before she died, RantWoman has especially been thinking of her this year. 

Remembering Quaker Honorary Auntie

Memorial Minute with Annotations

RantWoman has also been thinking with deep gratitude of all the people who helped take care of  Quaker Honorary Auntie for almost two decades between when she first had her aneurysms and when she died. RantWoman also feels continual gratitude for all the circumstances that lined up as far as RantMom's life in a retirement community. RantWoman is very frank: RantWoman feels very relieved about many things, and this in spite of the interaction between COVID Public Health rules and Retirement community rules.

RantWoman has been trying to radiate all the love flwoing from Quaker Honorary Auntie back out into the universe.

That is not going so well.

Is the RantFamily the only family on the planet that has to drag out a bunch of half moth-eaten family arguments along with the tinsel and Christmas decorations?

More free holly clip art

The short version:

--Blame the summer wildfires around the globe, the pandemic, the onset and now overdue exit of the Trump Administration, and various other stampeding herds of Change. RantWoman knows perfectly well she gets to COUNT HER BLESSINGS multiple times per day, but blame the pandemic etc. anyway.

--Somewhere in all of these meditations, RantWoman looked up dates for some old emails and various blog posts and other moments from 2017, the year Quaker Honorary Auntie died. 

Memories of Great Business Meeting past

Was RantWoman in 2017 just not handling grief as well as she thought she was?

Earth to RantWoman: Quaker Honorary Auntie died in May; you learned about it in July. You can play the overwhelming and underarticulated grief card from then until December, but not before that.

Oh Good. The perfect reason to rant about something else, the onset of the Trump administration! RantWoman is going to save some meditations for transfer of power parallelism for another whole post, but RantWoman is going to express aggravation about one thing: getting blown off when calling an event organizer for a post inauguration community recentering event about use of microphones. RantWoman had asked about something else and then the phone got hung up before RantWoman could even ask about amplification issues. 

This was not the first or the last event, the organizing efforts of multiple Friends, where RantWoman has been vexed about amplification issues. 

Nor is it either the first or the last time RantWoman has been irritated with one specific Friend.

There. Now RantWoman has gotten one round of festive holiday mental clutter out of her system. There is more to say, but perhaps if we all work on enjoying... in spite of... things can work themselves out. Either that or RantWoman will summon Sinter Klaus for a belated visitation.

In Light and Faithfulness

RantWoman