Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Auld Lang Syne, me Dears!

young Dad

Like Harry and Sally, this song never made much sense to me other than the raw feeling it generates every time I hear it. It's one of the rare things in life I enjoy along with the masses, perhaps because my dad liked it so much and played it on the piano, along with Both Sides Now, Send in the Clowns, Holiday for Strings, and Country Roads while I did yoga and watched the boats go by.




I have a love/shame relationship with my deep love of this song. I own several covers of it and tend to sing it when doing the dishes. It works when I need a lift or when I need a good cry. I am trying to encourage my little kirtan and music community to somehow work it into a chant.... Auld Lang Syme, Krisna Krisna! Syme Lang Auld Hare Hare!    A few weeks ago my fiery, brilliant, state-the-obvious, ninja girly friend suggested that perhaps I love it sappily so because it is seen in like every movie there ever was that takes place on New Years. "You know," she said, "it's so cinematic."  





Well. There's a thought.

There's a thought I never wanted to think.

There's a thought that means I have been duped by Hollywood along with everyone else even though I have written a memoir about how not to be duped by Hollywood because I was duped by Hollywood growing up there.

What's your auld lang syne story? Excuse?



Today in Friday Writers we wrote "what I don't want to forget from 2012." I emphasized "what I don't want to  forget" verses "what I want to remember" because it adds a subtle spin on the focus. They could take it anywhere it went. To a memory. A rant. A moment in time that lasted a lifetime. A lesson learned. A laugh. A midnight summer thunder light show by the pool.  The results were gorgeous.


What do you want to not forget from 2012? Follow the trail.......... And don't forget to come write with me in 2013! Raising a cup of kindness and a thousand pens to you all, ROX                                 xoxoxo

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Christmas in Hollywood

I love the holidays, always have.  Perhaps it's because we never really celebrated them growing up, which created a nostalgic mythology about the whole season, especially in LA. I tried to get Ma into it. I'd beg for a tree, to which she'd argue "We're Jewish for Christ's sake!" and besides, it would kill my grandmother if she ever found it. Did I really want to live with that guilt? 

"It's enough that our menorah is from Mexico," she huffed.

"Well, how 'bout a Channukah Bush? I think they do that in Israel, don't they?" Not that we celebrated Channukah, either. We usually just lit the menorah on the nights we got presents.

"Now that's absurd, Roxanne!"

One year I was so desperate to celebrate Christmas like all the other LA Jews that I cut a branch off one of the cypress trees in the backyard, put it in a vase, and decorated it with cheap Christmas tchotchkes I got at Newberry's. 

"You're dragging that fucking tinsel crap all over the house," Ma complained, which was true. 

"Yeah, but it's pretty, isn't it?" I was proud of my little tree.

"It's low class," she said, picking a piece out of her hair. "Get rid of it!"

"After Christmas. I promise! Can we go back to Newberry's and get some more orgaments?"

Ma frowned. How I knew she hated that "fucking store." But I reeeeely wanted a few more candy canes and lambs for the little cypress. "You can get more of that Almond Roca stuff that you like... Or, I know! I can get it for you for Christmas! I mean, Channukah!"

At some point she'd give in and we'd head down to Pico Blvd in the fat red and brown station wagon.  After a bit of browsing, she'd even get a little excited,  enjoy looking at all the cheap Christmas crap with me. "Look at thooooooooooooose," she'd say, pointing behind the counter. "Pretty." 

"See Ma?" I'd say, "isn't Christmas cool?" My body flooded with hope every time Ma played along with my holiday fantasy. Maybe this time. Maybe this year it will be just like it is on TV. Maybe the family will appear, the snow will miraculously fall upon us here in the desert, and Santa may come down our chimney the same way he does at Kenny's house.

Inevitably Ma's patience would run out and it would be back to the usual,  "this is just cheap crap shit and we don't celebrate Christmas and let's get out of this fucking store, I got work to do!" 

But by then I was coasting on the high of hope.  On the drive home,  I held tightly to my little bag of shiny ornaments and basked in the parade of Hollywood Holy-Jolly that never quite looked so beautiful as it did that December twilight. The SoCal palm trees proudly wore their tinsel high in the azure sky, leaning their exotic necks toward the ocean. Santa and his reindeer flew across Santa Monica Boulevard in the 75 degree sunshine while Sinatra crooned swingin' Christmas songs out of all the rolled down car windows, gridlocked, but beautifully happy. 

Even Ma swearing at the "idiots" ahead of us in traffic as we drove away from Newberry's couldn't touch me safe in my holiday dreamland. I knew we'd be back next year, maybe sooner. Someday, Ma might even say yes to everything.

...

Childhood holiday stories? Snapshots? Fantasies?