SANTA’S LITTLE HELPER

I write so often about the necessity of retrieving a detailed version of painful memories in order to consciously and objectively re-evaluate (and unload) an avalanche of guilt that over-reactive adults (who had loved me) had unwittingly heaped upon my head causing the truth (the whole truth and nothing but the truth) about my participation in two childhood traumas to be buried within the subconscious portion of my mind until a series of emotional growth spurts inspired my power of intuitive thought to ready my heightened level of emotional maturity to dig for insights, which, having swept my memory clear of ‘snowy static’ (as a kid, I remember holding the rabbit ears steady with one hand while knocking the side of our TV cabinet with the other to clear the picture screen of snowy static), had shone a spotlight upon a sad and lonely, deeply confounded, terrified, good little girl who, having chastised herself so harshly for being so bad as to feel unworthy of love, made a sacred vow to be the best little girl in the world—forever and a day.

Once I realized that one insight led to another so as to spotlight my inner need to recover details, which had remained frozen in time within a snowy mental block, I came to ‘see’ that the conscious portion of my mind had need to retrieve ‘forgotten’ details in order to conscientiously re-evaluate the true picture of a good little girl whose sunny side has been waiting, over my entire lifetime, to be pardoned (by me) of darkly clouded ‘crimes’ that ‘she’ had not committed during the innocence of my youth.  (Even after the painstaking nature of the editing process feels complete to me, clarifying streams of consciousness that leap back and forth in time without so much as a hint of warning can take a whale of patience if you hope to understand my drift.)

Though I’ve felt compelled to dig ever more deeply through one layer of my psyche after another in hopes of freeing my whole self of that subconscious avalanche of undeserved guilt, thank goodness, the dark side of my mind has not released the ghost-like presence of that tormented child to rain on my parade as often as you might think—and with fanciful thoughts leaping into the forefront of my mind, right now, let's flip the switch toward lighting up recent memories, each of which offers my eyes sound reason to sparkle with heartfelt 'good' cheer—hey—this next insight just dawned on me—I’m beginning to see why my power of intuitive thought refused to swing my conscious attention toward penning memories of my life beyond my preteen years until that avalanche of snowy static had been swept out of my subconscious so as to clear my conscience of a mountain of undeserved guilt, which, several years back (in the aftermath of my dad's sudden death) had experienced sound reason to begin to erupt through cracks in my brain’s wall of denial, creating a pressure cooker of my subconscious memory as layers of deeply repressed, tightly compressed coils of mental pressure began to fire up so volcanically as to make a mind field of my head until I came to see that feeling guilty of being bad and being guilty of being bad are not one and the same, because the first is a belief (and beliefs tend to change) while the second is a fact (and facts remain facts)!  And as my processor's absorption of that Aha! moment has clearly offered my spirit a significant lift—let’s buckle up and switch gears as my intuitive powers ready my time machine to zoom in a flash away from the inner tensions of my memory’s distant past toward fully absorbing the inner peace that I, having worked determinedly to free my memory of undeserved guilt, am CLEARLY enjoying now that my psyche is not experiencing uprisings of LATENT anxiety in the present tense ... Whew!😊

At seven and eight, my grandsons’ innocent belief in Santa (and the elf on the shelf) is heartwarmingly sweet.  Their personal elf is nicknamed Little Santa.  Beginning right after Thanksgiving, Tony and Ray look for his whereabouts upon awakening, every morning, because their little buddy never fails to leave a note, assuring both boys of his daily reminders to Santa to place their names at the high end of St. Nick’s list of good girls and boys.

Being a mischievous elf, it’s not unusual for L’il Santa to play tricks on everyone in the family—for example, on the Sunday morning that dawned before Xmas, Tony and Ray and Cuckoo and I all awoke to find that while we four had been fast asleep in our beds dreaming of sugar plums dancing in our heads, ‘someone’ had tee pee’d each one of us in the still of the night.

Then on Xmas day, we awoke to find the little jokester zip lining from the fridge to the tree, where his best buddy, a fun-loving reindeer, named Candycane, having climbed up the Xmas tree, held fast to the rope to ensure that his BBF would land safely on a gaily tinseled branch so as to hang one last note for Tony and Ray to find before Santa’s little helper flew away to vacation in Hawaii with his main squeeze, better known as The Tooth Fairy, and on Xmas morning (which dawned on the day before we’d packed up in readiness to drive back to our home in the desert), Tony and Ray pulled Papa and Gramma into the family room, where standing next to the fire place, we four witnessed what little was left of the milk and cookies (which we’d all enjoyed rolling and decorating followed by baking) that Santa had left behind (I mean, sampling cookies around the whole world, it's no wonder why he's become such a jolly, round soul).  Then bright and early on the morning of our leave-taking, while walking toward our car parked in the driveway, Papa and I glanced down at the front lawn where our eyes spied what had been left of the carrots, which had re-energized the reindeer so as to complete their night-long flight round the world just in time for children to awaken, here, there, everywhere, eager to open gaily wrapped presents placed festively round the base of their decorous, brightly lit trees on a joyous Xmas morning, 2018 ...

We drove to L.A. for lunch to wish Brant a Merry Xmas

  
And then returned to enjoy dinner at Marie's and Barry's

Xmas Eve saw us preparing for Santa

On Xmas morning, we all laughed to see

Lil Santa zip lining!

 

See Candycane holding Lil Santa's zip lining rope?

By the time we'd arrived at Marie's and Barry's

Eight days of Chanukah had been celebrated with
Steven, Celina and Ravi
(Colorful menorah created for us by Tony and Ray)

Tony's and Ray's menorah remained on display
Throughout the holiday season

Years ago, the boys were so sad to say goodbye to Lil Santa for a whole year that he agreed to fly back for each of their birthdays—and year after year, he's been as good as his word!😀

PS

Lil Santa met the tooth fairy two years ago (when Tony lost a tooth right before Xmas); then they saw each other again, last year, when Ray lost a tooth, and that's when they fell in love, and as everyone loves a good love story, I decided to share theirs with you😍

PSS

I must admit that when my sons grew to be men and fell  in love with women whose religion differed from our own that worried me; however, over the years, as I've come to accept that their decisions, which differ from mine, are based in personal experiences that have not been my own (just as many of my adult decisions had not matched those that my parents would have chosen for me, and as that reality has always been true from generation to generation), hindsight has offered me countless opportunities to gain the insight to consciously glean as much wisdom during family discussions with my adult sons as I hope they've gained from me—in short, our home has always been likened to The United Nations in terms of our friendships, and now the customs and heritage of our immediate family are in the process of blending with traditional customs shared within Celina's and Marie's heritage, as well—Ohhmm ...

PSSS

As to which religious beliefs Tony, Ray and Ravi will adopt as their own—time will tell—on the other hand, I can tell you this, right now—three young minds are in the process of absorbing differences in beliefs with a much greater sense of open-minded tolerance than had been true of my generation, and with that positively focused thought in mind, the 'Wait and See' attitude, which I've conscientiously chosen to adopt, works for me, and here's why that's true:  In the past, religious fervor, which was meant to control people and guide them toward taking good care of each other's feelings and needs, had actually served to separate people into war parties as remains openly true in THE MIDDLE EAST

 And was secretly true in THE USA until trump's prejudicial tweets unleashed and unmuzzled the portion of white sheeted Americans whose red hatted views have fully emerged, over these past two years—

Hhmm ... A clear view of reality spotlights the fact that we are facing lots of work left to do in terms of inspiring positively focused change for the better when confronted with the persistence of negatively focused attitudes that separate people into warring camps, because—
"In war there is no second prize for the runner up."
—General Omar Bradley