Irony In Motion

I love irony, and I was a living manifestation of it this morning while driving to work.  As I've mentioned here before, I am studying the music for the High Holy Days at the Temple here in Redwood City and as a result of that, I will be at all the services (all except one which is on the same evening as a lecture on new emerging therapies for MS which I plan to attend).  Well, as I was driving to work, I was listening to the music of one of my most recent musical discoveries - Straight No Chaser (10 acapella men who have been singing together since 1996 when they met at college - Liza told me about them), and some of the tunes happen to be Christmas carols.  Now I love Christmas carols - I know all the lyrics and harmonies because we used to celebrate Christmas and that was one of my favorite parts - and as I was singing along at the top of my voice, cruising along the freeway, I was struck by the irony of it all.  I don't know if irony is the correct expression, but in any case, what a wonderful metaphor for who I am - Christmas music today, Jewish music tomorrow, who knows what on Wednesday?  Irony, dicohotomy, who cares, I love it.

Now you might wonder why we celebrated Christmas, since most of you know I am Jewish with the family name of Droshnicop.  It's because we had a wonderful mother who was very universal in her religious beliefs.  What mattered to her was the joy and the love.  That meant we celebrated all the holidays that involved celebrating and eating - Christmas, Easter, Passover.  We had a Christmas tree which we decorated on Christmas Eve while listening to/watching Amahl And The Night Visitors on tv (don't you dare, don't you dare, don't you dare touch my mother, tra la la), we had a Santa Claus face on our front door which lit up, we had colored lights on the trees on either side of the front door, and we had our own traditions for exchanging presents - three for each of us.  We'd go shopping in the evenings with her while most families were home having dinner.  We'd go into the dining room two at a time to wrap the presents for the other members of our family.  We'd play the piano and sing Christmas carols.  All of us except our father, who disapproved of and disliked all of it.  His only concession was to come in and sing Good King Wenceslas, offkey.  Why that particular carol I have no idea.  Easter was fun, too.  We'd color Easter eggs and she'd hide them, and there would be baskets filled with fake grass, jelly beans, and little goodies into which we would then place the eggs we found hidden the next morning.  Passover was the traditional meal with the symbols and the Haggadahs and the singing and the drinking of wine (grape juice for us).  The main thing is that everything was fun.

So my trip down the freeway this morning led to a trip down Memory Lane.

A wonderful honor has been bestowed upon me.  A friend from the Support Group, who has a beautiful blog called Musing by Moonlight (I recommend it to everyone - her name is Jamie Dedes and she is a writer and a poet and ray of light - the link is http://musingbymoonlight.com/), has give me two  Blog awards - one is The Elegant Blog Award and, the one I'm most excited about, The Singing In The Rain Award.  When I asked her what that meant, she responded: as in doing fun stuff and smiling even though the clouds are out and the rain sometimes pours down (as in our health challenges et al.)  Isn't that great?  I accept that one proudly!

Speaking of Jamie, she described our Support Group on her blog so perfectly that I would like to include it here.   I asked her permission which she granted on the condition that I add the following: copyright Jamie Dedes 2010 all rights reserved.  As I said, she is a writer and needs to protect her words, which I understand and respect.  Here is what she wrote:

My other much beloved quality-of-life saver is my Group. Of course, it’s not mine. It’s ours. This is a Group that is sponsored by a Buddhist center near home. Its members all have life-threatening illnesses, yet lead productive and joy-filled lives while buying time. We are led by the dearest, kindest human being, a Buddhist chaplain, whose kindness is so deep and consistent I tear to think about it and him. The Group is composed of people from all different religious traditions. Buddhism doesn’t seek to proselytize and does respect all religions, so this is possible. The diversity just serves to enrich the experience. Each of us knows inherently that our illness can be a spiritual path if we choose to use it that way … and we do. That’s one of the things I love about us.  I wanted a group that was spiritually based, not medically based. I believe this whole trip called “life” is a spiritual exercise not a material one. So this Group is consistent with my personal philosophy and value. The Group has turned out to be one of the great joys of my life. Each person within it is heroic, generous, compassionate, and very, very dear.

I couldn't have said it any better.  Now you can see how lucky I am.

It's time for Poker Night.  Enough of this philosophizing, I'm going to go have some fun!