The gift of giving.

Christmas generates a collective spirit; enlightening people to the understanding they should express their love and compassion toward one another. Christmas Spirit, the fantastically contagious holiday epidemic, causes uncontrollable happiness, compassion, and warmth generated from within. It also causes love to spew from the lips of friends and family members at delightful rates – rates which we do not see any other time of year. Christmas Spirit awakens the heart. 

I didn’t have the money to do much in the way of gifts this year, but I did have the creativity to make some things for the people I will be seeing. I don’t believe Christmas has anything to do with spending lots of money. What I aimed for this year was giving people things I made myself – it’s going to be a sort of one-of-a-kind artwork Christmas.

I had been struggling to taste any semblance of Christmas Spirit on my tongue and in my heart this year, but after heading to the beach in nice 80 degree weather for the weekend with my parents, Jeff, Susan, and my boyfriend Jon-Michael, I’m bursting at the seams with Christmas Spirit (…as odd as that seems).

All those viral Christmas stories go around every year – the one about the child buying shoes for his sick mom, the one about the young woman whose food stamp card won’t work at the grocery, the one about the soldiers who finally get to come home to their families, and while each of them I’m sure has a thread of truth, I wonder how many people actually carry those stories with them beyond forwarding them to their friends and family this season?

It’s this time of year that brings out the giving spirit in so many people, and I know those in need are eternally grateful for what is given, but I wonder what happens to the people who need help all the other eleven months of the year? Who helps them?

I would give all the money in the world if I possessed it. I would fix the lives and stop the heartache for all the people I could reach. If I won the Lottery, I’d use it to stabilize the lives of the people around me and spread the wealth as far and as wide as possible. But I am by no means a financially wealthy woman (and I can’t even afford to play the Lottery).

My heart, however, is overflowing. And the contents of it I can give, and give, and give and the supply never runs dry. So whether it is winter, spring, summer, or fall, I’ll give what I have to give – love, compassion, friendship, kindness, and all those heart-grown things.

It doesn’t take the spirit of Christmas for things like love and compassion to flourish in me and I wish there was some way I could teach the entire world to see with these same eyes. To see past surfaces and skins, to see the good most people possess, and to quit assuming things are as they seem. We never fully know another person’s story until we’ve given them the opportunity to let us in.

This is the season of giving, of generosity, and of compassion and love. And I realize this year is tighter than any before for most of us, but I urge everyone to seek new and more affordable ways to give this year. And to give farther than you ever have.

Donate clothes to a charity, donate your time to a mentoring program, give to a school or church fund raiser or to the Red Cross, volunteer in a soup kitchen, or sponsor an animal for an organization like Heifer International. These are all gifts that give farther than traditional gift-giving and in times when more people need more help than imaginable, a small donation to a larger cause will both warm your heart and put food on the table of a family in need. Or clothe a child. Or feed a village. Or perhaps even catch the eye of a passerby who, in turn, shares his or her wealth of compassion.

For Christmas this year, I’m giving you my love and all my best wishes for a happy and successful new year. I hope you’ll share your love and best wishes with those around you this season, but all I ask in return is that you pass the love, compassion, kindness, and friendship along to someone you haven’t met yet. It’ll change their life and yours. I promise.

Creating Traditions

Ever since I was too young to remember, my family has had one significantly exciting tradition. We're not too big into over-the-top traditions, but we do things like family dinners and family game night, the occasional backyard barbecue, a New Year's party, whathaveyou. But when Christmas time comes, the family favorite tradition gets refreshed, hidden in plain sight, and then hunted for.

Each Christmas every member of my family (including Kelly) goes on a treasure hunt for one of their gifts. It's a fun and free way to take the emphasis off tearing open unnecessary paper, and gleefully go through present after present of items we might not ever use.

So we treasure hunt. We treasure hunt for the gift we wanted, nay, longed for the most. And, aside from being with family and feeling warmth and happiness seep from every body, it's honestly become the part of Christmas I look forward to most. (yes, it trumps fresh-baked Christmas cookies.)

But I've been feeling like starting new traditions lately. I guess that's partly why I'm so eager to go to the beach with my family for Christmas this year. One day I'll have my own family, and I look forward to getting to tell my children (the kind with only two feet, not four) all about the traditions we had growing up. I want to create more pass-down-able traditions and experiences.

While I was looking around online for homemade gift ideas, I found some neat ones that are potentially tradition-worthy.

Here is my favorite: Writing.

“We are now writing a chapter of our family history each year. We’ll pick a topic, and each family member will write about it. One person plays ‘editor’, collecting the stories, and presents them all together for Christmas. We’ve written about our favorite Christmas, the house we grew up in, and this year we’re writing about how we met our spouse. Last year, my Mom sent out her first draft of her entire life history. This gift costs nothing, unless you choose to make fancy copies or books. It does take a little time if you want to contribute quality. It will, however, carry a lasting value unmatched by any tangible gifts we’ve exchanged, or even experiential gifts!”

With as much as I know my siblings and I are capable of writing and telling stories, I think this kind of thing would be fascinating for my parents. I want to start working on something like this for them for perhaps their anniversary.

And another one: games.

"This year is going to be a family trivia game.”

In general, trivia is fun, but if every member of my family came up with ten varying difficulty level questions about themselves, we could have an awesome trivia game in no time at all. And not only would there probably be hours of laughter, but we might also learn a thing or two about each other.

And one last one: a memory jar.

“The most wonderful gift I’ve ever given (it’s still talked about years later) cost me almost nothing. I spent a few months contacting friends and family members and asked them to send me memories and old pictures of my grandfather. Then I wrote one memory (or printed one picture)on each of 365 business card sized pieces of cardstock. I folded each in half and secured it with a bit of tape, then placed them all in a big jar I decorated. Every morning for the next year, my grandfather would take out a paper, open it, and see what other people cherished in him. He loved it.”

Yet another great gift idea for the parents.




I think things like this would bring our family even closer, if that's even possible. And would pave the way for future generations -- setting in motion some family traditions that may last longer than I can even fathom. :)

Reminiscing.

Yesterday I was given the charitable task of finding a new home for an old overhead projector that still works. My obvious first guess was a school and since I have personal ties to North Marion High, I called there first. The woman who answered sounded more like a child and she put me through to the librarian, Pat Conlon.

Mrs. Conlon's assistant patched me through to her after asking my name. Then Mrs. Conlon picked up the phone and said this:

"Oh my goodness, I can't believe it! Is this really Alison Scott? The Alison Scott of Alison and Susan Scott from Future Educators?"

We proceeded to have a nice discussion about how our lives were going, how Susan was, how the school was, and whatnot. Then she suggested I try some other schools in the area because she already had three spare projectors.

Luckily I found the AI-1000 a home at Anthony Elementary with the librarian there, named Mrs. McRae. McRae being the last name of a middle school friend of mine. I'm taking a guess it's her mom considering there aren't too many McRae's around the area.

I think it's fascinating that even five years after graduation and eight years after leaving the Future Educators club, Mrs. Conlon stills knows me and Susan by name. It's mind boggling really. Mind boggling and flattering, both.

I like to think I left a mark on that school -- a positive mark. And being remembered by a librarian that I lost regular contact with after my ninth grade year really gives me the impression that I did. It kind of makes me want to get back in touch with teachers like George Wayte (drafting and CAD), Russell Murphy (Chemistry and Physics), and Kalebra Jacobs-Williams (French). They were more than my favorite teachers -- those three were my friends. I wonder where they are these days...

It also makes me think of Mr. Butterfield, my gifted teacher from kindergarten through 8th grade. We've written before. And I've talked to him on the phone. My mom invited him to my high school graduation party and never let me know he RSVPed. When I opened the kitchen door to him standing there with a card in his hands, I almost started crying because I hadn't seen him in four years. I hadn't seen him in four years, yet he still cared enough to show up.

When I showed him my senior design project (the new CAD drawing of the entire high school with the new additions, bus routes, and fire escape routes), he was as proud of me as my own parents were. Aside from Mom and Dad, he is the one constant role model I had growing up.

He is the reason I've read all the classics. He's the reason I love chess, can create optical illusions with paper and a straight edge, and love the game Password. He is the reason I'm a die hard C.S. Lewis fan and the reason I knew how to play pool at 12-years-old. He's the reason I wrote a children's book detailing the attack on Pearl Harbor and the reason I respect Bette Davis as a cultural icon.

Most kids don't know the same teacher for nine years. I did. That leaves an impact on a child.

I remember the exact tone of his voice and the scent of the cologne he wears. Most children go through school without putting much thought into what kind of impressions their teachers will leave on them because most children only have any particular teacher for one year.

I miss him. I think I'll write to him tomorrow.

A difficult lesson learned.

Life is tricky.The world never offers an easy solution.Altruism is hard to capture these days.And even the light of the firefly is unreliable.But like the light of the firefly,just when you start to believe hope is lost,the mason jar world is illuminated again.

--A.Scott

the submissions on PostSecret are quite relatable tonight. 

With a fist full of change, but no sense.

Tonight I find myself with a list of names, 61 cards to make, and no motivation. Where is my Christmas spirit? Maybe if I sat in the room with the Christmas tree and music playing... I might try that tomorrow night when nothing else has piqued my interest.

I have friends (hence the 61 cards). Thank God. And like all the people in the world at one point or another, some of my friends have fallen into rough patches. Rough patches, I say that include anything from relationship crap, health issues, car trouble, accidentally throwing something into a dumpster that you shouldn't have, financial problems, school trouble, losing a job, lackluster lifestyles... whathaveyou.

I always want to be available to listen, but sometimes it's difficult for me to simply be a human diary for a friend. This stems from my unexplainable passion for finding solutions.

Perfect example: Susan called the house tonight and, with a very snarky laugh, said "I threw the cupholder for my car into the dumpster today." (it was stuck to the bottle that had been placed in the holder) Immediately I asked her if she had tried to fish it out. When she said no, I suggested a slew of make-shift tools to aid in the retrieval. Later I found out none of which worked.

As much as I want to listen and offer a gentle ear and kind, almost brain-numbing consoling, it physically pains me to hear my friends in distress. My instructing on solutions always comes with the best of intentions, but often times is executed with the poorest of tact or tenderness (and I've acknowledged this more than once). Susan, I'm sorry for all but telling you to dumpster dive for a cupholder you can probably much more easily replace or go without.

At the same time however, sometimes I find my friends take my occasionally all-too-accurate suggestions as attacks on them personally. It's as if they feel my suggestions are criticisms of their situations. This makes me sad and reluctant to ever say anything at all. I don't know any other way than to say exactly what I believe will fix a situation and it is never my intention to be critical of my friends.

I know very few people who are aware of more wayward doings than I and who judge less. And this shows in the number of people who trust my ear and trust my locked lips -- and I wouldn't have it any other way. But I don't think it's wrong of me to be hurt by the attitudes of my friends who misunderstand the suggestions I offer.

Recurring Dreams

While on the phone with a friend the other day, I randomly recalled a recurring dream I had as a child.

My family and I were evacuating (a place I understood to be, but looked nothing like) home. But we had to drive through flooded plains and strange, desolate, almost war-torn environments. It was like the National Forest had been burned and then flooded.

There were ravenous starving animals lurking, stalking the car. All kinds of animals -- things like cougars, alligators, bears. They had no shelter, so they were all out, exposed on the plains.

We were driving a station wagon (?). A very low one. Each time we ran out of dry ground, my parents had to decide if the wagon would make it through the giant puddles of flood water of if they were too deep to drive the car through. At which point, we'd have to find another route.

We had a bunch of our stuff piled on the roof of our station wagon (?). At one point, a piece of luggage tumbles off the roof and gets mauled and devoured by alligators. This is usually where I would wake up.

It's a weird dream and until this conversation with a friend, I hadn't thought of it in years. And thinking about it, there's no obvious reason this conversation should have sparked thoughts of that dream. I think searching for a reason that it suddenly came to mind is bothering me more than searching for a definition of the dream.

I don't always wake up analyzing the actual dreams I've had, but I do wake up wondering where particular dreams have come from.

Hear me out. The abilities of the human brain and the capacity of it are currently incomprehensible, unfathomable. The brain is the well-spring of human feelings, creations, experiences, memories, actions, and discoveries. There have even been theories that our brains, our thought, are all connected -- the collective conscious, they call it. I like that idea.

What made me dream about evacuating a home I did not recognize and traveling through a shattered and desolate land with predators threatening our every turn?

Well, C.G. Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, suggests we inherit part of brains from our ancestors, much like we inherit some of our physical features. Could memories be hereditary? A sort of collective unconscious??

If that's the case, who knows where my dream comes from. Perhaps my ancestors had to make this trip that recurred in my mind throughout my youth.

Maybe it's not the National Forest burned down, but rather the Great Plains of the United States after a devastating fire? And maybe the station wagon we're driving was a Conestoga wagon my ancestors drove across the Oregon Trail. It's entirely possible. The Great Plains and a Conestoga wagon would not be items my active brain recognized as familiar, so it's perfectly understandable that I would unconsciously translate them into being a recognizable location and a modern vehicle.

Maybe, thanks to my collective unconscious, as a child, I was remembering a journey my ancestors made.

If that is true, imagine the possibilities and discoveries of history I could make if I were able to harness and control my collective unconscious!

If you want more science and less whimsy, perhaps dreams are just arbitrary misfires of the brain. But how can my brain misfire something I've never experienced?

Answer me that, please.

Guns and sex.

I have a new default picture on Myspace. And it's getting some mixed reviews; although most people find it sharp and powerful.

One of my good writing friends *(Jessica) left a comment regarding how she never pegged me for a guns type of person.

I can see how that would be the common perception, what with my typical 'peace, love and compassion' persona. However, things are never that cut and dry, especially when it comes to me ... you know this.

I'm not claiming to be a pro-gun person, or an NRA freak. But -- surprise, surprise -- I do have an opinion.

I view guns control the same way I view sex ed. That's right, I said it.

Just because the "adults" ignore a topic -- an elephant in the room, even -- doesn't mean it's not blaring it's trumpet nose right into your ears, singing 'try me, try me.' So, in case you're wondering, no I don't believe in teaching abstinence.

Just like they portray the angel and devil on the cartoon character's shoulders - teasing and tempting him, just like you were tempted to peep into your parents' closet for presents at Christmas time as a child, and just like I am tempted to thoroughly know any person who actively avoids offering me that opportunity, ignoring sex and ignoring guns is the quickest, straightest route to detriment, poor judgment, ignorance, and potentially death. What you're not supposed to know, to touch, to experience, you just absolutely MUST know, touch, and experience. This is simply human nature. The 'see for yourself' quandary.

If the adults taught the dangers of both sex and guns, perhaps not go so far as to use scare tactics, but do be blatantly honest, maybe there'd be less teen pregnancy, STD outbreaks, and less arbitrary gun-related deaths.

If parents say, "look, if you have sex, you'll get the clap and then you'll never get your happily ever after..." kids say, "hey eff you. You don't know jack and I'm going to do the exact opposite of what you say because you're my stupid, stuffy mother."

But if parents said, "hey, you're growing up. Sometimes sex happens. Here's how to be safe about it. It's NOT a taboo subject so if you have questions, ask me. I made you so I must know a bit about it... I'd rather you ask questions and be safe, than not ask out of embarrassment and get the clap, okay?"

That's how I'm handling it when I have children. verbatim actually.

As for guns, the same sort of applies. I grew up in a gun-wielding home. They were locked in a cabinet in my parents' bedroom, ammunition locked in a separate compartment (a compartment I couldn't even reach until I was about 17-years-old). As a child I might not have gotten to hold them, but I knew they were there.

My parents kept guns in the house and I turned out just fine -- as did my sister and my brother. There were no secrets. And without the shadows of secrets, the mystery of the metal killing cannons disappeared. Guns weren't a curious creation to me because I knew what they were and what they were used for. My dad was a hunter. Guns provided us food.

My parents gave us kids BB guns for fun. And yes, my brother and sister shot me in the ass (actually just the back of the upper leg as I was running away). It hurt. It hurt so much I remember thinking, "man, I might be dying." Dead from an ass wound (one with a sting comparable to that of a swift hit from a paddle) isn't really that realistic, but as a child, the insta-welt seemed potentially fatal.

My point is, growing up I was taught what a gun was for and I never felt overcome with curiosity towards them. They were there. I knew they were there. And in the case of an emergency, I would be capable of handling one.

And the day the need came to get the single pump, single barrel shotgun out of the cabinet and fire a practice round or two into a stump on our property, I handled it well. The fact of the matter is, guns should never be left loaded.

Never leave them loaded. This way, unbridled rage is never an excuse for firing a gun. If it's not loaded, or easily able to be loaded, there's no chance you'll fire a gun without actively thinking about it first.

But teaching about guns alone is not enough. You can't let you child go into tamtrums and tyrades over things like not getting dessert before dinner, fight in school and join gangs and then expect them not to snatch a gun in a fit of fury the first time they argue with their brother while playing cards.

Teaching about guns starts with teaching your child patience, level-headedness, zen, and mostly the use of words over weapons. This is paramount. PARAMOUNT.

The bottom line is: not teaching your children about guns is almost as bad as putting one in their hands and saying, "here, hold this. And when I turn my back, go ahead and experiment ... see what it can do."

In this world, sooner or later your child will come across a gun or a situation that involves one. You have to ask yourself, do you want them to know exactly how to handle that situation or do you want them to be scared stiff by the sight of it and behave eratically or inappropriately?

In my opinion, the risk is too great to not teach them about guns and gun safety.

How I feel

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I have had writer's block lately.