Christmas 2018

Dearest friends, family, readers, and companions along the way,                                    
(Apart from the commercial, this might be an appropriate soundtrack to this year's Christmas letter: Tender Tennessee Christmas)

I am writing this from Sam's father's house near Cookeville, Tennessee.  This will be our third Christmas in Tennessee since Sam and I rediscovered each other in 2015.  His family is remarkably kind and drama-free. There are no drunk uncles, no long-standing feuds, no members treated like they are less lovable than the others, and all the bodies are well-hidden---at least in this branch. 

It has rained over 6 inches in the last week, and everything is soggy. Green moss shines thick on many tree-trunks along the roadways. The temperature is hovering in the upper 30s and low 40s (around 5 Celsius), much cooler than past Christmases here. We did have sun yesterday! But we are back to grey and rainy today.

Not unlike last year, I had five days of profound laryngitis, though it came the second week of December rather than over Christmas, thank goodness.  Just like last year, it was funny to watch people around me start pantomiming, whispering, and just stop talking in response to my whispering and pantomiming. I will call that deep empathy, and the desire to connect through mirroring, rather than anything reflecting the overall intelligence of my friends. We humans are endlessly entertaining.

Sam continues to work at Penguin Random House in the permissions department, though they moved his office from the lower West Village up to 55th and Broadway. The walk is longer than it used to be and nowhere near as pleasant, so he is more inclined to take the subway.  Nevertheless, we are grateful he has steady, secure work with a boss he respects.

Alison had nine exciting months at Mood Designer Fabrics, leaving before they began shooting the next season of Project Runway.  She enjoyed many of her co-workers and much about the job.  But the long hours and less-than-admirable employment practices of the owners saw her departing in late July. She misses the steady (low) pay but doesn't miss the fatigue and inability to do much besides sleep and work.

She (me) has turned her attention to her organization and clutter clearing business and is seeing a steady influx of work.  She (I, me) find this work deeply satisfying.  It feels pastoral and useful and seems to give the clients a real lift. Most of my work is in my hometown, a two-hour train ride from NYC, so I have been staying for two or three weeks at a time with friends and family in order to fit in as many jobs as I can line up.  I'm hoping to build my clientele in New York City, but so far my network is far too small there, and folks generally hire people they've heard great things about.

So if you live in New York City or have friends there and want to give my business a boost, please recommend my services!  New York City clients will get the first hour free in exchange for a positive review.  I need to get off the ground in NYC in particular.  The business is called Moore Magic Organizing, and the website can be found at MagicOrganizing.com. 

I also have clients in Pittsburgh and Kitchener, Ontario. If you live in one of those places and are curious to try my services, be sure to get on my list. I currently will be in Southern Ontario in mid-February and need more clients for that trip.  Just mention my new-customer offer and get the first hour for only $15.  

Since pretty much all my energy goes to earning enough to stop sinking deeper in debt, I don't have a lot else to talk about.  I'm not writing, sewing, singing, supply preaching, or anything else except for performing the occasional wedding.  I still love to do weddings, but folks will have to find me via word of mouth. The annual advertising costs are too much compared to what I can earn doing them. 

I long to write, but Maslow's hierarchy of needs finds me solidly in the lower four levels. I will just have to trust that one day I will again have time for writing that is not work-related. I do believe in a society where every member can have a lifestyle that includes time and energy enough for the enjoyment and expression of art.  I would love to be going to museums, seeing shows, and writing my novel, but that would require more time, energy, and money than I possibly have.  I feel mad about that sometimes. But the mad doesn't fix anything. So I get over it and move on.

As I age, I find I am growing increasingly sentimental. I have been enjoying spending time on ancestry.com, researching connections, looking for family resemblances in old photos, and discovering different places and homesteads where ancestors once lived. Family ties, history, and genealogy are freshly meaningful.  Time with children, grandchildren, and siblings feels much more important than, say, world travel (which I also love). All the signs point to me getting older. Hmm. 

The clock in the picture above represents a successful Philadelphia Chocolate company in Sam's heritage. If you dig hard, sometimes you can find old bottles embossed with their brand too. Croft and Allen Swiss Milk Cocoa was a going concern in the early 1900s, but the company lost everything in the Great Depression.  (Well, that makes a better story.) Actually, it was "badly mismanaged by an Uncle" and went bankrupt before the Depression. (Think Uncle Billy from It's a Wonderful Life.) Oh dear. Such is life.

I think about these ancestors---the lives they lived which were just as real as ours---their hardships and their triumphs, their great failings and the disasters they survived. I think about the many sacrifices some of them made so that we could have a chance at a decent life too.  I think about the ways that, despite their best efforts and expectations, their lives didn't necessarily go the way they had hoped. (Just like ours?)

But life goes on, and the wise ones continue to point us to the things that have real value: not wild financial success, expensive belongings, or political power; but a wealth of family and friends,  a rich supply of love, courage, and compassion, and the strength of personal integrity and authenticity. This wisdom is found in all the spiritual teachings in all the world: Use things, not people. Love people, not things. 

Underneath it all, the Creator of everything good and wise has never stopped speaking and never changed the message. May we continue to seek genuine peace on earth. We can absolutely make a difference in that quest because I can work on me and you can work on you.  The biggest change we can make in the world is changing our own hearts and leading by example.

With gratitude for all the amazing, creative, compassionate, funny, wise, and courageous people there are in our lives.  

That means you.  

With deepest love to our family, old and new, 

Sam and Alison Moore

Previous Christmas letters can be found here:
https://alisonlongstaffmoore.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-silent-christmas.html
and here:
https://cliffsidechapel.com/Christmas2015.htm