Listen to Jim’s 3-minute podcast:

https://youtu.be/El8ACxbJImY

or read his true tale below…

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Life, actually…

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A CHRISTMAS EVE BLESSING OF SHINY QUARTERS

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“Bless your heart,” somebody just pronounced, at the vacated table.

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The eatery is bustling with noisy diners, and a rather rowdy bunch is waiting for the bussers and servers to clear the surface, or at least redistribute the grease evenly so that the source of subsequent sepsis cannot be traced.

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The Bless Your Heart employee is addressing her grand tip of four quarters the previous gluttoneers set adrift on the placemat.

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She is not amused.

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The Bless Your Heart muttering is a form of automatic censure. This longtime denizen of chaotic kitchens and foot-bruising tiled floors and bossy bosses and entitled customers knows how to suppress what she really wants to say until she can grab a smoke next to the dumpster out back.

.The words will not be as pretty as Bless Your Heart, but they will be honest and direct and heartfelt and delivered in philosophical resignation.

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Later in the long shift, at clock out time, the Bless Your Heart woman will stop by Dollar Tree and pick up a few Christmas trinkets to the tune of at least twenty-four quarter tips, wend her way home to her basement apartment that sports a wreath-decked front door and, within, a small musical Christmas Tree with twinkling lights.

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She slides the chain lock in place, groans a bit during shoe removal, slips into a so-soft robe, examines the contents of a refrigerator that holds no surprises, retrieves half a quart of eggnog, then sits lengthways on a caressing sofa, takes a sip while regarding the twinkling tree, looks forward to turning the Dollar Tree bag contents into something that will make her lone grandchild smile and laugh and clap her hands in love.

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The cares of the day loosen their hold, the memories of childhood Christmases loom sweetly, the echoes of distant family and friends diminish, and for just a moment, just a moment, the world takes time to bless her heart

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© 2022 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Life, actually…

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ALL ABOUT HAND CARVED WHISTLES AND SMALL ANGELS

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Another Christmas looms, and what do I have to show for it?

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Each Christmas Down South, I receive kind attentions and some truly marvelous trinkets that remind me of what the world was like when I was four years old.

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One of my favorite Christmas stories from grammar school is the Charles Tazewell tale of the Littlest Angel. The story of the Littlest Angel always sticks with me because of the respect it pays to the feelings of little children, the reverence with which it views the really important possessions of life.

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As you may recall, the Littlest Angel was not happy in heaven because he had left behind under his earthly bed the most important things in his small world.

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Each of these objects had absolutely no significance to anyone but him.

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That’s exactly the memory I cherish to this day. I still value most the small things that remind me of tendernesses long gone.

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I keep little memory-jogging doodads all over my book store and everywhere at home.

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Each attentive family member knows by now that what I want for my birthday or Christmas is not a tie or a shirt or a screwdriver, but a toy or a handmade trinket that is just a little bit special and that is selected out of love instead of duty.

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The rule of buying a gift for Jim Reed, should you ever be so inspired: Find something that makes you smile. Bring me your smile. And if you wish, bring me that special thing that made you smile.

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What was in the Littlest Angel’s box under his bed?

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“A butterfly with golden wings, captured one bright summer day on the hills above Jerusalem, and a sky-blue egg from a bird’s nest in the olive tree that stood to shade his mother’s kitchen door. Yes, and two white stones, found on a muddy river bank, where he and his friends had played like small brown beavers, and, at the bottom of the box, a limp, tooth-marked leather strap, once worn as a collar by his mongrel dog, who had died as he had lived, in absolute and infinite devotion.”

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What really makes my morning today is the fond memory of a little present in the mail from my big sister, sent so long ago and still cherished: A small hand carved wooden whistle with three distinct notes that I toot over and over again all the way to work, enjoying each moment of pure sound, pure love.

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Big sisters still remember what little brothers and small angels love most

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© 2022 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Catch Jim’s podcast: https://jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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Life, actually…

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A 1950s MAGIC CHRISTMAS MEMORY

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When I was small–not too small, mind you–the world was still a magical place. I wanted to introduce everyone I knew to this magic world. I thought a smashing way to do this would be to become a magician. A prestidigitator. A master of illusion. A fake fakir who could fool and entertain his superiors all at once.

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Santa Claus, who still existed back then, gave me a big, garish book of illustrated magic tricks by Joseph Dunninger. I spent hours wearing that book out, trying to master the simple tricks within.

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Later, one of my most cherished gifts, my Rosebud, came, at yet another Christmas: a complete paper-covered case full of Mandrake the Magician magic tricks. I practiced alone in my room, tried out the easier ones on my brother Ronny, and spent hours hoarding and cataloging these and other sleight-of-hand acts and gags, dreaming of the day I’d be able to fool everybody at will with my suave patter and my dashing Batman cape (blue on the outside, red on the inside, or vice versa–confiscated from my sister Barbara).

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What I did not yet know about myself was that I was shy, painfully shy, and that my only confidence remained hidden within myself, was only apparent in my heart.

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By the time I got up enough nerve to perform in front of my entire family in the dining room (even my father, though fidgety, sat bemusedly and watched my show), I was nervous but determined to go ahead with the tricks I’d learned. The easiest trick I knew, which I believe Barbara had taught me, was the one where you make an empty glass go through a solid table and land on the floor, hopefully unbroken. I actually pulled this off successfully if slowly, and went through a few other tricks I knew before the performance faded to an end.

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The family watched patiently if stoically. My fantasies had come to a head, had been realized right in my own dining room. I was satisfied and thereafter gave up magic, for I had not yet been given the gift of self-confidence and knew that I could never stand before strangers and fool them, too. I knew my family watched because they had to, because they had manners and could not help but watch, and because they loved me and would have enjoyed the show even if it had been terrible.

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So, my little box of tricks lay stored and labeled by my mother, waiting for re-discovery.

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After that, I went on to other hobbies, including amateur astronomy and sky observation. Now that was a hobby tailor-made for a shy person. I never had to perform. I could be alone a lot and my family would not worry over the fact that I spent entire nights on the roof of the house, peering through a telescope and dreaming my dreams, my starry dreams.

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Even that hobby came to a close abruptly one day, when the Soviets launched the world’s first artificial satellite and suddenly everybody wanted to become an astronaut or a star expert. Since loners have to have their own personal hobbies, hobbies that no one else they know is involved in, the skies suddenly lost their appeal as career fodder.

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I faced the fact that I didn’t want to be an astronomer anyhow. Facts and physics left me cold. What I really enjoyed about the heavens was their accessibility to the poet within me. I didn’t want anyone to require a mathematical formula of me. I just wanted to enjoy the enormous, awesome feelings that came over me when I looked skyward, and I wanted to share these feelings with others.

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Years later, I actually went to a meeting of amateur astronomers and found that they spent little time looking at stars, but much time doing calculations and explaining black holes to each other, and theorizing about the death of the cosmos.

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Sara Teasdale would not have approved, thank goodness. Do you know her poem, the one that best expresses that wonderful feeling the stars can give you if you open up to them? May I share it with you?

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This is my favorite poem:

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Alone in the night

On a dark hill

With pines around me

Spicy and still

And a heaven full of stars

Over my head

White and topaz and misty red

Myriads with beating hearts of fire

That eons cannot vex or tire.

Up the dome of heaven

Like a great hill

I watch them marching

Stately and still

And I know that I

Am honored to be

Witness of so much majesty.

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Sara knew. Sara knew me. Sara knew all about the childhood me. Through the distance of time, through the timelessness of distance, she still holds my hand and Knows.

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I hope your dreamy memories of Christmastime stars are as healing as mine. Get ready. The 25th is just a few days thataway

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© 2022 A.D. by Jim Reed

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