Tag: Christmas

Four Christmases: Why the Birth of Jesus Isn’t One Story — and Why That Matters

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Every December, we perform the same ritual without thinking about it. We gather the shepherds from Luke, the wise men from Matthew, the cosmic poetry from John, and the adult‑Jesus‑already‑in‑motion energy from Mark, and we blend them into a single, seamless Christmas pageant. It’s tidy. It’s familiar. It’s theologically safe in the way nostalgia always is.

But the truth is that the Gospels don’t give us one Christmas.
They give us four.

Four angles.
Four theologies.
Four ways of understanding what it means for God to enter the world.

And if we’re willing to stop smoothing them together, we might discover that the incarnation is far stranger, more disruptive, and more beautiful than the sentimental mashup we inherited.

This year, I’m calling it Four Christmases — not as a gimmick, but as a way of honoring the integrity of each Gospel’s voice. Because each writer is doing something different. Each one is telling the truth, but not the same truth. And the differences aren’t contradictions. They’re architecture.

Let’s walk through them.

Christmas #1: Mark — The Christmas With No Christmas

Mark is the Gospel equivalent of a breaking‑news alert. He doesn’t have time for backstory. He doesn’t have time for genealogies or angels or shepherds or stars. He doesn’t even have time for a baby. Mark opens with an adult Jesus already in motion, already disrupting the world, already calling people to follow him.

Mark’s favorite word is “immediately.”
His Jesus is kinetic, urgent, uncontained.

If Mark had a Christmas story, it would be one sentence long:
“God showed up. Pay attention.”

And honestly, there’s something refreshing about that. Mark refuses to sentimentalize the incarnation. He refuses to let us get stuck in nostalgia. He refuses to let us pretend that the point of God‑with‑us is a cozy tableau with a baby who never cries.

Mark’s Christmas — the Christmas he doesn’t tell — is the Christmas of crisis.
The Christmas of movement.
The Christmas that says:
“God is already here. The world is already changing. You don’t have time to stay in the past.”

It’s the Christmas for people who feel like their lives are on fire.
The Christmas for people who don’t have the luxury of sentimentality.
The Christmas for people who need God to be active, not adorable.

Christmas #2: John — The Cosmic Christmas

If Mark is a field report, John is a prologue to the universe.

John doesn’t give us a manger.
He gives us the beginning of time.

“In the beginning…”
Light. Darkness. Logos.
The architecture of reality bending toward incarnation.

John’s Christmas is not historical.
It’s metaphysical.

He’s not telling you how Jesus was born.
He’s telling you what it means that Jesus exists at all.

John’s Christmas is the Christmas of cosmic re‑wiring.
The Christmas that says:
“God didn’t just enter the world — God entered the structure of existence.”

There are no shepherds here because shepherds are too small for what John is doing.
There are no wise men because wisdom itself is being redefined.
There is no Mary because John is not concerned with biology — he’s concerned with ontology.

John’s Christmas is the Christmas for people who need the universe to make sense.
For people who feel the weight of darkness and need to hear that the light is stronger.
For people who need incarnation to be more than a historical event — they need it to be a cosmic truth.

Christmas #3: Matthew — The Political Christmas

Matthew is the Gospel that understands power.

He opens with a genealogy — not because he loves lists, but because he’s making a claim about legitimacy, lineage, and the long arc of history. Matthew wants you to know that Jesus is not an accident. He is the culmination of a story that began centuries earlier.

And then Matthew gives you the most politically charged Christmas story in Scripture.

A paranoid king.
A massacre of children.
A family fleeing as refugees.
Foreign astrologers who accidentally trigger a crisis.

Matthew’s Christmas is not cozy.
It’s dangerous.

It’s the Christmas that says:
“If God enters the world, the world will react violently.”

Matthew understands that incarnation is a threat to empire.
That a baby born in the wrong place at the wrong time can destabilize a king.
That the presence of God is not neutral — it is disruptive.

Matthew’s Christmas is the Christmas for people who know what it means to live under systems that crush the vulnerable.
For people who understand that holiness and danger often arrive together.
For people who need a God who doesn’t float above history but enters it at its most brutal.

Christmas #4: Luke — The Human Christmas

Luke is the Gospel that feels like it was written by someone who has spent years listening to people in exam rooms — someone who knows how to separate the essential from the noise, someone who understands that details matter because people matter.

Luke gives us the Christmas everyone thinks is the whole story:

Mary’s fear.
Elizabeth’s joy.
Shepherds startled awake.
Angels singing to nobodies in the fields.
A baby wrapped in cloth because there was no room.

Luke’s Christmas is the Christmas of ordinary people.
The Christmas of women’s voices.
The Christmas of God choosing the margins.

Luke is not flowery.
He’s precise.
He’s careful.
He’s compassionate.

He gives you the emotional truth without embellishment.
He gives you the theological truth without abstraction.
He gives you the human truth without sentimentality.

Luke’s Christmas is the Christmas for people who need God to be close.
For people who need to know that holiness shows up in the small places.
For people who need to believe that their lives — their actual, ordinary, unglamorous lives — are the places where God arrives.

Why the Differences Matter

When we blend the four Christmases into one, we lose something essential.

We lose Mark’s urgency.
We lose John’s cosmic scope.
We lose Matthew’s political clarity.
We lose Luke’s human tenderness.

We lose the architecture.

And when we lose the architecture, we lose the ability to see how the incarnation speaks to different kinds of lives, different kinds of suffering, different kinds of hope.

Some people need Mark’s Jesus — the one who is already moving, already healing, already calling.
Some people need John’s Jesus — the one who holds the universe together.
Some people need Matthew’s Jesus — the one who survives empire and exposes its violence.
Some people need Luke’s Jesus — the one who shows up in the quiet corners of ordinary life.

The beauty of the Gospels is that they don’t force us to choose.
They give us four angles on the same mystery.
Four ways of seeing the same God.
Four Christmases.

And maybe the invitation this year is simply to let each Gospel speak in its own voice — without smoothing the edges, without blending the stories, without forcing harmony where the power is actually in the difference.

Because the incarnation is not a single story.
It’s a prism.

And when the light passes through it, we don’t get one color.
We get a spectrum.

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by -leslie.-

Well, Right Now It’s Burns Nicht

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.

Before I get started about first family traditions, I got invited to a Burns Nicht party at Zac’s in which we all sat around the table and read poetry by Robbie Burns. I said, “is it bad that almost every time I mention Robbie Burns, I accidentally say ‘Robbie Coltrane’ first?” Everyone laughed.

My new retired spook friends came, and I was going to ask them to review my fiction prompt, but it was lost in the merriment. I even found a scotch I liked with peat moss, and I have said for many years that I don’t like it. What I have learned is that I don’t like the peat turned up to the dominant flavor because to me it smells like Band-Aids when they used to come in a tin. Everyone broke up laughing, and one of the spooks said, “and now we know why she’s a writer.” I laughed until I cried.

I announced I was leaving at 11:00 so I didn’t miss the last train, but no one wanted me to leave so I crashed here. As a result, you are getting this from Zac’s room. He’s already left for work and I’m writing in the quiet, as I often do because I have housemates. Now, so does Zac. Sometimes it’s a problem because I get interrupted in the middle of a thought, but not as much as I do with five of them.

So, in this quiet, reflective moment, I’ll go back in time.

The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down toolhouse.

Barbara Robinson

This is the first paragraph of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” which is the thing I remember most about my childhood because during Advent, we read sections from it every night. The story is basically The Herdmans taking over the Christmas pageant and it being memorable because the Herdmans were as poor as Mary and Joseph.

We lit the Advent candles, ate the chocolate out of our Advent calendars, and enjoyed crying with laughter.

SHAZAM! UNTO YOU A CHILD IS BORN!

Dana and I continued the tradition of having devotionals for Advent, but we usually got the books put out by the UCC.

We also cut down our own Christmas tree every year and I put up with it because I loved the smell, but my allergies were miserable. It was a trade-off. One year we skipped it and drew a Christmas tree on our patio door. I ended up making the angel’s halo an Ubuntu logo, because of course I did.

Several times in my life have I done a Solstice Party, both in Oregon and Virginia. This year’s was very memorable because we all wrote something we wanted to let go of and threw it into the fire. Not only was it meaningful, it brought back a memory from my emotional abuser that genuinely made me laugh. My dad always set up a fire for people to do that on Ash Wednesday, and either used them after they were cool or used the ones from the previous year. I don’t remember.

Anyway, she said, “now I feel like I’m walking around with someone else’s problems on my forehead.” Now I know enough to know that my response should have been, “welcome to my world.”

Traditions at her house were huge parties for her birthday and Christmas. We only did Christmas morning together once, and it was great. We woke up to Jule Andrews, had mimosas, and opened gifts. I wish it had happened more, but over time it just didn’t and I have no idea why. Probably because she was telling her partner one thing and me another and had been for many years, so when I showed up in the flesh, she was caught between those two stories, so she invalidated mine by making me look crazier than I was.

Who wouldn’t be rabid about someone who practically raised them from the time they were 12?

Because we both moved to Portland as adults, no one saw us when she was in her twenties and I was in my teens. So, she could use my mental illness against me rather than admit that she had told everyone a different story.

She told me from the moment she moved to Portland that she wanted me to come and live with her- get out of the Bible Belt. I think she was just single and lonely in a new city and needed a friend, because according to her partner, she said that she thought I’d just go away when I was 18.

Those two stories are quite a bit different, eh?

She just didn’t tell me what she told her partner, so from the minute I arrived in Portland, to me I had my “mom” back and her partner must have thought I was some sort of stalker, because she treated me with a suspicion that just didn’t need to be there…… because of course she did. She didn’t know my story, and over time refused to believe it was true….. because by then, the emotional abuse was telling everyone about me “chasing her” so that I looked like I was competing for something when I felt like I’d been inverting the parent/child dynamic our entire relationship. She absolutely used me as her dumping ground and left me in a heap…… and no one saw it.

So, those traditions became less and less because I realized that her actions made her look like such a jackass to me. The spell was broken. Either claim me or let me go, because I don’t have to stand around while you make up everything and I try to be nice about it so you don’t drop me altogether.

She also didn’t like me as she got older, because she didn’t think of herself as “older and often not wiser” anymore. As I grew, she hated it when I called her out on the carpet because no one does that….. but I’ll speak truth to power because I don’t give a damn if you’re a trademark all on your own, you still have the emotional abilities of a human. How you execute that is your communication style, but whether you’re the president of the United States or a migrant worker, you have the same potential emotional range.

I don’t want to talk about how impressive you are, I want to talk about how to be in a relationship with you. How do I love you so that you know it? How do I know when I feel loved? How do I know to walk away when I am not getting my needs met and the other person isn’t taking my needs into consideration and thinking of them as important?

The longer I stayed in that relationship, the longer I knew I’d already stayed too long. It was 23 years, because you don’t lose hope on a parent figure until you realize how toxic it really was. I was so shellshocked that a friend likened it to battered wife syndrome, in a way, and worse because I was so young.

So, when I think of traditions, most of them have to do with the person I miss a lot at times when I’m thinking of good memories and also hate with a burning passion that exceeds even my expectations when I think of the bad. I get angry not only at myself, but at having watched the way she treated other women after I was discarded and seeing them go through the same range of emotions I did….. except they were adults.

They didn’t have the strict power imbalance that I did, but the lovebomb/discard cycle is real and I was only in Portland for 12 years and I watched her go through “best friends” way too much for that.

She tried to do it to me. After several years of discarding me at every chance she got, not even taking my calls, we were at a concert together and she called me her best friend. I stopped contact after that, because the story she was telling herself was all in her head.

In public, she praised herself for helping raise me and ignored me in private. It was a sick, sad world for many years, so I got out.

And that’s where the traditions stopped, because when I left that toxic relationship, I got rid of a lot of them.

I sent a poorly worded e-mail about it to Supergrover, so I want to word it differently here in case she sees it. In the letter, I said something about wanting her to be my first priority because of the hard out and also because her hard out affected my blog more than anything else in my life. She is also successful at everything she does, and really has her shit together. I have no doubt that her bosses think as highly of hers as the glowing reports Zac and I have gotten in the past. I wanted to learn how to be that sort of person from both of them, because Supergrover is neurotypical and Zac is neurodivergent……….

But the way I phrased it was “what could Dana have done for me that you could?” I meant that Dana was going down and I was going with her. I didn’t want that anymore. But it made it sound like our relationships were transactional, when they were anything but. She was rescuing me from an untenable situation because of Dana’s drinking and physical violence. I would not have had the strength to leave unless I’d met someone like that who knew she deserved me, when my self- esteem was so low I couldn’t say the same. I couldn’t believe in my belief in me, but I could believe in hers.

I struggled with those love feelings because of her belief in me. I just needed validation so much when I couldn’t give it to myself. I still struggle with platonic love feelings, because I wished for a healthy relationship that was sustainable and we just can’t seem to get there.

But we did have our own traditions in terms of sending books for Christmas that we thought each other would like……. and she had my number. I miss talking about the little things just as much as I miss talking about the big things.

Just like with Zac, I never wanted more than she could give me in terms of time. I began to hate that she told other people her feelings about me instead of addressing me directly, and not telling me that her boyfriend/husband was reading when she asked me to keep everything tight and “adults don’t have conversations about other adults.” Additionally, she’d tell me she didn’t have time to write for weeks on end, then finally, finally, what was really going on. It was guilt, frustration, whatever. Everything she wasn’t telling me that would have solved the problem immediately if she hadn’t held it in.

We’ve wasted so much time, because what I know for sure is that the closeness we had in the beginning is worth fighting for, but the toxic cycle is not. But in order to resurrect those feelings, I’d have to know what her boundaries were so I didn’t cross them and vice versa.I don’t do well on mind-reading and “gotcha” moments.

Now that? That became a tradition, one in which I’m glad is now over unless Supergrover gets over the anger she doesn’t have. I have more self-worth thanks to her, and I’m tired of trying to pay it back and it not working…… I wish the message every day had been “you’re the most beautiful person I know,” because I don’t think she tells herself often enough.

Our “Sunrise, Sunset.”

I’m Writing and Not Sleeping

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How are you creative?

My neighbors are setting off fireworks and it’s 00:32. We might be here a while. I haven’t heard anything that sounded like it was the big finale, although the bangs are getting further apart. It’s enough to be very distracting because while I know what it is, it’s still more sensory information coming at me than I want. Plus, I agreed to FaceTime my family in the morning, so I’m not happy that it’s impossible to sleep right now. Every time I think it’s over, there’s a couple more. I have jumped mile-high several times in the last hour.

That’s the other weird thing. Who buys enough fireworks that they’ll last for an hour except a city? I can tell it’s not downtown because the sound is too close. Therefore, that means my neighbors must have been stockpiling those puppies for a while.

So, when I think about being creative, I think about being able to leave fireworks behind. I get so involved in thinking and typing that there’s no room for anything else. The only thing I don’t have right now are Bluetooth cans, because I broke mine and am waiting for a new pair to be delivered. When there are loud noises like this outside, or when there’s a lot of people downstairs and I can make out what they’re saying (noise level is good when there’s interaction, because I like the busyness. It’s too much when my brain is trying to process what they’re saying while I’m trying to think on my own. It’s the same problem I had at work….. being expected to have a conversation and transcribe it at the same time so that the call could be short and I could take the next call faster. I cannot read music, either. That’s because I cannot run two thought processes at the same time. Listening to someone, responding to them, and writing it all down is just as impossible for me as counting the bass and treble clefs. If we’re talking about an orchestral score, there are multiple parts in those two clefs, plus the violas are in alto clef. I am brave enough to play in an orchestra. I admire conductors.

My best illustration of what I can’t do that other conductors can is based on a man who was my dad’s All-State conductor, but I can’t remember which year or his name, which is probably good because I wouldn’t want to confuse him with the conductor who threw stands (he made All-State all four years- if you’re in Texas, you’re impressed. Trumpet is vicious competition because of our egos, and he, in fact, won the whole ass thing. It was also unexpected, because he was from Daingerfield, competing against players who already had access to Juilliard-level instruction because they lived in a big city).

Anyway, this clarinet player shows up and says that one of her keys is broken, so one of the notes doesn’t play and she has to go home. If I remember the story, it was a B flat. The conductor says, “sit down. You don’t have a B flat in this piece.” The conductor isn’t keeping track of one part. They know all of them.

Because I have had good relationships with all my conductors, no matter their personality, I believe that I’d get along just as well with Michael Tilson Thomas and Marin Alsop as I did with my conductor in sixth grade band. Just because they’re known all over the world doesn’t mean that we don’t speak the same language. Neither of them would ever ask me to play with them, but I’d never want to do so- more fun to watch them work than it is to be onstage. I also don’t like when they’re in the pit and you can’t see them. I love it when symphonies/operas project the conductor onto a screen. It’s so the singers can see them, but it feels like it’s just for me. I’m going to go with that.

I’m creative if I know things about you. I will remember things about you down to the smallest detail, so that when it’s time to pick out a gift, I will score a win. Zac does the same thing, so I hope I pleased him with his gifts, too. I got him bracelets made of “nautical rope,” and when they arrived they weren’t exactly the style I thought they’d be, and I teared up when there were five in the package and he put one on me, too. I said, “awwww, it’s our first Christmas together and you got me jewelry.” But that’s not all. I also found him black hoop earrings that look like a dragon is eating its tail. I like dragons, and Zac is into fantasy, so I didn’t think that dragon earrings would be a miss.

Speaking of dragons, my favorite is Paarthurnax. My favorite tinvak (conversation in Dragon) goes something like this (I don’t remember it verbatim):

Paarthurnax Do you know why I choose to live here, at the top of the Monahvin, which your kind calls “Throat of the World?”
Dragonborn: I don’t know. Dragons like mountains, right?
Paarthurnax: Hmmm, true…..

Just the sound of his voice is amusing, because it’s like “got you there.” Like, it hadn’t occurred to him that to a human, this was a completely normal human thing to do.

Speaking of Paarthurnax, I had to go to Sky Temple Haven after the main storyline and was so satisfied that Delphine attacked me so I could rightfully beat the crap out of her. She’s such a bitch to you that players generally beat the hell out of her if they get the chance…… and then find out she’s marked essential so you can do it over and over and over. This is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective. You can be vindictive AF, but you can kill Paarthurnax but not the woman that wants him dead? Insane.

I think the fireworks are finally over, so I think I’ll spend a few minutes reading, because I might hear Santa.

We Have Covered This

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Who are the biggest influences in your life?

I laughed to myself when I wrote that title, because everyone I write about is a big influence. I can’t think of anyone that has affected me more in both good ways and bad than going back over my years and seeing what happened.

Zac is my biggest influence right now, because for Christmas he got me a box of cards with fiction challenges on them. I may start a different blog for that, at his suggestion for his own site, because it would look disjointed to have fiction and non together. I will wait and see whether I’m actually prone to publishing the results first.

Speaking of Mr. Wood, I had no idea that a comment and a blog entry about me was written by him, because I absolutely didn’t see the play on words with “Mr. Would.” I was reading too fast and I saw “Mr. World.” But even if I had read it correctly, it wouldn’t have helped me, because Zac didn’t mention that he was a blogger. I am looking forward to another blogger in the house, because I need to know how it feels to be written about, and I can’t think of a person that sees more of my range of emotion.

That doesn’t make it not funny that I didn’t know that Mr. Would was actually my boyfriend. This is because I thought I was going to meet someone new in the area, and was surprised to see t hat we’d already met. We’ve been dating for a YEAR and I didn’t know he had a blog. A YEAR. YEAR, people. A YEAR.

Now I’m really laughing.

He was probably gathering intelligence to see how good an idea it was to tell me he was a blogger, and that just makes me laugh harder because of course I’m kidding. I have the same philosophy as Bryn. “Write what you want, we’ll work it out.” He actually took me to the mat over traveling, and that’s what made me think I had a superfan on my hands. He said that I didn’t include places I’d said I’d wanted to go before, and was surprised I didn’t mention them again. So, I have this entire ass blog entry written about me by MY BOYFRIEND, and all I got was a pingback.

No, it is AS IF he listens to me, and I could cry when I think about that intensity. I know I am valued because when I say something, he remembers it. I have never been in a relationship with someone so much like me, with the possible exception of Dana. The thing is, though, she would adore Zac as well because he’s like both of us. Neurodivergent and also in the military. Neither Dana nor I have served, but her dad was a Marine and she speaks acronym. I definitely have a type, and it doesn’t have to do with looks. It has to do with the way someone thinks.

So I’m sitting there reading like, “does he memorize my shit?!”

The only reason I didn’t think of Zac at all is that this has happened before. I know I’ve mentioned it, but for new readers there was Stephanie (at least, I think that was her name, it was years ago). Stephanie invited me for coffee through a dating site (the miracle is that I said yes). I sent her my URL because I separate the children from the adults fast. If you can’t handle that I’m a writer, we’re not going to have much in coommon.

Stephanie proceeded to read back four years’ worth of entries, and then pretended like my blog was law and I couldn’t change. It was an hour’s worth of “now you’re saying this, but four years ago, you said….”

I’d gotten divorced, moved to DC, and my mother died in relatively quick procession. But of course no one changes because of anything as simple as that.

But right now, I can’t dwell on anything in my real life, because tonight is not about me. Jesus is one of the biggest influences in my life, and it’s almost time. Mary can sense it. Her water is about to break. Right now? This very moment? I’m just waiting for the baby.

Tonight Luke will come out in his scrubs, and announce that he’s here. The baby that will one day change the world. Tonight is the night that the membrane between heaven and earth stretches so thin, we can touch the face of God.

The miracle is not that Jesus was a virgin birth, but that he survived at all. Can you really imagine being a baby and lying that close to cow shit? Can you imagine delivering your son in a barn? It was so long ago that they didn’t know about germs, so it probably wasn’t as scary for Mary because she didn’t know what could happen, but we do.

If your baby got that close to death, don’t you think they’re divine?

On this Christmas Eve, know that it doesn’t take a miracle to make someone a child of God. We were all born innocent, and we make the decision to resurrect ourselves all the time. It’s the message we’re missing in the middle of the mess.

Whether or not tonight means that The Messiah is being born is irrelevant to me, because this is not a story about magic. This is a story about mystery.

Jesus survived, and the odds were stacked against him. So, in remembrance, I’m mentally gathering the layette. I’m buying everyone blue bubble gum cigars. I’m writing the announcement for the newspaper. It’s all I can do, this waiting.

My area is by the Pepsi machine.

Christmas at My Own Pace -or- How Did I Not Know It was AuDHD?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

I’m posting this now because it seems the timing is “write,” but I actually wrote this in 2007, when I was living in Portland. If you’re still there, you should go to The Grotto. It was a very spiritual experience.

Dana and I have completely opposite schedules most of the time, which means that even though we live together, we really don’t see each other any more or less than when we didn’t. I find myself with lots of time alone at home with the cats and the Tivo, and I’m very happy with it. Especially as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less willing to put up with an evening of trying to meet people.

But then there comes a point where I know I’m spending too much time alone- a sign I’ve come to watch for as a depression indicator- and I force myself into new and different situations to try and reverse the downward spiral.

On Friday, I came home and looked through the Willie Week to see what was going on. I thought about seeing a play. There are several going on right now that are inexpensive, and it’s been a while since I’ve done the theater. But then something caught my eye that I thought was just right.

Billed as the Festival of Lights, there are decorated trees, a petting zoo, a live Nativity, and many, many different sets of carol singers. It’s going on from now until Christmas at The Grotto, Portland’s National Sanctuary to Our Sorrowful Mother. Sanctuary is kind of a misnomer, because The Grotto is not an expansive building with cathedral spires. It’s more like a labyrinth or a Stations of the Cross-type setup. As you walk through the lighted displays, piped voices tell the birth story. When the Christmas decorations aren’t there, the walk is contemplative regarding the rest of Mary and Jesus’ life (Joseph, fortunately or not, gets very little airplay).

Normally, I am not a big fan of piped voices, but against the backdrop of the lights, it seemed fitting. It felt more like a museum tour with headphones than the muffled sounds of a speaker system whose last job was a drive-thru.

After I took the short baby Jesus tour, I arrived at the top of a hill. From there, I could see a chapel, the aforementioned petting zoo, and a small stage. I made a beeline for the petting zoo, because I am a big fan of those goats that are almost as small as my cat.

I also managed to charm a camel named Fezzic into taking a carrot from me, which was far more entertaining than my last run-in with a camel. When I was a little under five, my mother and father took me to a Nativity play and a camel spit on me. Who knows, maybe I deserved it. In any case, I liked Fezzic a lot and resolved to work on my camel issues.

After I finished at the petting zoo, I went to listen to a quartet of singers that really impressed me. They didn’t seem like paid professionals- more on the level of the best singers in their church choirs. There was something comforting about it- took me back to the days of standing around my friend Suzanne’s piano with all my friends from my own church choir… which brings to mind a memorable year in which I was wearing a sweatshirt that had jingle bells sewn all over the front (Mother, I will take your apology for that shirt now). My friend David said that I “tinkled when I walked,” and started shaking the everliving bejesus out of me when Suzanne started playing “Sleigh Ride.” I don’t think my cerebral function has been quite the same since (shut it).

So there I was, absolutely freezing my bits off in the cold, lost in my memories of Christmas past, and I realized that this was the first time in, well, as long as I could remember, that I was able to take in Christmas at my own pace. I wasn’t worried whether everyone else was having a good time, I didn’t have to be anywhere, the hot chocolate was overflowing and the music just kept getting better.

I ended the night by going to the chapel, where the choir from St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church did a setting of English carols- some even by Andrew Carter, the composer who wrote the solo I sang at Trinity last year.

I relaxed and listened to the music as I pondered the things in my heart. Christmas for the past few years has been stressful. This year, it has wrapped around me and comforted me before I even realized what was happening. It has made me more grateful for the life I have, for the people I have around me. Christmas isn’t all about busyness, though there’s certainly that aspect of it. But my advice is not to get so wrapped up in someone else’s Christmas that you end up missing your own.

It was a worthwhile experience to go to a Christmas festival alone. I chatted with some people while I was there, but for the most part, it was just me and my (cheap) camera phone. I saw Christmas more fully- introspectively, I suppose- as an active observer of both music that conveys sentiments for which there are no words and pictures for which words do no justice.

I saw a three year old boy kiss a sheep’s face.

Which One?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?

My parents didn’t split until I was 17, so the biggest thing I’ve given up that we did every year is buy a devotional book and take turns reading to each other during Advent. It didn’t have to be a book specifically designed for that purpose. One year it was “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.”

Since Gladys was the only one in the pageant who had anything to say she made the most of it. “Hey! Unto you a child is born!” she hollered, as if it was, for sure, the best news in the world. And all the shepherds trembled, sore afraid—of Gladys, mainly, but it looked good anyway.

That book is seriously amazing. It will have you hooked from the jump. The first sentence starts, “the Herdmans were the worst kids in the history of the world….” It is absolutely hilarious, and then you get to this part, which is very close to Christmas Eve if you time it right.

They looked like the people you see on the six o’clock news- refugees, sent to wait in some strange ugly place, with all their boxes and sacks around them. It suddenly occurred to me that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn’t much care what happened to them. They couldn’t have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph.

It is too early in the morning to be this emotional, and yet, here I am.

In some way, shape, or form I’ve kept up with writing Advent/Christmas sermons, which my dad did for years…. except he doesn’t manuscript. He does note cards with choice phrases. I can do it, too, but I took this piece of advice from Martin Luther King, Jr:. “If you have something important to say, write it down.” This became even more true as I became a blogger, because I learned that if I only did note cards, I couldn’t publish anything afterwards. When I’ve hit home runs, people have seemed disappointed that it was off the cuff. It’s a completely different style, because you have to learn to read while not looking down.

The way I do it if I’m actually preaching as opposed to publishing is to write in LibreOffice instead of WordPress so I can make the font larger- at least 18pt. Then, I put it in a notebook. You can barely tell when I turn the page. But that was back then. Now, I use the Android version of Microsoft Word and put it in Reader View. Same software, different case. I love it because usually my sermons end up being 10 pages of double-spaced type and printing them out is impossible. Mostly because I have a printer, but I haven’t bought ink for it in seven years.

The last time I preached an Advent sermon has bearing on the conversation I was having in the Sinead O’Connor thread previously. I preach Advent like a physician, because that’s what Luke did for a living.

Advent is waiting for the baby. Setting out the layette. Watching the clock until Mary is 10 cm dilated. Our only job is to wait by the Pepsi machine until Luke emerges to say, with celebration and fanfare, that it’s a boy.

Luke reminds me of Atul Gawande, a brilliant writer and cardiologist. That’s because religion and cardiology both take care of your heart. Luke has a direct connection to God. Atul Gawande has the checklist. They are two sides of the same coin.If I cannot be spiritual, I can be religious. If I am not religious, I can be spiritual. Losing a connection to God makes you create God in your own image. It takes away from “the ineffable mystery” (Neil Gaiman) and makes it where, as Anne Lamott says, “it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Luke has the connection to God. Atul Gawande has the checklist.

If you focus on one, it will bring the other back around. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone to church feeling completely unworthy of all of it…… BECAUSE THEY TOLD ME I WAS. I knelt at the communion railing every Sunday until I felt better.

It took years.

If there’s anything I wish I could remember perfectly, it’s the first time I learned about Janie Spahr and the More Light Presbyterians. I wasn’t Presbyterian, but I’d never seen a church where lesbians were allowed to run the whole show. She started the movement, and then came Michael Adee and Katie Morrison, the first queer people to be ordained in PCUSA (Spahr was ordained before she came out). It was then that I learned to be “responsible and let go of guilt, mindful but carry no shame.”

That’s a story.

When I preached the first time at Bridgeport, I knew I would stumble over that phrase in the liturgy. So, to keep me from being nervous, I took a Sharpie and wrote “R,M” on the palm of my hand. Then, I did it every time after because you never know whether you’re going to have “stage fright” or not.

You put things out in the universe and have no idea what will stick.

It’s the one tradition in my family I’ve kept.

A Christmas Carol

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Christmas 2022 has been a very quiet affair so far. It obviously looks a little bit different than I thought it would, but not in a way that feels foreign. Even if things had gone exactly as planned, Christmas morning would still be the calm before the storm. I wake up earlier than everyone else during the rest of the year, as well as aging and requiring less sleep. Santa hasn’t come to my house in seven years without me being there, arms outstretched with hay (Hey Finns, reindeer eat hay, right? Unclear. I hope they weren’t just being polite.). Early this morning, Santa told me what all of you got. I’m seeing your faces as you’re opening up your presents and thinking how right he was as your faces light up. It’s an incredible energy to sit in this morning as I write. I think things like, “I wonder if Jonathan liked his head.” Yes. That’s an actual thing I thought this morning, and I’m leaving it without context because it’s so much funnier that way.

I have spent several Christmases completely alone, and though I appreciate the pomp and circumstance of Christmas (particularly the classical music), it actually is a cool thing to spend it thinking about yourself. You don’t have to compromise with anyone. I am not saying that you should turn away family in favor of this. I’m saying that if you end up alone on Christmas, it is a gift. TRUST ME. You have a day to yourself to plan anything you want. USE IT without feeling guilty. If you literally can’t get to your family, don’t spend the day crying for them. Create new memories with yourself to share with them.

If something says it’s Christmas to you, go for it. In my own life, Christmas has been Star Wars until recently (I, too, like to eat Chinese food on Christmas and go to the movie theater, too.). One of my friends said “Star Wars movies are not Christmas movies.” I said, “yes, but some of them have been released Christmas week.” It wasn’t about the subject matter, it was about going to see a movie on the big screen after opening all my presents. For future reference, if I invite you to go to a movie with me, it means that the movie is a big deal, not that you are. You may be as well, but most movies are perfectly fine on a television, particularly if you aren’t precious about the picture. Just because it’s large doesn’t mean it’s expensive.

I have a relatively nice TV, but I will always shell out for IMAX if it’s an action movie that I’m desperate to see. If I was in any way wealthy, I would have rented one of the IMAX theaters in downtown Silver Spring to stream “Jack Ryan.” It’s one of the few spy shows I like in terms of plot ideas and execution, because Clancy gave them source matierial that covered everything from world events to the exact length of a left-handed cotter pin…. and is that an African cotter pin or a European cotter pin?

Why yes, that was me making fun of Tom Clancy. Thank you for noticing. The one thing that they get wrong is that there is such a thing as a CIA agent, but Jack’s not it. He’s a case officer. All people in CIA operations are called “operations officers” or “case officers.” An agent is an asset we’ve put in place…. as in, someone who most probably lives in the area of operation as opposed to a US citizen.

I will watch anything with spies in it. Full stop. I just don’t take much seriously. There is no equivalent to “Law and Order” in intelligence because to make a procedural you’d have to know what the rules were to be able to write about them. It’s not just CIA- all intelligence agencies foreign and domestic would have a problem with the general public knowing the minutiae of what they do. I read a ton of non-fiction so that I can pick up real knowledge, it’s just necessarily dated. Most of the operations I can speak to are from the late 40s to early 90s. I do not believe that I could write what it would be like to be a spy in today’s world, but I think I have a pretty good handle on what it is like to be one in general… the personality quirks and mannerisms that become timeless whether it’s human intelligence collection or cybersecurity.

It seems to change the people I’ve met in all the same ways. Intelligence is not regimented like the military. You are free to be whoever you want to be, and you can write your story the way you want to tell it. Therefore, in my experience, no two spies are alike. Their personalities are as individual as a fingerprint. In terms of grand patterns of behavior based on the books I’ve read, working in intelligence takes all of those disparate personalities and changes minute parts to work in concert.

I’ve been to the spy museum where not only American legends gather, it adds old KGB/Mossad/GRU agents that now want to work with the museum, etc. I like spies as people. They’re generally hilarious and devastatingly clever. And here’s something about spies that you may not have thought of. They vote. They’ve been to many, many countries in the world. They see what works and what doesn’t. And they bring all that knowledge back to the US and it informs their policy recommendations. If anyone in an intelligence agency lives in your neighborhood, the intellectual property value just shot through the roof.

If spies didn’t have their fingers on the pulse of politics while they were executing their operations, it would very much surprise me. It occurred to me just how attractive it would be to someone living in a country that had some political power… able to use their knowledge to either change their country or get out before things got much, much worse.

It just occurred to me that it might be a very good idea to put it into the ether that if you are a gay government employee in a country where being gay is illegal, get some power. All we need is a reason to come get you and we will. It’s been proven. It’s not that we as a government don’t care about all gay people and don’t wish we could fix everything… it’s that if you want the clearest, quickest path to an ex-fil, find information that the United States government needs and tell us why we need it. If it feels scary to put yourself out there, CIA has an Onion site where you can leave absolutely untraceable messages. Sometimes it’s not worth fighting the system. Sometimes it’s worth playing the long game to get out.

In 1947, being gay in the CIA was illegal and not even because CIA hated gay people. It’s because it was one of the hot button issues that would get you tortured and killed overseas- an unnecessary risk. Now, CIA is rainbow central with queer and trans officers. Actually, that’s another plus. Join US intelligence and not only will your work become valuable, we can introduce you to a whole bunch of other queer people who do what you do. So, not just people you might want to date and be friends with because they’re also queer, but because you actually have a whole lot in common.

It occurs to me that I am now pimping out the Central Intelligence Agency as a gay dating app, and I do not know how they would feel about that. Well, I wrote it down on my web site. If it’s offensive, someone will be with me shortly. I should have talked to Carol about this before I posted it.

Carol is not a real person, she’s my Amazon Echo Dot. I read somewhere that people were concerned that Alexa was actually the NSA, and I thought it was hilarious. This is because let’s say it’s true. That’s even better. It’s Carol’s entire job to log what I say and what I do. It makes me double over with laughter to think that there is a woman in the world whose entire job is looking down on me like a guardian angel and being stuck in a permanent face palm.

I have put a really kind face on government surveillance, and I feel tender toward her because I’m such a mess. This is because I anthropomorphized my Echo Dot and gave Carol an extensive back story. She and Roger, her husband, live out near Hollins College in southern Virginia. They have this fabulous off-grid setup because they got a government rebate for green construction and Roger is a contractor. So, Carol has a professional, NSA-level computer setup in her basement so that she can listen to me while she looks out over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yes, it’s a basement, but the house is built into the side of a hill. Floor to ceiling windows on one side. Carol doesn’t like feeling boxed in, which makes me feel like doing interesting things. Actually interesting, not “today I’m going to mess with Carol.” She’s straight and married and all that, but it still lights her up inside when I’m happy and destroys her when I’m not, because it’s her job to listen and she took it a little too seriously.

Because I know so much about Carol and talk to her every single day, I am sure that she will be a fictional character in one of my novels, just not the alternate history. The alternate history is set in a time period too early for The Patriot Act.

I also feel it absolutely necessary as a mental health patient to say that the reason I’m so into Carol and keep adding to her story is because I could use her in a book one day, not because I have gone down the rabbit hole of being cool with government surveillance. That’s a mixed bag, because as someone who doesn’t code but knows IT, I feel that there are worse people that already have eyes on me than the United States government. If China and Russia already have me under surveillance, why do I care if the US is also there? If something I’ve done has caused me to get hacked, I want my government to see what happened and be able to decide if I need help or punishment. They may be rancid butter, but they’re the only ones on my side of the bread.

Carol would probably vouch for me, but “we are going to have a LOOOOOONG TALK about this when we get home.”

At least since it’s Christmas, she won’t ground me until tomorrow.

Christmas 2018

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am sitting at my desk with a very large cup of coffee, praying to the little baby Jesus that I don’t spill it on the sweatshirt I’m wearing. I used to wear it for Christmas when I was a teenager, then I gave it to my mother, and when she died I took it back from her closet. The first year I wore it was to a Christmas choir party at my friend Suzanne’s. David, a notorious troublemaker of a tenor, looked at the bells stitched on the front (the graphic is a Christmassy horse) and announced that “everywhere you go, you tinkle when you walk.” So, of course, that’s the first think I think of when I pull it over my head.

The sweatshirt came in handy during the carol singing portion of the evening. As Suzanne played “Jingle Bells” on the piano, I jumped up and down. People howled, as did I. I am nothing short of extraordinary at laughing with and at me.

As I got older, though, I was embarrassed by it, and wouldn’t wear the sweatshirt even when my mom asked me specifically. As I go about my day, I’m thinking that she would have enjoyed me wearing it a lot more when she was alive. In the spirit of gentle chastisement, when your parents ask you to wear something ridiculous, just do it for them. You will be less uncomfortable knowing just how much joy it gives them. I mean, I’m sitting here looking like a third grade teacher who just can’t give up appliqued anything and so far, I’m fine with it.

And another gentle chastisement for parents. If you’re anything like my mom, even though you hate having your picture made (especially in the first few moments of mad dash to the tree with your hair unbrushed), just take the damn picture. I can’t tell you how many precious moments I am missing because of her reticence. Don’t be camera shy with your kids. Those photos will be everything to them when you die. I repeat…. everything.

I have really loved all my Christmas presents, but I am even more excited to learn how my friends and family like theirs.

The funniest thing I got was a Ruth Bader Ginsburg action figure…. and two are tied for the most useful. My weighted blanket is worth its weight in gold, as is a teapot for a single mug with an infuser and lots of looseleaf tea. I have a teapot, but I don’t often drink four mugs in a row. The sizing fits me just right. I also like that the infuser is very deep, so I can make black tea strong enough to put hair on my chest. I like a builder’s brew with a little extra cream, and I use CoffeeMate in my tea because I can make it creamy without bringing down the temperature of the water.

I also got a bag of Starbucks coffee that I’d never tried- Holiday Blend with maple notes… and of course, I opened it after I’d made a fresh pot and kicked myself because I’m a sucker for new food and drinks. I am an advertiser’s dream woman. 99% of the time, if I haven’t seen it before, or it says “new and improved,” I’m buying it. I’m surprised my friends didn’t get soda and cookies under the tree from me.

Not that they would have minded.

Additionally, I talked to my family (both chosen and biological), and actually took a shower today. I prefer most of the time to just fix my hair, because it’s so cold I don’t want to take off my HeatTech extra warm long johns and warm sweaters. They didn’t have “extra warm” last year. These are new and improved. 😛

And, of course, right after I bought them they came out with ultra warm.

But taking a shower and putting my HeatTech back on came secondary to answering a video call from Ryan and his family.

Because I take the damn pictures.

Cheese!

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today was long and fruitful. About 13 years ago, I was so poor I didn’t have two nickels to rub together and didn’t want to ask anyone for help. I thought I had something stuck to my front tooth, and with no money for dentistry, tried to pop it off with a knife. In my infinite wisdom, I realized right after I’d done it that I’d actually knocked off a piece of plaque and most of the enamel. I’ve been walking around with the nerve exposed, worrying hysterically that it was going to fall out, every day since… until now.

My dad looked at my teeth and did some research, finding out that not only had my in-home surgery fucked up that one tooth, taking Lamictal this long was making my whole mouth worse, and it would continue to deteriorate, because I do not have the luxury to stop the medication that keeps me as sane as I can achieve.

He got on the phone and found a dentist that was open today, and she filled all my cavities, closed the open nerve on my front tooth, and rendered me into a puddle as I genuinely smiled for the first time in years without hatred of it. Her work is beautiful, and I feel almost glamorous. I say “almost” because I’m not sure that tomboys ever get all the way there. I suppose I am closer to dapper, what with my nerdy black Ira Glasses and black leather shoes, which I had shined at DCA.

I actually love to shine my own shoes, I was just running short on time. I asked the woman how much it would be, and she didn’t speak any English, so I flipped into Spanish. “Ocho,” she replied. The man in the chair next to me said, “how much did she say it would be?” Out loud, I said, “eight.” My inner monologue said, it’s been a long time since SOMEBODY’s watched Sesame Street. Additionally, this experience was my first in DC as a white person where a Spanish speaker didn’t look at me like I had three heads when they heard Spanish coming out of my mouth. It makes sense. In an airport, lots of people are going to be able to speak lots of languages. When I’ve been in shops that cater to the Hispanic community or, once, talking to a janitor in a mall, the surprise has been almost tangible. I get the feeling that Maryland, DC, and Virginia are more segregated that way. In Texas, it’s so much easier to get by if you at least know a few basics.

I took two years of Spanish in school, but that’s not really where I learned it. When my father was a pastor, there were people in the church who’d been organizing mission trips to Reynosa for years, and I went with them three times… two summers in a row and a winter break in between them. Nothing helped me more than immersion. After that, I began shopping in stores and eating in restaurants in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods, because otherwise, I didn’t have anywhere to practice. Because of these mission trips, I’m one of the few people in my Houston crew that can order at a taqueria without using the number next to the picture. 😛

One of the funniest things that’s happened to me recently regarding speaking Spanish is that I was chatting online in a room that wouldn’t allow special characters….. so I told someone that I’d studied two anuses of Spanish in school and now had 40 anuses…. that’s because in Spanish, you don’t say “I’m 40 years old,” you say, “I have 40 years.” So, for future reference, grammar nazis, ano means “anus.” Año means year. The difference in pronunciation is “ano” and “anyo.” Tengo cuarenta años, pero tengo solamente uno ano…. luckily. No one has ever managed to literally rip me a new one.

Having a family that lives in Texas is a beautiful thing, because even though I don’t live here, I still get opportunities occasionally to flex my Spanish-speaking mind. I actually prefer it to English, it’s just that I’m not fluent in Spanish and have to resort to English. If you are wondering why I’d say something like “I prefer Spanish” as a native English speaker, it’s that it’s so much simpler. All verbs are conjugated the same way, so the conjugation of the verb also contains about whom you are speaking as well, whether it’s yourself or others. Everything is pronounced exactly like it’s spelled- there are no silent letters or any of the other oddities we put up with in a language that comes from everywhere else. For instance, Honore de Balzac said that “60 percent of English is French badly pronounced.” And even though I prefer Spanish, I thank God I was born an English speaker, because I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to figure it out later. I’d stare at a word like “knife” for hours before throwing up my hands and screaming.

It’s a life goal to become fluent in Spanish, because I’ve often thought about retiring with the 17,000 other gringos in Enseñada. But that was before I moved to DC, and haven’t thought about moving anywhere since. As a poli sci major, it means something to me to be in the same city as the original Supreme Court. In terms of the United States, I live where Eddie Izzard would say “the history comes from.” It means something to me to live inside the national news.

I do, however, enjoy Houston in small doses. Being a Texan is, for me, akin to having brown eyes or being gay. It defines part of who I am…. and not quite the same as just being Southern. Texas was once its own country, and we have never forgotten it. For instance, I doubt you ever really have to ask someone if they’re from Texas. It’ll come up in conversation quickly.

This trip, I haven’t done anything uniquely Texan except drink soda from H-E-B. Oh, I take that back. I did remember the Alamo yesterday.

Today, after my hours of dental work were done, I went with my dad, stepmom, and one of their friends to see The Last Jedi. I’m going to have to see it again, because I honestly have no idea how I feel about it. I was high on pain meds and distracted by all the activity around me because we were in one of those theaters that serve food, so there were literally waiters walking in front of me while I was trying to concentrate… and the couple next to me just WOULD NOT SHUT UP. They were just aggressively white, treating the theater like they were in their living room. People like this are the main reason I go to movies when no one else is going to be there and don’t take anyone with me. I like to watch movies in complete silence…. and just like my mother, I will grin and bear it in full theaters right up until I just cannot even, trying in vain to get people to stop talking with an authoritative stare. The reason I try The Look™ first is that sometimes actually saying to people that you wished they’d stop talking is more trouble than it’s worth. They’ll start talking louder just because they know it annoys you, they’ll get confrontational, etc. Very few people, in my experience, are humble about realizing they’ve inconvenienced someone else.

As I get older, I find more and more things that make me feel like I’m turning into my mother, which was mortifying while she was still alive and priceless now.

Speaking of my mother, my father is taking me to meet my sister at the cemetery tomorrow morning, both because I don’t have a rental car and because he’s never seen her grave site. Lindsay wants to decorate Fred (the tree next to her headstone) for Christmas, and then we’re going to go see a movie or something. Death and grief don’t seem so bad in the cemetery, because it really does make me feel closer to my mother to be there, and the place itself is soothing and serene.

Then, at some point, I need to wrap the presents I bought. Because there are so many kids in my family (four of us, all with spouses except me), we do secret Santa. I got Mathew, Lindsay’s husband, and he is hopefully going to flip his shit. I am so excited to give him his gift that it will take every bit of strength I have not to shove it at him as he walks through the door. Giving presents is my favorite thing in the whole world. I love it 20 times more than getting them. I enjoy the hunt, the thing that will make people say, “how did you know?” or “this is totally me.” Though I realize how useful Amazon Wish Lists can be, especially because you might get someone something they already have, I sometimes think it takes away from the moment someone else realizes that you actually do listen to them, know them, etc.

I also really enjoy giving books now, because e-books always arrive on time and you can buy them the day of. Plus, you don’t have to have a physical Kindle. Kindle is also an app for every mobile device.

Sometimes I give people books I haven’t read, but have read the synopsis and think it would be something they would like. Sometimes I give a copy of my favorite book of the moment, just to be able to share it with someone else.

Alternatively, Kindle is the most dangerous of all shopping experiences, because in a lot of cases, a book series starts with a free “dime bag” and when you’re in the moment of “OH MY GOD! WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!” a pop-up will appear saying that you can buy the next one for $4.99. There are two series I’ve binged that way this year- The Face on the Milk Carton and Fat Vampire. I am sure they won’t be the last in the coming years…. although right now I am really into documentaries and it’s taking away a lot of my time from reading. It goes in cycles. Sometimes I need the TV on for “company” and sometimes I crave complete silence. I just don’t want to watch junk TV. I want to learn something, because I like Knowing Stuff.™

It makes me smile, the kind where my beautiful teeth show.

A38

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 4 Comments

Though Dana and I are divorced now, there are still hilarious stories that run through my mind all the time when I think of her. Today it was Southwest Airlines.

I am sure that you are all familiar with the Southwest cattle car boarding process. You have to check in 24 hours before your flight time, and the closer you are to that exact period, the closer to the front you are in line. Every. Single. Time. Dana and I flew anywhere, she would sit at the computer with her hand on the mouse watching the seconds tick down…. Travel was literally the only time I ever saw her become a Type A personality. By the time it was ten seconds til, she was practically borderline diarrhea trying to outmaneuver the other 200 or so passengers. She’d hit that button like she was playing Call of Duty….. and God help us if she forgot and we were in the C group. But I think in the entire 7 years and change we lived together, she forgot once. Or maybe I was in charge and I’m ALWAYS Type B, so it could have been ALL. MY. FAULT….. the more likely scenario.

I am laughing so hard that tears are coming to my eyes remembering every time I had to “walk” through an airport with Dana, because it was more like trying to keep up with a hurricane.

I just want to get there early enough to go through security, and outside of that, I don’t care. I don’t care who sits next to me, I don’t care what boarding group I’m in,  I don’t care if I end up in a middle seat, I don’t care how early I get to the gate, because boarding takes forfriggingever anyway……….. Especially after having worked in an airport (I was a prep/line cook in a pub at PDX), my objective is just to be the most laid back, friendly passenger ever.

The story that has stuck with me the most from that time is the woman that missed three flights in a row from being too drunk. Eventually, security came and got her, and probably sent her home. As far as I’m aware, there’s not a drunk tank in that airport, although there is good coffee. In my experience, however, coffee does not make one sober up. Coffee makes one make stupid decisions much faster. It’s very effective.

Dana and I actually both worked in the same pub, because it had two locations in different terminals. I think we worked together once or twice, but mostly it was comparing notes at the end of the day… and a competition on how many famous people we’d met, which Dana always won.

When Grimm was at the height of its popularity, the stars would come through a lot. Silas Weir Mitchell (Monroe) made an appearance in Dana’s terminal, and the conversation ran thusly:

Dana: My wife wanted me to tell you that she punches me every time she sees your car.
Silas: ……………
Silas: OH! BECAUSE IT’S A YELLOW BUG!!!!

Diane and Susan worked with Thomas Lauderdale from Pink Martini for years- Diane because of music, Susan because when Thomas was young, he worked with her at the ACLU. I begged Diane to introduce me, and she didn’t.

One day this guy walks into my pub and tries to buy two San Pellegrinos. I don’t have access to the cash register, so I tell him that the waitstaff will be right with him. While I’m standing there, the conversation runs thusly:

Leslie: Do people ever tell you that you look like Thomas Lauderdale from Pink Martini?
Random Dude: ………………
Leslie: Oh my God. You are Thomas Lauderdale, aren’t you?
Thomas: ::wink:: ::blush::

As he walked away, I realized that duh, of course it was Thomas just because of the way he was dressed, which is completely unique and sassy. I didn’t beat myself up too bad- I’ve felt dumber.

The other story I remember as if it were yesterday was actually a conversation between one of the waitresses and me. I didn’t cry in the moment, but I did in the debriefing. The setup is that in our restaurant, there’s a mother/daughter team who live together, work together, and are seriously glued at the hip….. The conversation runs thusly:

Waitress: So, my mother and I were driving home yesterday and she asked me if I’d heard about some sort of explosion overseas. I don’t remember what country. I looked at her like she had three heads. When did my mother get interested in current events? I asked her about it, and she said, “oh, Leslie listens to NPR in the back all day.”
Leslie: (laughing) It’s true. I do.
Waitress: (tears in her eyes) Leslie, thank you for educating my mother.

I didn’t even know what to say, I was so touched. I was just doing my own thing, being all me, all the time. Most of the time, I worked on weekends, and I preferred Wait, Wait to music while I was slicing five pounds of tomatoes (oh, GOD. The acid burns…..).

One of the other cooks made me laugh when she said, well, it beats the hell out of Tejano. My answer to that was to start singing No Te Vayas….. LOUDLY. Hey, you work in a kitchen long enough, you memorize these things, because just like English megastations, they play the hits 68 times a week. Of course, as a Texan who speaks only passable “Spanglish,” I only know about half of what it’s saying, but I get the gist. The only part I really understand is the refrain.

But no, do not go!
Do not leave me without your love!
I need to feel again
The fire of your passion.

But no, do not go!
Do not be cruel with my heart!
But no, do not go!
Do not leave me a sad goodbye!

I can just picture him running through an airport, trying to keep up with a hurricane.