Women Over Fifty

To write about pleasure is easy.  I love Christmas.

A Christmas story.  When my oldest child started junior high school, she decided she wanted to play in the Jazz band at her school.  Never mind that she had neither an instrument or the training to go with it.  She could read music and the school offered to loan her an instrument and teach her to use it.   It wasn’t long before she talked a neighbor woman into selling her her own flute and paid for it by washing our car every weekend.  She really wanted to play the flute and she did.

This daughter became proficient quickly and sometimes played her flute with the choir at church.  Then came a Christmas Eve candlelight service.  The church was dark except for the candlelight.  The choir stood to sing, and my daughter stepped up to the solo position with her flute.  What happened then was amazing.  The trilling song of the flute drifted over our heads.  Nothing else.  Just the flute in the darkness.  It was so beautiful.  I just stood there and cried as finally the choir joined in for their song, my daughter still accompanying them.  I felt I had been given a gift.  I will never forget it.  This is pleasure in its purest form. 

So pleasure comes in many forms.  This daughter is now grown and has a talented flute player of her own.

A different kind of pleasure.  Today I went to Target and bought a gift card to be given to an underprivileged teen in our community.  This gives me pleasure.  I can imagine the struggle as the teen tries to decide how to spend it.  Will he/she buy a CD or a game for a computer?  What if he can’t play CDs or play a game on a computer?  Will he/she buy something to wear?  New shoes, a T shirt (this isn’t the gift card to end all gift cards after all).  Maybe the gift card will inspire the teen to buy something for his/her family.  I can only imagine and it gives me pleasure to do so.

A giving Christmas.  I enjoy the giving part of Christmas, but I’m not trying to make the world wonderful for everyone with one gift.  Even my much-loved grandchildren won’t get a world of wonder for Christmas.  You know, I once tried to do that for my grandchildren - to make their Christmas a wonderful thing.  Their parents stopped me.  While they appreciated the thought, they were afraid of the children’s expectations growing each year.  They wanted Christmas to be a reasonable holiday and I had to respect their wishes.  Just one wonderful gift, but not too wonderful.

Giving gives me pleasure.  Every Christmas I have a budget for giving to charity.  I set the amount, then decide who will get what share of it.  I am cautious about whom I give the money to.  I don’t want my hard-earned money going into some fat cat’s pocket.  So, I do my research and spend my budget carefully.  This year, the recipient of most of the budget goes to a charity that provides not only food, but clothing, housing and counseling for the needy.  They brag that 91% of the money they receive goes to the people they serve, not to overhead.  They must use a lot of volunteers.

I love the lights of Christmas.  I love the sparkling lights on all the homes at Christmas time.  Christmas doesn’t really begin for me until two things happen.  My husband puts the lights up on the house, and we go out to dinner and a show with friends.  That’s what begins Christmas for me.

Carols, Candlelight, the Christmas Story.  What makes it really Christmas for me are the carols, the candlelight services at church, the reading of the Christmas story.  This is so vitally important to me.

What gives me pleasure?  Seeing happiness around me, whether it’s the one, not too wonderful gift, or the happiness of a needy person with a full stomach and shelter.

 Marilynne 

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