Many years later, the whole hero topic is complicated. I realize that even extraordinary humans are a blend of good and bad. They save the world by day but by night, life goes on: bills, bad relationships, wrong turns, mental illness, real stakes and deadly fires. I see with adult eyes that the lives of my idols were difficult and full of hard choices. This jaded perspective is exacerbated by the flag-waving, yellow-ribbon casting of all soldiers, regardless of their actual duty or performance, as national heroes. Why does putting on a uniform make you great? It all feels diluted. I try to convince myself that there are also daily moments of valor like letting another car merge or offering to split the last snickers bar. But the child I was, who hid imaginary Jews from imaginary Nazis in her imaginary annex, would scoff at this definition as well. Not being a jerk doesn’t make you a hero either.

This week my sister called and told me a hero story. She is a family practitioner who works at an urgent care clinic. She also works for Doctors without Borders and has expertise in tropic medicine and underserved populations. When she is abroad, she rides around in dugout canoes and sets protocol for cholera epidemics. When she is home, she gives people Tylenol and tells them that the virus will run its course in five to seven days.

Several weeks ago one of her colleagues saw a ten-year old boy with an ear ache. He had a ordinary ear infection and was prescribed an antibiotic. A few days ago he and his parents were back, now seeing my sister. A teacher had noticed redness on the boy’s face near the ear. My sister asked if he had completed his medication. “No,” the mom said, “he didn’t want to take it.” When my sister examined the ear, she realized that the infection had developed into a condition uncommon in countries with widespread immunization and antibiotic programs. She called an EENT doctor and suggested he see the boy that day. She was told to give him more amoxicillin and make an appointment. She called the ER and was grilled on what she had done or not done, what she knew and what she didn’t. Finally, my sister lost her formidable Sicilian temper and bullied an ER doctor into meeting the boy and his parents at the hospital as quickly as it took to drive there.

The next day my sister received an email. The boy did indeed have the rare infection, which had progressed into a brain abscess so severe, they had to perform emergency surgery. Had he not been treated immediately, the boy might have died within hours.

I cannot stop thinking about this story. It has all the elements that intrigued me as a kid. My sister risked her reputation and within her own context, fought ferociously for what she knew to be true. She did not give up. She advocated for someone unable to advocate for themselves. She saved a life. She was rather nonplussed about the whole thing afterwards. Her nurses told her later that most doctors would have inadvertently sent the boy home. Why didn’t she? My grown up cynicism recedes as I add an inspiring epilogue. Heroes simply do what needs to be done when no one else will do it. There, my teacher will love it.

Next year that same little boy will be in sixth grade. My guess is that if asked to write a paper on “heroes,” he will choose firemen, his grandma or Jesus. He won’t realize that this homework opportunity is possible because a feisty doctor would not take no for answer. He will just shrug at the instructions and get to work.  

We own about a million Christmas CDs. We have a version of nearly every holiday song ever recorded by any creature (including cats and the Partridge Family). The rest of the household plays these covers, mostly atrocious, with delight. I only listen to one CD and this is it. Over and over. For me this is the only soundtrack for Christmas; for the rest, turning it off and rolling their eyes is part of their seasonal entertainment.  

Pan lives in our house but no notices him until he puts on his antlers. Every year at least one visitor says, “Is that an elf? Or more bluntly, “What is that?” To which the family nonchalantly says, “Oh that’s just Pan” and keeps on chatting. 

This is Devil Santa. No one is really sure where he came from or when, but he is always positioned on the tree in a way that highlights his evil nature. When the boys were little, Devil Santa was creepy. At some point they accepted him as an essential balance to all the otherwise irrepressible goodness.      

The Christmas we lived in Japan we could not pack our usual “stuff” and had no money to buy replacements. So we decorated our tree with origami cranes, washi covered eggs and kimono scraps sewn into shapes. This star is the last remnant of that tree, hand sewn from a flea market obi.

During the holidays I attempt to make every gift we have to give in three weeks. The sewing machine hums every night until I have my seasonal nervous breakdown and put it away.  

I like Jesus stories and accordingly I sing lots of Medieval passion play carols, tell supernatural saint stories and display a few nativity sets. This one we bought on a family vacation to San Capistrano, California. With misty reverence I told the boys about the returning sparrows and their magical haven.    

The first year after we were married, my mother-in-law sent me what would become an annual gift of Spode Christmas Tree dinnerware. Her mother-in-law had also given it to her throughout her life. At first I was skeptical, the pattern seemed a bit old fashioned. But as time has passed and my husband’s cooking skills rival those of any Top Chef, our holidays are all about beautiful food. And we eat everything from December 1 until December 31 on these plates. 

We have read this book on Christmas Eve for twenty-five years. There is a point in the story where everyone in our family cries. Triggered by kites and bones and fruit cake, this moment captures the cumulative emotion of the year in one cathartic, collective sob. Then we eat shrimp.    

Last week was my husband’s birthday. In our house it is a tradition to make breakfast in bed for the person of honor. For twenty four years we have done this, and for twenty four years my husband has endured his turn at the festivities with grim resignation.

There are two kinds of people in the world, people who love their birthdays and people who hate them. I love mine, my husband hates his. I start telling people a month ahead, counting down the days. My husband just shrugs when asked and changes the subject.

I love my birthday for reasons that range from shallow obvious to true confessions.

First, I am always the one to make a fuss over something. I am tickled by daily wins, mini milestones, any excuse to celebrate what feels like progress. Over time I appreciate the rituals and markers that represent lines in our life’s sandbox, offering vantage points to look backwards and forward. Birthdays are a year’s culmination of such moments and provide a collection of snapshots to sort and reminisce. My mother made me my own pot of homemade spaghetti sauce for my sixteenth birthday. My coworkers once bought me a giant cookie with my name misspelled in frosting. My son boxed himself as a gift. Every memory burns as distinct as each yearly candle.

Birthdays have a magical “all about me” factor. I am a woman with little sense of entitlement, a helper, the oldest and most parentified of children. I am one of those self deprecating people who responds to a compliment by insisting “this old thing?” or “it was on sale” or “I look fat” or “seriously, yours is so much cuter.” My birthday is the day I dig deep below the socialized layers of “no, no, you first” and allow my inner diva to sing her aria, “I was born today!!” It is indulgent, freeing, a sparkling tiara perched on my head just one day a year.

And I get presents on my birthday. I love presents.

My husband hates any fuss he isn’t in charge of, moves through time fluidly, unfettered by time lines and never, ever wants to be the center of attention. Presents are problematic because he is an ascetic and wants for nothing.

There is also the age thing. I love getting older. I fully expect to live into my nineties and I imagine endless golden years of crocheting afghans and sewing doll clothes. I tell people proudly of my solid middle age status. I look better and sound better and act a million times better than I did when younger. I was tortured in my teens, awkward in my twenties and angry in my thirties. My forties have glimpsed the “I don’t give a shit” light at the end of a long neurotic tunnel. It is not that I don’t try hard anymore. I try hard at things I enjoy and know I am good at versus what I think I should do. The want and the should are merging. Such is the gift of aging. When people say, “Are you turning 39 (wink, wink) again?” I say, “Thank god, no.”

My husband hears a clock ticking.

This birthday business is tricky. It has streamers leading into many different issues, touching on whether we prefer to process our movement through life privately or socially; whether we need one whole day a year to consider our existence or just small increments every time we jog around the park. Do we wrestle with mortality or bask in the immediacy of carpe diem? Do we like cake with raspberry filling or butter cream?

My husband was a good sport all day. He bravely faced the giant Mylar smiley face balloon at work, the over budget presents and my gleeful happy birthday chorus every 20 minutes. He was more than relieved to wake up the next day to his normal anonymous indispensability. He will need time to regroup, my birthday is less than three months away.

Sometimes you hear a song for the first time when your heart is breaking. When you are left and lost and sure no one has ever felt this alone. Then you hear this song and it is everything you feel sung exactly how you feel it. It is the soundtrack to your sad montage, a collective wail that only you can hear, dragging you forward as each scene unfolds.

Pretty Saro is that song for me.

When I first come to this country in Eighteen and Forty-nine
I saw many fair lovers but I never saw mine
I viewed it all around me, saw I was quite alone
and me a poor stranger and a long way from home

 It is a song typical of the genre I love but unique in my emotional discography. Pretty Saro dates back to the early 1700’s. The story suggests it originated in England where Saro was probably Sarah. The song can be traced only so far in the old country and then it vanishes, showing up a hundred years later in North Carolina. The lyrical dating of 1849 could have been 1749, aligning the song with an influx of Irish and Scottish immigrants to America. Saro, as she is now called, must have resonated with these new balladeers and the song moved across Appalachia, beloved in nearly every state and holler.

The story is simple. The singer loves Saro and wants to marry her. Saro wants a “freeholder” or a man who owns and cultivates a small estate. It is interesting that a “freeholder” was neither a gentleman nor a laborer, but an emerging class somewhere in between. The singer, however, has no land. Saro, or more likely her family, has ambition and wants all the “silver and gold that a fine house can hold.” She rejects the proposal and our protagonist leaves home. But Saro haunts him. He imagines all the ways to tell her how much he loves her, pleading with her to change her mind, but in the end, he knows she is out of reach.  

Pretty Saro was first recorded in the early 20^th century when a few academic heroes travelled through the mountains capturing songs that had been handed down through oral tradition. Although there are multiple lyric variations, there are two primary musical versions. One is sweeter and usually played with a mandolin or guitar. The other is more plaintive and sung with minimal or no accompaniment.  As with all music of this genre, the gender of the singer is irrelevant which gives the song a universal power, transcending a boy-girl love story. Pretty Saro carries the weight of all wandering strangers pining for another life, a happy ending that seems to elude them.  

This is one of my favorite songs. The appeal has spanned years and if I have any say, it will be part of how I am remembered. I collect recordings and compare the subtle differences in how the words and verses are ordered, how the intonations of the singer denote the regional origins of that version, how the singer interprets the content. For me the song evokes a longing that is so deep, so essential, when I listen to it I feel more human. I feel kindness and affection for those who share a similar ache. And mostly I think of my own Pretty Saro, wherever I go.

Here are three of the many renditions of Pretty Saro available on YouTube (more on iTunes!). The first is by Elizabeth LaPrelle. Elizabeth looks ageless but she is very young, in her early twenties. She is part singer, part historian, in that she sings in a very authentic style. Her version probably sounds the closest to how the song might have been sung way back when. Her five minute version also includes every known lyric. Iris Dement is stunning, her performance was recorded for a movie. Sam Amidon sings a truly lovely Saro for a modern audience. He has a music video of the song as well, but I could not resist a cute guy playing a guitar.

Sometimes a song is more than a song. Sometimes it calls back a specific moment in time, a mood, a person. The voice in Pretty Saro also searches beyond memory toward a new identity. One that accepts desire, loss and the inevitable “dawning of day.”  

Elizabeth LaPrelle

Iris Dement

Sam Amidon 

My son is in the middle of writing college application essays. I am his in house writing coach and verbal valium dispenser. In an attempt to be the best support I can be, I read a book about writing college application essays. The author recommends that when constructing a narrative, the writer must make a distinction between the “ordinary and the extraordinary.” The possibility of an interesting story begins at the point in which something unexpected happens in a commonplace string of events.

I am standing in line holding a form. The form is only partially filled out. I forgot my insurance card, my work ID and any memory of a tetanus shot. Everyone in line is awkwardly trying to make small talk. Someone pipes up that this is their first time. Someone else says, “Oh, I get one every year and I am never sick.” Several other people share their history. I say, “Do you get cookies and orange juice at the end?” I am told no, but that you get a 10% coupon to the grocery store. A guy steps out from behind the partition clutching the top of his arm and staggering. His face is winced in pain and then he grins. I look at my watch. If the person I was supposed to be meeting with right now was not in the line two people ahead of me, and if I had not gotten so sick last year, I would not be here.

My son easily applies this advice. He is able to identify unique experiences in his high school career and express himself in a way that clearly indicates why these moments have singular importance. I, however, realize that I have an odd resistance to this delineation.   

A coworker to me: “You know those people who you can set your clock to? Who are always at work or go home or go to lunch at a certain time? You are not one of those people.”

I have no trouble discovering extraordinary departures, compelling segues or absurdly fascinating juxtapositions where an aura of potential narrative shimmers. I can hear a story in a turn of phrase. I can see a story in a bright red necklace. I can cajole a story from a forlorn sigh. My problem is that I have trouble deeming anything ordinary. It is hard for me to discern just a few snapshots when I am on a perpetual adventure. When the lady in front of me at Target is schooling a teenage girl on the evils of texting, I want to share the whole slideshow.

“My friend’s daughter died from texting. Died. Crashed her car. And she was adopted from China. From China. Found her in the river. Found the phone. That is what will happen to you. They will find you in the river some day. Dead.”

What is mundane when humans are involved? 

My head is down, rifling through my wallet for a credit card and a receipt I will need later in the day. My mind is knotted with annoyances, how long it had taken to drive here, whether I should have gotten the clear labels or the white labels and how stupid it is that I am the one who has to buy labels at all. “Isn’t the Fall Season wonderful!” I look up. The cashier at Office Max is talking to me. I say, “What?” “I love when it gets cooler and the trees turn colors and we get to wear warmer clothes again, don’t you?” She is smiling. I smile back. “I know. I am wearing my favorite sweater today.” She finishes the transaction and I leave not thinking about labels. 

Although I can help my son choose and edit his best, most distinct ideas, personally I am a hopeless hoarder of snippets I consider worth saving. Scribbling, perking up and leaning over, eavesdropping, watching out the corner of my eye. I am like a child surrounded by shiny, bright, spinning widgets of plot. I am always curious what will happen next.  

 An out-of-the-blue message from my sister: “Damn sacrifice.”