{"id":11254,"date":"2021-12-18T05:54:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-18T12:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=11254"},"modified":"2021-12-10T13:55:10","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T20:55:10","slug":"a-little-louder-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/a-little-louder-please\/","title":{"rendered":"A Little Louder, Please"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer\u2019s voice on the page.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Little Louder, Please<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan Zahl Bono<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christmas 2005<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I must be going deaf. It\u2019s the season when yuletide TV ads are louder and brighter than the shows they\u2019re interrupting, but I don\u2019t seem to be hearing their message. December is swinging into its second week and I haven\u2019t bought any presents. Last weekend, my husband wrestled the fake tree into the living room and wrapped it with lights, but if that\u2019s as far as we get, I\u2019m not going to be heartbroken about it. At night with those little lights glowing, I can almost forget the ornaments are missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are my dark ages. My kids are too old to believe in Santa and too young to make grandchildren. They stopped caring about trees and holiday trappings about the time we gave in to their dad\u2019s allergies and went artificial. As far as their gifts are concerned, there are only so many ways you can wrap money. My husband likes to order his own gifts, and all I really want are my closets emptied and my left eyelid to stop sagging enough to let me see out of it in the morning. I\u2019m not inspired to do much baking. Everyone my age knows about the dangers of letting Christmas cookies into the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few days ago, a three-year-old took me to lunch. Her mother drove, but the little queen was obviously in charge. Giuliana, dressed like a Victorian monarch in a flouncy skirt and short velvet cape, issued orders from her crash-tested throne in the back seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA little louder, please,\u201d she said, indicating the car stereo. The queen\u2019s mum, like any good mother, pretended to comply by touching the volume knob.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA little louder, please,\u201d our sovereign commanded, with only a trace of irritation in her voice. Soon, such seasonal favorites as \u201cAll I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth\u201d and \u201cFrosty the Snowman\u201d engulfed us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suspect Giuliana\u2019s mother was afraid I would condemn her daughter\u2019s musical tastes as well as her own lack of parental control. On the contrary. The sappy rendition of \u201cJingle Bells\u201d took me back to yuletides past when my own kids demanded the volume cranked on Dr. Demento\u2019s Christmas Novelties, payback for having tortured my own parents. As a child, my favorite holiday album featured Jack Benny\u2019s halting violin and someone loudly lisping, \u201cI thaw Mommy kith-ing Thanta Cloth.\u201d Little ones really do know what Christmas is all about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA little louder, please,\u201d the Good Queen said again, this time for our benefit. She was having no trouble singing along with a relentlessly cheery \u201cDeck the Halls,\u201d and she wanted to make sure we heard the music, too. Any fool could see that her mom and I were so busy dissecting the past and worrying about the future we were completely missing out on the fa la la la la.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A wiser woman would have joined in on a couple of verses of \u201cThe Twelve Days of Christmas\u201d or \u201cRudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.\u201d I\u2019m sorry, Giuliana. I wasn\u2019t ready to listen.  But it\u2019s not too late. Sadly, my own collection of holiday music is heavy on a cappella versions of \u201cThe Holly and the Ivy,\u201d \u201cO, Come, O, Come, Emmanuel\u201d and carols played on antique German music boxes. But maybe if I play them loudly enough, I\u2019ll start to remember what the fuss is all about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Susan Zahl Bono<\/a><\/strong> is a California-born mother, teacher, writer, and editor who\u2019s lived more than half her life with the same man in the same house in Petaluma. She published\u00a0Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative\u00a0for twenty years. She facilitates writing workshops, including Jumpstart with Marlene Cullen. Her own work has appeared online, on stage, in anthologies, newspapers, on the radio, and in several Write Spot anthologies<\/a>.\u00a0Her book, \u201cWhat Have We Here: Essays about Keeping House and Finding Home\u201d<\/a>\u00a0was published in 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#amwriting #justwrite #creativewriting #iamawriter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer\u2019s voice on the page. A Little Louder, Please Susan Zahl Bono Christmas 2005 I must be going deaf. It\u2019s the season when yuletide TV ads are louder and brighter than the shows they\u2019re interrupting, but I don\u2019t seem to be hearing their message. December is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1474],"tags":[106,821],"class_list":["post-11254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sparks","tag-susan-bono","tag-what-have-we-here-essays-about-keeping-house-and-finding-home"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-2Vw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11256,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11254\/revisions\/11256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}