Margaret DeAngelis

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

A New Road, A Secret Gate : Goodbye, old friend, I whispered to the camel when I visited with him on Sunday. I ran my hands along the reins, patted his head. We both need to be on our way. . . . May we travel all our new roads in joy, may we be surprised and delighted to find secret gates that open for us to ... (posted Jan 6, 9:33pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Goal Post : Posted, with only a little comment and explanation, my fiction writing goals for 2010 . . . (posted Jan 6, 1:03pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Personal Best : I did send him the more later, a few links to other pieces I’ve done that I thought he might find of interest. . . . In September I sent him a note on his birthday. And I peeled the yellow ribbon off the picture frame. . . . the old silence has resumed. But it has a softer, less ... (posted Jan 5, 10:35pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Open Every Door : Remembering Georgia and South Carolina was just what I needed. On this night before i go back to work, carrying both fear of failure and fear of success, I pulled up the picture below, of the open door of the cottage I occupied at the Hambidge center in Georgia, and found my symbol for January, if not for the whole ... (posted Jan 5, 2:03pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

With a Cherry on Top : 1. Dates stuffed with cream cheese 2. Keebler club crackers spread with cream cheese and a maraschino cherry on top 3. Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate spread with cream cheese 4. Cake with cream cheese icing (may skip the cake part) 5. Cream cheese fudge Are you seeing the pattern here? (posted Jan 4, 1:49pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

MMX : “All the vacancies of January ahead” doesn’t do anything for me this time. I wobbled in and out of anxiety and uncertainty this Christmas season. I am tired of thinking in terms of bleakness and limitation. I am ready for the freshness of unclaimed surprises, with my hand held out. (posted Jan 2, 10:44pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant : I was taken back 48 years . . . [to that same table] and clearly saw myself as I was that August day the summer after eighth grade. . . . And downstairs, measuring sauce and filling bottles and keeping after the complicated paperwork of commercial food preparation and distribution, is the man I will marry twenty-two years later. (posted Jan 1, 8:28pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Kyrie Eleison : However much of this you read, however much of anything of mine you read, thank you. I hope you will follow me into 2010, on a highway in the light.. . . Culling these excerpts from my private journal was an interesting and instructive exercise for me. . . I . . . remembered the wild and forward-moving energy I ... (posted Dec 31, 12:09pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Unguessable, Unfathomable : “You go to too many funerals,” he said, and I wondered what . . . .would be the correct amount? (posted Dec 30, 8:39pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Something of a Schedule : I checked my work diary this morning. The last notation was made on Saturday, December 5: “A day lost to recovering from the twisted ankle, yet I wrote a 1 ¶ scenario for a new story!” (posted Dec 29, 1:32pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

The Feast of Stephen : My father’s birthday was the Feast of Stephen. At Christmas of my first year of college I had a boyfriend named Stephen, whose father was also Stephen. My boyfriend’s family had my family over to dinner on the day after Christmas, and the two Stephens and my father raised a glass of wine to each other. (posted Dec 27, 7:19pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Augusta Was a Right-On Woman : Yesterday happened way too fast. Lynn was here, and then she was gone.In the evening I drove about 60 miles east to St. John’s (Hain’s) Church in Wernersville, . . . Although I am glad I went, stepping back into that milieu served mostly to add to the jumble of emotions and hopes and regrets and plans that I am ... (posted Dec 25, 1:09pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Paco and His Wagon : Here is the third annual posting of the essay I wrote about the Christmas 1953 episode of Dragnet. It is my “Yes, Virginia.” . . . here’s Paco and his wagon again. Thank you for reading, so much, so often. (posted Dec 24, 2:44pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

What Would the Prince of Peace Do? : Best of Holidailies I knew instantly that something wasn’t right about this. And it took me just two clicks to get the facts. Try it yourself. Enter into Google the words “Michelle Obama soup kitchen cell phone” (Google will probably anticipate most of what follows after “soup”) and you’ll be able to access the same Snopes.com explanation I did. (posted Dec 23, 9:31pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Like Every Other Baby : During the storm on Saturday I triggered some accusations that I was a Grinch or a Scrooge because I wondered about the unbridled giddiness and joy some people were expressing about the snow. It’s just snow, I said, and it poses risks and losses for a lot of people. Oh, some of my friends said, those risks and losses only ... (posted Dec 23, 8:20am)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

'Talkin 'Bout Joy : We have a tape of the Claymation [Christmas] special, taken from broadcast, I think. (Hey, Santa, it’s available on DVD!!) I don’t think we’ve watched it together as a family since Lynn went to college. (It was our Second Sunday in Advent family spiritual experience — seriously.) (posted Dec 22, 7:50pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Coming of Age : I can still see my father standing at the counter in the kitchen, the cord from the wall telephone reaching across the doorway into the dining room. He is paging through the phone book. I am sitting on the couch in the living room. He is calling garages. (posted Dec 21, 8:02pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

What Women Want -- 2009 : Men! Do not be deceived. A watch, even a diamond-studded eco-friendly watch that runs on light and never needs a battery and costs $600 and is the same kind that Eli Manning wears, is not what a woman who is up with an infant at two in the morning wants. Obviously, she already knows what time it is (posted Dec 20, 1:22pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Forward Motion : Every year, it seems, there is a moment in which the hope of the season brims up in me and propels me forward. (posted Dec 19, 9:34pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Barry and Beth : Looking back, I feel deeply ashamed that I could have been so unaware of the effect a put-down of faith in general, let alone the particular flavor of it that someone was learning to embrace, could have, especially if she liked me and respected the things that I said. (posted Dec 18, 6:52pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

In Your Dreams: Cherry Dot Cookies : I keep all of my loose recipes in a red folder that is part of my Gaudete! binder, . . . Lined loose leaf pages covered with my handwriting are headed “Notes for the Advent Kitchen” because someday I am going to gather all this stuff into a formal presentation book with pictures and essays and recipes. In my dreams ... (posted Dec 16, 5:10pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Lustrum : Five years ago, when Holidailies began, I had posted only nine times to my online journal. Nevertheless, I joined Holidailies, and posted every single day from the first of December through Epiphany. Holidailies saved my journal. (posted Dec 15, 11:23pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

The Scarf : Best of Holidailies The silk chiffon oblong seen at left was a gift in 1966 from Susie P.,[who] gave me the scarf as a thank-you gift for saving her two long walks twice a week for four months. I’ve had [it] for almost forty-four years. I can’t tell you the last time I wore it. Yet still I have it. (posted Dec 15, 9:40am)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Psallat Lam in Lustro : . . . but here it is Gaudete Sunday and we haven’t sung Veni Veni yet. I put an anymous note in the collection plate (the pastors will certainly deduce that it’s from me) lamenting this and noting that the song’s omission can probably be traced to the fact that it is not in the regrettable new worship book which ... (posted Dec 13, 7:14pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Love, Lenny Montana : You know that a ritual or a tradition has attained mythic status when violating its sanctity or even changing it a little bit becomes an issue. (posted Dec 12, 3:31pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Still the Dazzling Sky-Blue Sheep : So I opened the door. There stood a man who looked for all the world like Luca Brasi,the devoted bodyguard in The Godfather.That movie had not yet been made, so when I eventually saw it, my reaction to the appearance of Luca Brasi was to say, “Oh my! That’s Dominick Costanza!” (posted Dec 11, 8:06pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Holly Claws : I am starting to rethink my commitment to reading the selections in A Literary Christmas one by one as we move toward Christmas Day. I knew that these would not be stories that would likely me made into Hallmark Hall of Fame or Lifetime Channel movies, where people enter the holidays burdened by conflict and estrangement but find hope and ... (posted Dec 11, 12:04am)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Brush with Fame : Veronica Hamel looked at me. She raised one of those perfect eyebrows, smiled a broader smile than any I’d ever seen her display in a role. “Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for telling me.” She put out her hand, I took it briefly, the way women do, and then we went our separate ways. (posted Dec 9, 3:54pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Transgression : I opened the book at random. “List your character flaws” appears on page 39, opposite a drawing of a green Buick parked over a Handicapped symbol, with the caption “Inconsiderate of the needs of others.” I picked up a pen and made my first entry, using two of the twenty lines provided. “I resent the ‘Maternity Parking’ spaces at the ... (posted Dec 8, 8:19pm)

Markings: Days of Her Life by Margaret DeAngelis (30)

Dylan and Donald : My own Christmas memories are a mixture of the glorious and the grim, and in my memoir I include one account of a Christmas morning gift-opening session when I was about ten that ended in tears for me. I thought a long time before I put that in, even though both of my parents had passed on before I wrote ... (posted Dec 7, 7:30pm)