Peg Kerr's Journal

This week's collage isn't a collage--just a picture. And not a very good one either--the people pictured are distracted and a bit tired-looking, rather than smiling at the camera, but I was so busy getting Christmas brunch on the table that I didn't have time to get a good one. Eh, whatever. This brunch with the girls and their partners was held later in the week. Eric joined me Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, but I didn't get good pictures for that, either.

Maybe it's the fact that it's a holiday week, or that I still have a Covid cough hanging on. It was a satisfactory Christmas, but I don't have a kick-ass collage to show for it. I thought of adding closeups of a few other elements--the Nutella Star pastry, or the candlesticks that belonged to my grandmother, that will be turning 100 years old this year. But they didn't quite work, and in the end I decided not to. One thing that the girls and I assured each other this year was that we wouldn't worry about having a picture-perfect Christmas. And because this collage project has been running for several years, I can be okay with a week that isn't as strong.

I plan to continue with the collage project next year. I am considering whether to do landscape orientation collages rather than portrait orientation. I will loosen my rule, allowing more than one word in the title.

Christmas



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

This is one of the weeks that has convinced me that next year I will loosen the rule I'd set for myself of titling each card with just one word. In reality, the trip I made this past weekend wasn't to a market.

It was to the European Christmas Market, an annual event at the St. Paul Union Depot.

I had tried to get several different people to go with me, but I ended up going alone. It was cold, and it was expensive (a cup of French Onion Soup cost $11), but I still thoroughly enjoyed myself and was glad that I went.

This was my favorite picture taken that day:



I tried to fit it into the collage, but it was too different thematically. But I liked what I came up with, which was an amalgamation of the various things I found hanging in the front of the market booths.

Image description: Upper center: A lit paper multirayed star. Upper left: a stylized snowflake. Hanging around the star and the snowflake are various ornate Christmas ornaments. Lower left corner: a mug with the words "European Christmas Market - 10th Anniversary." A chalk sign, lower right corner, reads "European Christmas Market."

Market



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

I spent over 3 hours trying to put a card together without success. I didn't quite take the right pictures to capture my ideas that would crystalize the week. Or perhaps I did, yet I couldn't put them together into a pleasing composition design.

So I finally decided to throw in the towel and declare the project done for the year with just one image. Hey, I'm on vacation this week, and I'm not going to struggle with this collage anymore. Sometimes enough is enough, you know? I AM proud of what I've done with the collage project this year, and I intend to continue with it next year.

See the link to the gallery below. What was your favorite digital collage of the year?

Image description: A closeup of a silver star ornament on a Christmas tree

Christmas



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

This one feels a bit like double-dipping, as it focuses on a project that I've already spoken about, the Advent Snapchats I've been doing and sending out to a small circle that I mentioned in my post about the Rituals card. Here I've gathered together a number of the subjects I've featured thus far.

It's been fun, looking for Christmas-themed things I see around me. I keep an eye out when I'm driving, and I've stopped hastily to take a picture of a cheerful family of snow people, or the Cottontail Along the Trail, the bronze bunny statue at Portland Avenue, all decked out in his Christmas finery.

Eh, I'm not going to describe this one exhaustively. Just: a card with a Christmas border, crammed full of various Christmas-themed things (ornaments, a St. Lucia figure, snowmen, etc). Lower left: a bitmoji cartoon me, smiling in the center of a wreath. Lower right: the word "Advent" in red.

Advent



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

This is one of those weeks where I was a little bit at a loss as to what the week was about, and so what would I do the card about? This is week when I start to move the felt ornaments over, one on each day, on my Advent wall hanging. I did a card about that last year. Why bother to do the same card all over again?

I realized that this slotted nicely into something I've been mulling over, not quite consciously this week. I want to talk about rituals, and the place they have in my life, specifically, when regular rituals that have been a great comfort for a long time no longer fit or feel quite right, and in fact, start to feel almost like a burden.

As I explained last year, my sister Betsy gave me the Advent wall hanging as a gift years ago.



For the last several years, I've taken a picture every day as I've moved an ornament over and sent them as a Snapchat picture to the people I'm closest with.

But this year, as I set up the wall hanging, I wondered...should I send out the pictures every day again this year? I've done it before. Heck, I could just send out last year's pictures again, and who would know the difference? What would be different about it? Have I just become a bore? But I liked sending out a picture every day to my loved ones during Advent.

So I decided to continue to take pictures of the felt Advent tree every day, but instead of sending them to that small circle, I would post them to my story. People could look at them if they want. But I would also instead send different Advent pictures out every day to my circle of loved ones. Something I found that was lovely and Christmas-y, things I saw when I was out and about. Something different. Here are the two I sent out yesterday and today:
The first picture I took at the garden section at Home Depot, and the second was a close up of an ornament display at a local grocery store. I'll continue to send out pictures of found things like these every day until Christmas.

As I said, rituals are extremely important to me: going to the Renaissance Faire every year. Washing my face with morning dew on May Day. Lussekatter on St. Lucia's day. Eating strawberries and cream for breakfast on July 6, the day after my anniversary.

But life changes. I've lost my husband, and my children have left home. Some of the entities that supported important rituals are gone (no more May Day parade by Heart of the Beast. No more lovely lazy afternoons shopping at Sophie Jo's Emporium). And so rituals slowly have to change and adapt, too, as the people you shared them with move away, or the rituals themselves don't fit your life anymore. And that can be difficult and sometimes painful. The girls and I have agreed not to exchange holiday gifts this year. It makes sense--we're experiencing a financial pinch, I'm trying to eliminate more stuff coming into my life, and we're undergoing some stress. I am trying to keep the rituals I love, yet make them over to fit my life now and not the life I had five years ago or ten years ago. Even if that means changing the rituals or even letting beloved rituals go.

It means putting up a smaller Christmas tree, and not hanging every ornament I own on it, even the ones I love very much.

I created this card around the Wheel of the Year, a concept that gives structure to the rituals I follow. I put a ritual object in each corner for the four seasons of the year. For spring, I put the Tree of Life from the Heart of the Beast's May Day parade, an annual ritual that has ended as the Heart of the Beast could no longer survive at the same financial level. For Summer, I put in the strawberries and cream I eat each July 6, remembering the day after my anniversary. For fall: the feathered fan with the mirror at its center reflecting my face is the one I bring to the Renaissance Faire every year. For winter, I included a picture of my breakfast of lussekatter I eat every December 13 for St. Lucia day.

(It would have been nice, design-wise, if I could have found/thought of something round to represent Spring, to echo the round shapes in the other three corners and the wheel itself. But the Tree of Life still felt like the best thing to choose.)

Wooden carved Wheel of the Year. Lower right corner: a red bowl of strawberries and cream. Lower left: lussekatter (saffron bun) on green holly plan, two taper candles, and a cup of hot chocolate. Upper right corner: Heart of the Beast Tree of Life (a giant puppet with outstretched arms, crowned with birds). Upper left: a feathered fan with a mirror inset. A woman's face (Peg) looks back at the viewer, reflected in the mirror.

Rituals



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I had such hopes for this holiday season.

I spent it last year alone, and I was so looking forward to getting together with my family. We have had some holiday rituals that we've done for decades: my extended family gathers between Christmas and New Year's every year, and I was excited to see everyone. We are all vaccinated and many of us have received boosters, and we are all willing to wear masks. It felt like our reward for being so diligent about keeping safe all year.

My nephew Lewis flew in from New York. He tested twice before getting on the plane and was negative each time. He came home to my sister Cindy's...and then tested positive the next day (Christmas Eve). Cindy, too, had really been looking forward to Christmas: this was the first year in decades that they would have been gathering in their own home instead of going out East. But now this meant that Cindy and her husband were forced to go into isolation, and her other two sons, Mitch and Stuart, could not come home. It also meant that my brother Chet's family canceled their trip to join us--they had intended to stay with Cindy's family (although one nephew did travel separately later). Disappointment #1.

I had planned an event during this family week for the women of the family, a cream tea at Bingley's Teas, but since our group was now reduced by one-third, I regretfully canceled it. Disappointment #2.

I spent Christmas Eve with my sister Betsy and her family, including my mom. Mitch and Stuart joined that party.

Christmas day, Eric and I had intended to go over to Fiona and Alona's for breakfast--but Eric tested positive that morning and so couldn't join us. His sons subsequently tested positive over the next several days. Disappointment #3.

That evening, Christmas night, I invited over Mitch and Stuart, Cindy's two sons who hadn't been able to go home for drinks and appetizers.

Delia had planned to come to Minneapolis with her boyfriend Chris on Tuesday the 27th. All of us--Fiona, Alona, Chris, Delia, and I tested negative that morning, so I went over to Fiona's and we had our gift opening. Yay! We had planned two more days of get-togethers before Delia and Chris had to head back to Eau Claire.

The next day, yesterday (Wednesday) Mitch called me to tell me that although he had tested negative on Christmas day, he was now testing positive. So now I am in isolation and unable to get together with Fiona's household, including Delia and Chris. I will not be able to see them again before they leave town to go back to Eau Claire. Disappointment #4. I will spend New Year's Eve alone again.

I thought of making another plum pudding on New Year's Eve, as I did last year. What better way to recognize the end of a difficult year than by setting something on fire in my living room? But I have a colonoscopy scheduled for next week and have to start limiting my diet, and I have to avoid some of the ingredients in the plum pudding a week out. That also means I will have no 12th night celebration--I will be fasting that day. Disappointment #5.

I'm grateful that my family and I are all on the same page, getting vaccines and boosters and wearing masks and testing before getting together. But despite our best efforts and diligence and cooperation, people have fallen sick. Omicron is just so damned contagious.

I am trying to keep my spirits up, and I'm glad that at least I did have a few get-together's, and the girls and I got to open our presents together. I will see Eric soon again and we can exchange gifts between the two of us then. But it's still hard, and this still sucks.

Edited to add: I took a rapid test tonight, five days out from my Christmas day exposure (per CDC guidelines), and it was negative.

The background for the card is the charcuterie board I created for my nephews Mitch and Stuart on Christmas night, with a rapid Covid test in the center. Upper left: Covid virus (wearing a Scrooge hat), with a dialogue bubble that reads "Humbug." Upper right: logo for Bingley's Teas with "no" sign. Lower right corner: Fiona and Delia overlaid with "no" sign. Lower left corner: Eric overlaid with "no" sign.

Humbug



Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

Woo hoo, I did it! 52 collages for the year completed!

Which one did you like the best?

I will continue the project next year, starting a new gallery with my next collage.

Two events this week: the women in our family had our annual cookie baking gathering this past Saturday. This week also featured St. Lucia Day. Fiona has often baked lussekatter for me, although this week she didn't quite have the spoons for that, and so I picked up some lussekatter at Fika Cafe at the American Swedish Institute for all of us, delivering some to Fiona's household and some to Eric. So we all could enjoy lussekatter on December 13.

Common theme: baking, by women, to drive away the darkness (note the candle is right over my mom). The turning over of generations, the importance of coming together at the holidays to make truly delicious food. As long as there are cookies and lussekatter, there is hope for the future.

We missed cookie baking last year due to the pandemic. It gives us such joy, and I realize how important it to us. There, along the top of the card are three generations: me, my Mom, and Fiona. My St. Lucia Day candle, lussekatter and coffee are in the center, and the bakers are at the bottom. The semi-transparent background (bakeground?) is, of course, cookies.

Baking



Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

Not very happy with this one aesthetically, but it's my own darned fault. I was too busy enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with my family to think of taking pictures. Well, I DID think of taking pictures, but I pulled out my camera in order to take pictures of the girls and myself and our respective sweeties, with plans to use them for a holiday card.

The next day, I did quite a bit of facepalming as I realized I had taken no pictures at all of the table set with the Thanksgiving feast with all the smiling faces around it. So, regrettably, I had to resort to stock art instead of using anything that really reflected the day as I experienced it. The one part of this collage that has a personal connection is the wooden figurine of the turkey and pumpkin. These are long-time holiday decorations that I put out on my front table during this season.

Sorry. I guess that it is inevitable that occasionally I do a collage that's somewhat lame. But that's just because I was concentrating on other things, which in this case I think was justifiable.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I certainly did.

Thanksgiving



Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

Just as I did in 2018, I decided on Halloween to use my Harry Potter tarot deck to do a Deathly Hallows tarot reading. I like doing this spread on Halloween. As I noted in my post about the 2018 reading, Halloween is the anniversary of the awful day that Rob and I learned that the suspicious PET scan he had recently received was not lymphoma coming out of remission, it was leukemia (caused by the first chemotherapy he'd received) that would go on to kill him a little less than three months later.

Samhain, the day when the souls of the dead are said to approach as close as they ever do to the living, or Halloween, the day before All Soul's Day, seems to be an appropriate occasion to do the Deathly Hallows tarot spread.

1 2 3


1: The Elder Wand - something that is both winning and losing
2: The Resurrection Stone - what has been lost and will not, cannot, come back
3: The Invisibility Cloak - what you've come to accept

Here is the Tale of the Three Brothers and the Deathly Hallows:



I drew three cards.

1: The Lovers - Remus and Tonks



The book that came along with the deck explained that there are two traditional approaches for this card: either an established couple, or a man making a choice between two potential lovers. (In my Jane Austen deck, for example, the VI card shows Darcy sitting with Caroline Bingley but looking longingly out the window at Elizabeth Bennet). Remus actually fits both of these traditional approaches: he and Tonks were lovers, but a choice is also involved, because Remus lost faith in his relationship with Tonks and then chose to go back to be a husband and father again (after getting a scolding from Harry).

Three years ago, I drew the King of Cups card for the Elder Wand card, which I associated with Rob. I associate the Lovers card, of course, with Rob and myself. But it's a winning and losing card because while we were lovers, and our marriage grew stronger throughout the cancer journey, I of course lost Rob to cancer.

But this card can also represent myself and the new person in my life, Eric. I've lost Rob, but I have a new relationship. Yet, there is a choice buried in that fact, too. Do I cling to my old relationship, to my status as Rob's widow? Do I move forward into the new relationship, even to the point of marriage? I am trying to decide that. Is that winning? Is it losing?

Another way to think of the card is that it simultaneously reflects me losing Rob and winning Eric.

2: the Four of Swords - Truce



This card shows the moment when the trio tries to cross the chessboard but they are blocked by the crossed swords of the pawns. They have to pause and regroup and figure out what to do. Cards with the number four are associated with stability: four sides make a square, a very stable, balanced form.

If the card in this position in the reading represents something that I have lost forever, that, too, makes sense: I have lost stability. My married life wasn't always easy, but I knew what to expect. Now my life seems upended, and as a widow living through a pandemic, I have no idea what to expect next.

3: the Seven of Swords - Deception



This card depicts seven sword-like teeth of the Monster Book of Monsters. Traditionally, (as in the Rider-Waite deck), this card shows a man carrying away a pile of swords. There is an element of sneakiness to the card. Another traditional meaning to the card is "betrayal."

I thought about how this card and meaning applied, in terms of something I have come to accept. I mentioned that Halloween has been so hard for me the past several years, because it is such a painful anniversary. It was the date that we learned that Rob's lymphoma was now leukemia, the disease that would go on to kill him. He was betrayed by a sneak attack: the chemotherapy that was supposed to save him ultimately was what killed him.

But although I have suffered from this memory for the past several years, I am definitely coming to accept it. I had fled the celebration of Halloween every year since Rob's death--turning out the lights, leaving the house, unable to bear the parade of cheerful children in costumes. Halloween was just too painful.

Until this year. I carved pumpkins and put them out on the porch with lit candles. I bought candy and handed it out. I lit all the candles in my living room, curled up with a cozy blanket, and again watched the movie Coco. For the first time since Rob's death, I actually enjoyed the holiday. And that makes me genuinely proud of myself.

I spent it alone. I decided that since 2020 was such a dumpster fire that I should celebrate New Year’s Eve by setting something on fire in my living room. Why not? So I spent the day making a plum pudding (as I did back in 2013) and then set it ablaze. What fun!






Happy New Year!