The Collective Christmas Collage Book

In which I continue to marvel at my mother's creative crafting and the way she layered, cut and glued different parts of life together.

Scroll to the end for a Josie photo and brief update.

My mother loves a holiday. She loves a candle. A sunset photo. I have no doubt she would've made some kind of candle-sunset book for solstice and Chanukah this year. She loves a menorah. A dreidel. A latke. An excuse to celebrate. A Christmas movie, a baking project. Most Christmas carols. She loves a self-created tradition, and a remixed and recreated interpretation of a tradition. She even loves that the paper bags are different during the holidays and thus, she can use them for crafting.

(Note: I am having trouble with past and present tense, as perhaps I should write in past tense, but it also seems as though these are constants and she still loves any reason to eat sweets and watch a good holiday movie.)

There are many scraps of paper that I stumble upon as I go through my mother's papers. Not all are worthy of scanning, copying, or typing. Some I am adding here, because I don't know where else to put them. And if my mother can put a recipe for granola alongside some cute characters with candy canes and wreaths, then I can put a few journal entries from 1989 alongside the collages and emails from 2010.

9-3-89

Today the girls and I drove to Santa Cruz and had a full wonderful day with Julia (Peters). We walked to a small museum where Lakshmi and Gayatri climbed on a huge stone whale. Then we walked down to the beach. Lakshmi and I built sand castles with decorations of sticks + feathers + seaweed. Julia and Gayatri sat closer to the rushing waves and they buried each others’ feet and made skin and toenails out of seaweed and shells. I am so thankful to be sharing fun and responsibility with another adult who my kids love.

These are precious moments for a single parent, and I don’t want them to end. Then we walked home and drove to the Greenpeace store. So many issues of the earth’s healing were constant reminders around the store. Afterwards, we sat on the curbside eating big pieces of pizza and watching people. When we got home, we all sat in the hot tub together. It was so relaxing. We drove home the coast way, mostly in fog. Izzy’s birthday is this week and I wanted to take Pescadero road. I stopped for my favorite french-fried artichoke hearts. We passed a small wooden water tower where Izzy and I used to pick blackberries and then go home and make pie. I have been driving over this road for 18 years and it’s always magical. When I come out of the valley and up into the hills, the fog disappears behind me and I drive into a twilight sky of pink and light blue. In the sky was my dear friend, the sliver crescent moon, shining near her constant companion Venus. On the top of the hill were three deer. I felt so at peace. When we got home, the girls and I all went to sleep together, singing lullabies.

9-4-89

We spent an hour at the thrift store this morning - half-price sale. It’s fun. We found so many surprises. At our staff meeting I found the courage to talk to Peter about some dynamics of our working together that were frustrating. It feels so awkward sometimes to talk about something I feel or sense deeply and can’t put into words. He heard me and we were able to dialogue. Lori, too, gave some insightful comments. The girls and I went bike riding, rollerskating. At home we made chicken soup, took baths and cut bangs. 

I cleared off and organized some shelves while they did artwork. Two friends stopped by spontaneously at different times. I felt so happy. Jane came by in the late afternoon and we sat on the grass and talked and shared photos. At midnight, when my light was still on and when Kristine just came home from work, she came over. We talked a while. I like surprise visits like that from friends. I’m doing a lot of cleaning and organizing shelves, closets, drawers. It feels so satisfying to order chaos and organize scatteredness and to be able to have an environment that inspires creativity for both myself and the girls. I’m writing by candlelight and I’m falling asleep. 

What I notice in my mother's writing and artistic practice is a reverence for noticing. It strikes me as an artistic quality, a writerly and poetic attention to detail. It is imbued with a sense of wonder and delight at leaves, trees and nature.

One of our regular practices was the picking of "animal cards" also known as Medicine cards. If ever I saw an animal and wondered what it might mean in the context if my life, my mother would be sure to get out her animal card guidebook and email me some notes. Here she is, emailing me after I have likely told her that I have been seeing many spiders:

Josie Saracino <jsaracino44@hotmail.com> Mon, Oct 18, 2010, 11:31 PM to me SPIDER-weaving...Spider's body is made like the number 8, consisting of two lobe-like parts connected to the waist and 8 legs...SPIDER IS THE SYMBOL OF INFINITE POSSIBILITIES OF CREATION...her 8 legs represent the four winds of change and the four directions on the medicine wheel...spider is the female energy of the creative force that weaves the beautiful designs of life...if spider has dropped from her web into your life today, she may be telling you to CREATE , CREATE , CREATE ! ...look for alternatives to your present impasse...she can also be warning you that you are coming too close to an entangling situation...use a journal to to write out and review your progress so you will not forget how you are creating a new or different phase in your life...spider brings a message of a different kind when she sees you becoming a bit too involved in the weaving of your life plans to notice opportunity at the outskirts of your web...if this is the case, spider gets your attention so that you will notice that something you have woven has borne fruit...Congratulations!...spider caught you just in time before you missed the opportunity on the edge of your web OR reality.  The most important message from spider is that you are an infinite being who will continue to weave patterns of life and living throughout time...do not fail to see the expansiveness of the eternal plan..LOVE, mom

RE: Hi Momma! 2010 India Josie Saracino <jsaracino44@hotmail.com> Wed, Oct 27, 2010, 9:42 PM to me dearest daughter...I am so proud of you for such thorough thinking and planning...I am so happy we will be together for the holidays so let's think of an adventure! together...reasonable of course...I am out of school on the 17th for holiday vacation...I can fly to Seattle...I may do New Year's Eve here which is my tradition of cleaning my altar, reflection, writing and preparing for the year ahead...no rush but we should think of airline reservations soon!...so glad all of your projects will be able to happen...Love you,Miss you,Kiss you,too, mom

Dec 22, 2025

Miss you, kiss you! Wishing everyone reading a collective collage of everything that brings you joy and quiet moments of wonder among nature, and seasonal paper bags.

xo L

This post is part of a series of essays called Josie's House. This is part of a larger work-in-progress-project I envision as a book. Previous essays can be found below.

1. New Beginning: In which I try to figure out how to tell people that the doctor at my mother's assisted living facility referred her to hospice care — meaning that based on her weight loss and decline, she is expected to be gone within six months.
2. Mom Rocks: In which I attempt to introduce my mother and this project.
3. 'Are You My Sister?': In which my Josie-mama thinks I am her sister and I find a letter my mother wrote to her sister after she died in my mother's arms.
4. Mandala's Tiles and Poetry: In which I go looking for tiles in India and re-discover my mother's love of mandalas and some poetry-letters she wrote after my grandmother died. 
5. A Purple-Infused 80th Birthday: In which I marvel at the passage of time, birthdays, and garden metaphors.
6. The Cottage and The Blue Couch: In which I share a draft of an essay about friendship, love, a cottage, and a blue couch.
7. Wearing Pantsuits to Church: Values Search: In which I look at my mother's values alongside my own.
8. A Dream Realized: Journey to India, 1979: In which I share a draft of an essay about my mother's first trip to India, and the next trip when she met my father. 
9. 'Cry Tests' & Journey to Peninsula School: In which I examine a piece of writing on how Josie got her dream job at Peninsula, thanks to the supportive community around her. 
10. Submerge!: In which I veer off from the aim of this newsletter and share an essay I wrote about my father's death. 
11. More Mandalas & Self-Acceptance Training: In which I take a deeper look into the self-acceptance work my mother did and also appreciate the beauty of a Korean spa and friendship.
12. Labyrinth: Portals to Love and Other Places: In which I write to my mother and read some poems she wrote in 1987. ‘What is the matter with aloneness anyway?’ she wrote in 1987.
13. Retreat to Spirit: In which, 'Are you my sister?' get's a reprise, and I ponder some wisdom from an email from 2010.
14. Unexpected Gratitude for Gifts Already On Their Way: In which I receive a gift that was written and created over 35 years ago. And something that was broken gets mended.