Tag: holidays

the work

The work of Christmas.

Some of choir is singing for both services and if Julia didn’t have to sit through both services, plus the early call for rehearsal, I’d sing both. There is a song in the second service—Sing we now of Christmas—that is evocative of the dark night and the quiet before celebration. I was happy to do it at choir practice.

A new choir song that we are learning for Christmas Eve.  There are two services that night.  7 and 10, or 10:30. This is the only time of year when we are in the church at night.  The stained glass windows are dark from the inside, no color except from the outside. I don’t notice the stained glass windows that often, but when they are dark. I see them clearly. 

The Work of Christmas is a song, according to our director, that Everyone is singing. The message of the song is that the work of Christmas begins after the tinsel is off the tree and the shepherds are back tending their sheep. It does seem like the perfect Christmas song in this year of tumult and chaos.  A time when we have so much work to do when these holidays are finished.

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of ghosts and christmas tree lights

I have been trying/drafting and deleting/ to explain just how this week is.  It is time out of time, ordinary moments out of ordinary order, days of big meals and late church services and traveling and visiting. And too much traffic through tunnels and delays at airports.

No flying this year, but I noticed something I have not really taken account of before.  I have been aware but not articulated to myself the presence of so many ghosts in and around every event, every visit, every meal, every ornament hanging on the tree, every candled trimmed to fit into Julia’s great grandmother’s menorah.

Not one of those events, practices or things stand by themselves. Nothing is new. Rather they are the latest version, the pencil sketch with many erased sketches beneath, the latest in the series of what I remember as winter holiday times. I am aware of both what my eyes perceive and also what I hold in my heart.

The winter holidays always bring on some blues, as they did a few weeks ago, but the sitting with the revelation of sketches in time has brought some awareness, some clarity, some way to find the joy, the blessings in the times that have past.  I am aware of the richness and the subtlety, the near inmoveable traditions dressed with the changes that time brings.

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babka and ambition

Another grey, wet and cold day.  Am I ever going to put my winter coat away in the hall closet?  I’ve put it away and taken it out again twice.

This morning supervising Julia at the library during her volunteer time. Observing what she can do and do well, and how much she gets in her own way. She has so much more ability than she uses. Mood and lack of regulation ability dampen potential. Trauma masks the possibility of ambition, and without ambition, goals are hard to come by. It’s the goals that have helped me push through bad days. I’ve lived through many a hard time murmuring “eyes on the prize.” When you can see no prize, where do you ever put your eyes.  

This morning, my friend wrote, “you’re not supposed to ace this.” I sigh. I guess I’ve always wanted to ace all my “this.” Time and age and especially Julia have smoothed out so many of my edges. I accept a good deal more and haven’t thought much about acing for awhile.

Living up to potential is not always what I imagined it to be. These days, acing my this is more about support and patience than it is about getting anywhere, accomplishing anything.

Trauma and distraction crowd out aiming for a prize, staying on task and target. And acceptance and flexibility become the goals.

Should I have realized this years ago? I am not a quick learner.

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a cherished empty box

I think I’ve started every writing of the last two weeks with some version of “gray day.”  And rain this morning, like so many others.  If this was snow, we’d be up to our eyeballs.

But it is not.  

I do like waking up early, before Julia (which is rare), making coffee and sitting down to write. And admittedly, the gray, rainy days make sitting in front of the usually over sunny front-of-the-house window easy on the eyes. 

I started a Christmas post late on that day. Intended to be mostly pictures with a few words.  When I looked at the result, I laughed at myself.  The pictures were of the darling boy. Almost all of them, a few glimpses of Justin, his dad, and Julia but only because the two of them were helping Wilbur unwrap something.

And I thought, what a besotted grandma I have become! Not really like every other grandparent, but like many that I know. Not like my own parents—they had their hands full raising one grandchild and had another three who lived closer than we did and were more to their liking.  

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process & peace

Another eve. Gray today. My christmas lights, sweet during the dark nights, don’t light up a day time room, even a gray day. I’ve finished the work of the days before—tree decorated, presents bought and wrapped, times for visits and choir and gift opening and dinner set, even cards signed and sealed even though not yet delivered.  Yesterday, with only little bits to do, Julia and I drove around to deliver cookies to those who were not where they were expected earlier in the week.  We stopped once and chatted and that was good. The car needs packing for this afternoon at Ed’s family, for tonight at choir, for later tonight at Cheshire’s and for tomorrow morning’s gift opening. 

And what to anticipate watching someone at 16 months on Christmas?  He is all eyes and questions . . tat? tat? with arm outstretched and fingers pointed.  Last night, I dreamed that he was walking around the living room, secure and proud of himself. In reality, he is taking a few steps  between two sets of arms when he forgets his caution. 

He tasted and liked my yearly baking of poppy seed rolls on Friday at lunch.  A new person to bake for is my own delight. I can hope that he remember my baking like I remember my grandmother’s Easter bread—white, not moist and perfect with butter.

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father’s day

Sometime a bit past noon.

We have had a month of ups and downs and I have a lot to digest and report, but today is Father’s Day. 

Trying to remember if we had traditional Father’s Days with David, I think they were mostly brunch, sometimes out, sometimes with Marcia and Matthew who was a youngster during those years, and then a movie.  Matthew and David had movie snack rules—nothing in the mouth until the movie began.  Not during previews or ads, not right after we found our seats, when the movie began.  The rest of us—myself, Marcia and Cheshire—would complain and moan.  David and Matthew never relented.  It was a sweet boys against the girls debate and we always let them win.

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sliding into new years

On Christmas Eve morning, I wrote: there is a feeling of the jiggling of a snow globe, of not-quite-righted-ness, possible-upsidedown-ness of the day, and also feelings of those shape shifting holidays of the early years after David died when we were untethered from what had come before and striking out, however clumsily, reaching for something that was akin to honest hope.

I had no idea when I wrote that overlong sentence that I had captured this holiday week spot on.

It began on the Thursday evening before the Friday, last day of school which was called off due to the possibility of wind, rain and ice, a storm that never materialized. Friday morning was gray and chilly but only a little rain and a a few gusts of wind.  And I put 20 bags of cookies into the freezer, 20 bags that Julia was going to bring into teachers and staff of her transition program that day, 20 bags that I had spent the best part of week baking.  

Then came the Christmas plan.  Cheshire, Justin and Wilbur were scheduled to travel to Colorado in the early evening of Christmas Eve.  Earlier in the day, we celebrated Christmas, opening presents, with a bit of Hanukkah slipped in so we could light candles together. The plan for the rest of the day was simple: after late lunch I dropped the little family at Logan Airport, and Julia and I went to the VNM’s family Christmas Eve celebration. And much later, Julia and I went to church in time for choir rehearsal and the 10:30 pm service. 

The plane did not take off at the scheduled 6:30.  Instead, they were delayed from hour to hour. I texted with Cheshire around 8:30 and she expected to board any minute. Then, as choir was rehearsing close to 10, their flight was cancelled and Cheshire tried calling and texting me.  Unfortunately, my phone was in my coat pocket back in a pew.  After we rehearsed, and Julia and I were settling into our seats for service, I took out my phone and saw the texts and phone calls.  

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perhaps it is always

Sunday morning we sang Where the Light Begins (music by Susan LaBarr, text by Jan Richardson) (a pretty version to listen to here): 

“Perhaps it does not begin,
Perhaps it is always.
Perhaps it takes a lifetime

“To open our eyes,
To learn to see

“The luminous line of the map in the dark,
The vigil flame in the house of the heart,
The love so searing we can’t keep from singing,
from crying out.

“Perhaps this day the light begins,
Perhaps this day the light begins in us,
We are where the light begins.

“Perhaps it does not begin,
Perhaps it is always.”

This is one of those songs, whose melody and words pierce the heart like an arrow.  I sang it every day at home last week to learn it. Sometimes it takes me so long to learn music, but singing it every day moved me closer to meaning. And after singing it in choir amidst many voices, I carried around a lump in my throat all day.

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cook, talk, laugh, eat

I’m up before the alarm, that I turned off last night, would have sounded and ready to . . . back in some old day, I would be . . . um, I wonder how far back I should be going to say what I mean to say today.  This is the traditional time of gathering beloved souls together for cooking and eating and hopefully taking a walk before falling asleep in front of some movie on a cushy couch.  And this time has been hard won.

I cast the net far enough back to state that my mother’s traditions did not fit me well; and during our East Village days with baby Cheshire in tow, we started to cook for ourselves and our friends. Cooking and talking and laughing and eating.  Sometimes too many people crowded into our tiny apartment on First Avenue and sometimes we all went to Park Slope and celebrated in Carolina and David’s sprawling apartment.  On a marble topped coffee table with one chip out of the wood frill frame, Carolina served glorious antipasto and David made margaritas.  And we got to the turkey much later.  Cooking and talking and laughing and eating. 

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auld lang syne

“For the sake of old times!”  As close as I can get to a translation that makes sense to me of the words “auld lang syne.”

“Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon” 

A slight variation of the Robert Berns words, but the words that sang out to me this morning.  Yes, I admit to wanting to not cast too many glances back.  It has been a hard year.  It has been a brutal almost two years, and all my heart wants to do is to turn and face the winds of the new, hoping and praying that the new will be much, much more pleasant than the old.  As a friend wrote as a wish to another friend, a wish for a more cooperative new year.

Indeed!

A cooperative 2022 would be divine!

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