The door is wreathed, the gifts are wrapped, the cards are mailed. But there is one more sign that the holidays have truly begun: I’m having cookies for breakfast.
It was a matter of necessity. I needed to remove at least two from the cookie tin in order to fit them in.
But the fact is that all dietary decorum has broken down.
‘Tis the season…
This is not about three paths — or two, for that matter — diverging in the woods, taking one and never knowing if it makes the difference. This is not about life choices, in other words.
This is about three paths walked in the last three days: a Reston trail on Monday, the W&OD on Tuesday and Franklin Farm today. One shady and still, the next cloudy and cold, today’s breezy and bright.
I think about how often I’ve strode up and down my neighborhood’s main drag, how boring it can be, how I thrive on variety, and how grateful I am that this week, at least, I’ve had it.
We
have one Christmas, one Easter, one Independence Day. But we have two solstices: one for the shortest day and one for the longest.As I sit here this morning, watching the world slowly lighten, I think about the imminent wisdom of these dual celebrations. You could see one as our pinnacle and one as our nadir. But there is a hopeful message in each, too.
In summer we revel in the long twilight, the early morning, the profusion. In winter we tell ourselves, it’s all up from here.
We live in the present for one, in the future with the other. Surely we could do with a little of each.
For the last week or so I’ve been slipping into the backyard when inside chores are done to plant iris, allium and daffodils. I usually miss the sunniest part of the afternoon, so it’s a wintry chore as I dig into the hard clay soil.
But it has a spring purpose. It’s a vote of confidence, a leap of faith made in deep winter, when boughs lie leafless, that green will come again, that these packets of potential will send down roots and bring forth flowers.
Today I barely finished before sunset. But nine more narcissus bulbs are in the ground, and at five minutes a bulb, I figure we are 45 minutes closer to spring.
This year’s tree was not bought from Vale United Methodist Church, the white building at an ancient crossroads like a picture postcard with each purchase contributing to a fund to end hunger.
This year’s tree came from a small lot I noticed on the way out of town, a beaten-earth parking lot with a big tacky Santa Claus and a string of simple lights. On our first trip there, we met Bradley from Whitetop Mountain, down near the Tennessee and North Carolina border. His family has been selling trees on this spot for decades, he said.
Bradley apologized. The trees had been picked over, he said, but he was expecting a shipment that very evening. If we liked, he would take our number and let us know when the shipment arrived. I didn’t think we would hear from him, I figured the tree shortage had caught up with us, that we’d have to pay hundreds of dollars for a scrawny spruce.
It’s not quite 11 a.m. and almost 60 degrees this December 17. The forsythia is confused.
Yes, it lost its final leaves just two weeks ago, but the soft air and warm earth are belying the scant light, are sending messages of “why not” to the poor plant.
And what of us humans? Does it make sense to pack away the shorts and t-shirts, or should we just tuck them amongst the woolens? Are we navigating a new season here?
Not quite winter. Let’s call it winterish.
I’ve always been a student at heart, and now I’m one in practice again—reading, writing, researching. Wait, that sounds like what I’ve been doing my entire career. But it was different, of course, When I was a freelance journalist, I read, researched and wrote about the topics I needed to sell an article. When I was an alumni magazine editor, I wrote about what I thought would appeal to my readers. And when I worked at Winrock, I wrote about topics that would explain and showcase the organization.
Now I’m studying and learning about topics purely because they’re interesting to me. These last few weeks, plunging into and through the final paper, I’ve been absorbed in a big topic that I can only scratch the surface of.
But how good it’s felt to scratch that surface. Stacking books around the desk, dipping into one and then another. And then there’s all the online research: I realized weeks into the semester that I didn’t just have to rely on Google Scholar. I had an entire research library with all its subscriptions and databases at my disposal. Which means that, in addition to the books and papers you see above, there are many more bookmarked pages or open tabs on the laptop that is almost buried amidst the clutter.
Our final papers are due today. I sent mine off Tuesday mid-afternoon, then took a long walk on a Reston trail to celebrate. It’s just a start. But it feels good to be a student again.
Of all the rituals and practices of the season — the gifts, the tree, the wreath — one means more to me every year. It’s the lights.
It’s the candles in the windows, the spotlights on the door. It’s the stars on high and the luminaries down below. It’s the icicles hanging from eaves and tree limbs wound with blues, reds and greens.
It’s these candles in the dark, because that’s what all of them are: our puny fists raised together against the dying of the light.
Walking to a holiday playlist the other day, I made a merry discovery: the opening chorus of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is just my speed. It’s a bouncy piece of music, and when I was striding down the W&OD trail, dodging the bicycles, it seemed just about perfect.
There’s the timpani pounding out the beat, the flutes trilling in response, the trumpets soaring above it all, and then, of course, the chorus, entering in unison before breaking into various voices throughout the movement.
I looked up the English translation later. “Shout for joy, exult, rise up, glorify the day.” The kind of words angels might use when announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds in the fields.
But even before I knew the meaning, the melody and meter passed through my ears to my feet, in that way that only music can.
I heard about Kentucky when good friends wrote to ask if my brother was OK. I checked the news then and learned of the horrible tornadoes that ripped through the country’s midsection. So this post is a lament: it’s a cry of solidarity for the residents of Mayfield, Kentucky, a town I’m embarrassed to say I had never heard of until Saturday, native Kentuckian that I am.
At first, I thought it was Maysville that had been hit, a river town near where some of Dad’s kin were born. But no, it was, as I often say about Kentucky towns whose names I don’t recognize, “in the western part of the state.” And it truly is there, close to both Tennessee and Missouri, more midwestern than southern. Dawson Springs is there, too—another town hit by the deadly twisters.
I keep thinking about the folks in the candle factory, perhaps some of them working an extra shift since it’s Christmas time and they could use the money. I think about the malls where those candles might be sold. Do we need those candles? Not really, but yes, because the residents of Mayfield need those jobs.
It could have been any kind of factory, though. And it could have been any place. But it was in Kentucky, so my heart is even heavier.
(Dark clouds outside of Nicholasville, from my August trip to Kentucky)