A Walker in the Suburbs

Yesterday the end of the trail. Today the end of the year. But the sun is out, and it feels like a day of promise, one that could just as easily be a first rather than a last. But it is a last. The end of a long, hard year. Also the end of a year of wonder and fulfillment. A trip to Africa! A son-in-law!

As I take stock of 2015, though, I can’t say I’m sad to see it go. It was the last year Mom was on this earth. It was a time of challenge at work. I’ve had better years.

Still, I’ve had space these last few days to catch my breath, to write and think. And that means I can see the patterns a little better than I did before. I have a little more faith that I can right myself.

Maybe that’s what holidays do for us, especially this megalopolis of holidays. It gives us the time to see where we’ve been, dream of where we might be going.

The presents are unwrapped. The cookies are eaten. The rain (not snow) is falling. But here inside the living room the tree is as splendid as it was when we decorated it last week. The lights illuminate the shiny ornaments and bring unaccustomed brightness to what is usually a dark corner.

Here we are in the final hours of the year, and all I want to do is sit in front of the tree, absorb its holiday happiness, gather in its aroma, stare at its baubles and glass. I notice its one errant limb that really should have been trimmed. Decide to leave it as it is. The tree looks like it’s waving.

It has taken so long to get here, to this Christmas moment.

Outside, a female cardinal hops over to the suet block. Rain makes puddles on the deck boards. Trees shift slowly in the breeze.

Inside, it is warmth and light. Inside it is Christmas. Today will be reading and errands and cooking. But it will also be tree sitting. Tree savoring.

It’s the return of an old friend. An acquaintance you might be a bit embarrassed knowing. But it’s back — and it’s beautiful.

I speak of tinsel.

It’s not what the stylish trees are wearing this holiday season. It’s messy and flimsy. It lodges itself in every corner of the living room. But it’s Suzanne’s favorite holiday accessory, and now that she’s back … it’s back, too.

So I’m sitting here looking at the stuff, the way it reflects the light; the sheer, stringy wonder of it; how it amplifies the glitter of the holiday, its shiny appeal.

Without it, the tree still retains some connection to the soil that gave it birth. With it, the tree has stepped over the line. It is officially artifice. It is officially wonder.

It is officially Christmas.

The tree is up, a big fir that fills the house with fragrance — and overflows the corner it’s been assigned.

I sit down to write my post but first must move the rocking chair to the other side of the room, in front of the hutch. There now … that’s better.

To fit the tree we must reconfigure. The console moves into the hall and becomes a convenient flat surface to decorate — but also to pile the stuff that needs to be taken upstairs.

The rocking chair, parked where it is now,  reminds me of a Christmas 22 years ago, when Claire was a toddler and had begun waking up at 5 in the morning for some strange reason (an excess of exuberance?). We would sit in another (long since dispatched to the basement) chair in front of that same hutch and read the holiday books — Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, The Night Before Christmas.

If I close my eyes I can almost feel Claire’s squirmy little body in my arms. I would have been drop-dead tired, of course. But even then I knew those moments were precious.

Reconfiguration: It’s what we need. It’s what holidays help us do.

It finally felt like winter when I took my lunchtime walk yesterday. A brisk wind made the 40-something-degree air bite more deeply into the bones. But I warmed up quickly and was once again ready to walk past the Botanical Gardens without going in.

I’m so glad I didn’t!

This year’s holiday show was as magical as the others I’ve seen. The theme was  Pollination Station and the scenes were full of bees, bats and butterflies and the fruits and flowers they pollinate — all made of tree bark, willow shoots, grapevine tendrils, acorn caps and pine cone scales. An H gauge train chugged through the scene crossing ravines on rough-hewn trestles.

You could bend down and peek through little porthole windows into the winter homes of bugs, complete with twig-fashioned rocking chairs and mossy coverlets.

It was, in the best sense of the word, transporting. Full of wonder and whimsy.


(Photo: DConHeels.com)