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Author: Anne Cassidy

Overlay of Cheer

Overlay of Cheer

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Strong gusts bend the bamboo beside our deck, riffle the hollies, berry-less this year. The sky is an angry purple except for a white strip along the horizon. Christmas is riding in on the west wind.

Yesterday’s last-minute shopping meant parking at the far end of town and backtracking to the bookstore. No gloves for some reason, so I crammed one hand into a pocket, used the other to hold the bags. It was almost dark by the time I got home;  Reston Town Center was all decked out for the season.

Now I sit in warmth, willing myself to stand, walk upstairs and dress warmly enough for a windy walk. But first I notice how our tree lights are reflected in the window. They’re an overlay of cheer on a gray and unforgiving world.

End of Fear

End of Fear

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Work, Christmas shopping, decorating — with all the distractions of the season I’ve been too busy to think about the end of the world, which will happen in a few hours according to the Mayan calendar.

As I began to write this post, I remembered writing about the end of the world before. Thirty minutes later I found the entry (so much for my filing system). It was May 21, 2011, a day when some Christians expected the Rapture.

Today, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, it’s easy to understand these apocalyptic predictions. The days grow shorter and darker. Who’s to say they won’t go away entirely?

We can make all the jokes we want about the end of time (no need to finish your holiday shopping!), but ultimately, isn’t it all about fear? 

So here’s to an end of our end-of-the-world worries. And to the end of fear, too.

Tree Time

Tree Time

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Last night we put up the tree. We’ve inherited two blue chairs since last year, so we had to move those to make room. The plug we usually use for lights hasn’t worked in months, so we jerry-rigged extension cords for illumination.

And then there’s the tree itself, which looks like someone took a big bite out of the top. There isn’t enough corner to hide its deficiencies.

In other words, it wasn’t our typical tree. And it wasn’t our typical tree-decorating fest. We weren’t all present, and afterwards we sat outside around the fire pit and looked at the stars.

But there was plenty of talking and laughing. Families change; traditions can, too.

This year’s tree doesn’t look like this!

Heaven and Nature Sing

Heaven and Nature Sing

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Heaven and nature aren’t the only ones singing this time of year. There are carolers like the neighbors above, who serenaded us last year.

There are scads of sing-along “Messiah’s,” where rusty altos can rent scores and attempt, once more (and just as unsuccessfully), “For Unto Us a Child is Born.”

And then there are people driving around in their cars belting out “Angels We Have Heard on High” at 6 a.m.

This morning, after a particularly rousing carol-fest, the announcer said he knew everyone had joined in on that last number. And just to make it official, he played “Awake and Join the Cheerful Choir” by Anonymous Four.

He might as well have said, “I hear you all out there; I hear you singing.”

How did he know? Was I that loud?

Distraction

Distraction

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As our part of earth tilts farther from the sun, as days shorten and gray, as night swallows our lives  — there’s a good chance we won’t notice.

We’re too distracted standing in line at the post office, searching for ornaments in the dank storage area of the basement, finding if not the perfect tree then at least one with flaws that can be successfully hidden by strategic placement in the corner.

Did the ancients have this idea when they celebrated solstice or whatever holiday we purloined for Christmas? Were these feasts only to appease the gods or shout hooray? Or were our ancestors saying to themselves, yeah, looks like the world’s gonna end any day now, but I have this goat to slaughter and these wild herbs, they might freshen it up a bit, and it seems a shame to let it go to waste…

Because distraction, I think, is one of the surest bets of all. Distraction itself is worth celebrating.

Joy!

Joy!

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Six years ago we surprised Claire with a dog from the pound. He was a funny looking animal, advertised as a border collie basset hound mix — but there must be at least half a dozen (unadvertised!) breeds in his pedigree.

Claire had been begging for a dog for months and we had held off, but two days after we learned she’d have to wear a back brace for scoliosis, we adopted Copper.

Early signs were not auspicious.  He ate underwear, socks and eye medicine. He bit people. He ran away on numerous occasions, including the first time we tried to get him out of the car.

But there was always something about him, something ragged and rambunctious and loving, that gave us hope. He was — and still is — the embodiment of joy. A reminder that happiness doesn’t always fall into our laps; that we have to search for it, allow ourselves to be disrupted for it, even sometimes pretend we have it when we don’t.  Pretend long enough, though, and it begins to feel like we do.

Photo: Claire Capehart

Postscript

Postscript

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I don’t usually write postscripts, but today calls for one. I wrote yesterday’s entry hours before the tragic school shooting in Connecticut. It was a post about guns — not a topic I usually cover.

And now this.

There is everything to say, and there is nothing to say.

Could the tears shed over mass shootings fill an ocean?

I think maybe they could.

Shopping After Dark

Shopping After Dark

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I do most of my shopping in a two- to three-week period in December — not a perfect system, but it works. In order to buy lots of gifts in such a short time, however, I’ve had to head out after dinner — when I’d typically be curling up with a book or a movie — onto the cold, dark highways of suburbia, pulling in and out of massive parking lots, threading my way past holiday displays and shelves of sweaters in search of the right gift for each person on the list.

The other night, looking in vain for help in a large sporting goods store (what is a lure? and how do you tell one from the other?) I found myself in the one section of the establishment that was bustling, the one section where you could find clerks. That would be the gun department.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen so many guns in one place before. There were camo models and long sleek menacing ones and short, stubby almost cute ones. People were milling around cases, speaking animatedly to staff, pawing through boxes of ammunition.

I told myself that guns must be a big seller around the holidays, that these guns are for hunters. Put out of my mind the frightening alternatives.

Still, it was hard to forget that in this entire cavernous store the only place where there was life and activity and conversation, the only place that was lively … was where the guns were sold.

Hawks in Flight

Hawks in Flight

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It’s a matter of perspective, I tell myself. Of angle and scale. I see the birds, their outline against the  sky, their large size and hulking shape not robin or jay-like. Their stillness predatory, dangerous. Must be hawks. Hawks in trees.

Three times in the last week I’ve seen them — twice in the suburbs, once in the city. Are there more of them or am I simply spotting them more often? Are they desperate for food this time of year?

I read a little about them, their exceptional vision, their annual migration patterns, their behavior — more peaceful than you would think (when you rule out what they must do to eat!).  Though I’m seeing them in trees, I’m imagining them in flight, seeking, soaring, alone among the clouds.

Allaboutbirds.org

Cloudscape

Cloudscape

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Yesterday on Metro, uncharacteristically bookless, I stare at the scenery passing by. The clouds were winter ones, thin, remote. So different from the fat summer cumulus. They reminded me of whitened  animal bones.

The light almost gone, me half asleep, wishing myself home in time to catch a walk in the brief dusk.

But before Vienna, a bonus — the sun, sinking fast, lights up the clouds, turns dross into gold.