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Category: holidays

Crystal City Underground

Crystal City Underground

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I knew they existed but am just beginning to explore them. “They” are a series of enclosed walkways and tunnels that honeycomb the Crystal City neighborhood.

Billed as an underground mall, the Crystal City shops are connected by wide, well-lit sidewalks (halls?!) that lead to a bakery, an optometrist, a theater … and more.

Halloween would be a perfect day to write about subterranean walkways — if only they were creepy, scary, low-ceilinged and cobwebby. They are anything but.

Still, they’re odd enough that today’s the perfect day to introduce them. The tunnels are one of the funkiest things about my new work ‘hood — and the weirdness is welcome!

Ghost Land

Ghost Land

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The streets are deserted, the high-occupancy vehicle restrictions lifted, and I am abroad in a Ghost Land. The buildings are still here, the air system hums as it always does. But gone are the suits on the eleventh floor, the officers in camouflague gear, and most of all, the bustle of a busy work ‘hood.

We are suspended in our glass house while wind whips the yellowing trees and stirs the Potomac into ripples and eddies. We are here where the coffee machine punctuates the silence and voices I’ve grown to recognize call from distant corners.

When you work in a company town, you accept the company rhythms. But today, I’m cutting against the grain. It’s Monday, it’s Columbus Day, I’m in the office.

Early Rising

Early Rising

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The story is the same, but each year has its revelation. This year’s was something I’ve noticed before but not with as much intensity:

On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark, 
and saw the stone removed from the stone.

 “Early in the morning.” “While it was still dark.” Of course!  She was up in the wee hours tending to those who needed her. It’s how most women I know make everything work, by getting a head start on the day.

I no longer juggle a job with young children, but I’m always trying to balance competing duties, to find time not just for the work for which I’m paid but the work for which I’m not. Time for family and friends; for shopping, cooking and cleaning; for emails and phone calls; for connection and solitude.

The early morning hours are my ally in this quest. They are the great elastic clause. They are when I catch up with others — and with myself.  

Epiphany!

Epiphany!

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I was all set to write about Epiphany, one of my favorite holidays. Day of discovery and adoration. The magi at the stable. And also of epiphany, one of my favorite feelings, the sudden revelation, the aha moment, the emergence of the forest from the trees.

I was helped along by a real surprise, a tree of scarves. Farther along, scarves draped over banisters and railings. On each scarf a blue tag: If you’re cold take this scarf. Chase the Chill D.C.

Looked it up, found the page and the mission, saw the skeins of yarn from which some scarves were made. Learned that the “scarf bombing” was long planned for this day, that many fingers flew to bring it about.

A sometime crocheter, I could feel the needles in my grasp, imagine the warm hearts and hands of the knitters. A sudden revelation, an aha moment. All of that and more.

Year’s End

Year’s End

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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.

Tree Sitting

Tree Sitting

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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.

Every Valley

Every Valley

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The world doesn’t go away just because the holidays are here.  Even the most stubborn optimist must sometimes remove the rose-tinted glasses.

Mine were most decidedly not on this morning as I was working in a quick run before the rain started up again. When the mostly all-carols classical station switched over to a sedate Haydn number I switched my little iPod mini from radio to music. I needed a Messiah fix!

“Every valley shall be exalted,” sang the tenor. “And every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight and the rough places plain.” At “crooked,” he warbled between notes. At “straight” he rang out true and bold.

I thought of all the souls these words have comforted through the centuries. I thought of how they were comforting me this morning. Every valley exalted. Yes!

Officially Christmas

Officially Christmas

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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.

Reconfigured

Reconfigured

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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.

Pollination Station

Pollination Station

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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)