From yesterday’s ice storm to this morning’s fog. Air filled with the promise of robins. A warm breeze, a freshet, a stowaway on the south wind.
It’s not exactly to the break-even point yet, but I’m definitely ordering more holiday gifts online this year, and my sister is, too. So based on this highly unscientific sampling of two, I think there’s a trend here.
(I’m not so far off on this trend definition. When I wrote pieces for women’s magazines, a “trend” was something that you and a couple of your close friends were noticing — after which you dug up enough evidence to convince your editors it was really happening.)
But, back to this year’s shopping stats, I do have real, tangible proof: the piles of boxes in front of the houses in my neighborhood.
Usually you see lots of boxes after the holidays, not before. But no more.
‘Tis the season for FedEx and UPS and even the lowly ole US Post Office — and the containers they leave behind. They’re making the Yuletide jolly. And easier, too.
It’s been a while since I spent a day in bed, but that’s what I did yesterday. Not a relaxing, lolling-about day, but an oh-so-sick day. In fact, a lost day, 24 hours sucked from the calendar with little to show for it other than survival.
The experience, what I want to relive of it (not much!), was disorienting. Time was telescoped. Dreams bled from sleep into waking. There was an in-and-out wooziness to it all that was unsettling and unnerving.
Today I managed to make my way downstairs. I tried sitting up but found that lying down feels much, much better. So this will be a halfway day: some work and some resting.
But I’m doing it in a living room transformed. The family tree outing happened yesterday as planned, so while I was incapacitated, Santa and his elves found the tree, chopped it down, transported it here and set it up in its usual corner. All it needs now are lights and ornaments. It’s my get-well project!
A window of time opened up, a confluence of hour and place. I understood what I had to do and when I had to do it. So I followed vague directions to the outlet shops I knew were there in theory but had never reached from that starting point.
And when I got there the sun was setting, a disc on fire slipping behind the faux roofs. I watched it slide away, assembled my list, had a bite to eat and gathered my courage.
It was a quiet evening. Who shops on Friday night? People like me, I realized. Women with determination in their eyes and lists in their hands. As the evening wore on, not just lists but shopping bags, too.
There comes a point in the season when you are finally into it. You have gone too far not to be. From here there will be tree-cutting, hauling and decorating. There will be more shopping (I hope not too much more!), There will be baking and card-writing and stocking-hanging and all of it, right up to the cacophony of Christmas morning.
‘Tis the season, you know.
I feel like I should be writing about the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, but am filled to the brim with the music we made last night at the Reston Chorale Messiah Singalong.
It was cold and rainy but the church was almost filled. I found the altos, sitting on the left in the back, and struck up a conversation with Annette. “We’re doing Beethoven’s 9th in the spring,” she said. “You should audition.”
It was a warm and welcoming thing to say — especially since I’d yet to sing a note — and it made me feel instantly at home. And “at home” is the way I continued to feel as we made our way through the familiar choruses: “Glory to God,” “His Yoke is Easy,” “For Unto Us a Child is Born” and, finally, “Hallelujah.”
It wasn’t just the words and melodies, so ancient and true, it was being an alto, part of a group and a section. It was fudging the runs of “And he will purify” with 20 other voices to fudge along with me. It was belting out “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” with the fervor of a community chorus, knowing that this scene was being enacted in church basements and concert halls around the country.
It was singing “And he shall reign forever and ever” — and wanting more than anything for the music to go on that long, too.
Suzanne took me to the Nutcracker at Kennedy Center yesterday, and what a Nutcracker it was! A fizzy, funny production with tumbling sprites, flying Drosselmeyer and a stunning pas de deux. There was enough of the traditional ballet to suit purists but enough site gags (a leaning cake, two harem dancers fighting over their man and silly prancing poodles) to keep the audience guessing — and laughing.
When Suzanne and I went to the Nutcracker years ago, I would be in the audience and she would be on stage in a progression of roles — mirliton, polichinelle, party child — as her ballet skills improved. We reminisced about those days, about personalities in the ballet studio, including the earnest Mr. Ben, husband of the studio owner, who was pressed into service each Christmas as leading man and whose lifts looked ever more shaky as the years wore on.
And there were stories behind this production, too; we just didn’t know them. We were, instead, caught up in the illusion, a gasp as the curtain rises, a sigh as it descends.
(Above: The Nutcracker’s original performance in 1892.)
Halloween makes me nostalgic for the days of young parenthood. With most other holidays, the nature and tenor of them, how we celebrate, changes as children grow. Christmas isn’t the same as it was when Santa or the Easter Bunny made “appearances,” but the days are still fundamentally the same — and we celebrate them together.
But Halloween is for little kids, and my kids … aren’t little anymore.
Still, Tom carved the pumpkin and I roasted the seeds. We handed out Snickers and Sour Patch Kids. Copper was his usual crazy self.
But I kept remembering when the girls would come back with their big pillowcase hauls, masks askew, makeup smeared. They would sort candy by size and brand, then commence trading. Who wants my Milky Way? What’s a Heath Bar? Oh, no, not raisins!!
Which is all to say that the ghosts I saw last night weren’t creepy or scary. They were cuddly elephants, cute clowns and beautiful princesses — the memories of my own sweet girls when they were young.
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!
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.
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.
