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Category: holidays

Messiah Singalong

Messiah Singalong

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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.

Nutcracker, Redux

Nutcracker, Redux

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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.)

Missing Halloween

Missing Halloween

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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.

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!