Lights strung along rooftops, wound around tree trunks and lampposts. Nets of lights on shrubs and hedges. Spotlights on wreathed front doors.
At the far end of my neighborhood is a house with a backyard that dips down into the woods. I never know where the yard ends and the woods begin. Except this time of year.
We light our lives to taunt the darkness. But along the way we outline them too.
The lights tell us where we are.
A week till the big day, and there is still much to do. Gifts that need buying. Cookies that need baking. Cards that need mailing. Packages that need wrapping.
It’s easy to get caught up in seasonal hysteria.
But then I look at our tree and remember how pleasant it was to trim it this year. I think of dear ones here and far away. I see the dog biscuit the UPS man has left on top of the packages by our door, a funny peace offering to the canine who drives him crazy.
I take my time on the cookies, the notes, the ribbons and bows.
These aren’t way stations on the road to Christmas. They are Christmas itself.
A gray morning. I turn on the tree lights early. I sit and work beside the fir.
At first it distracts me, so many ornaments have stories. And even the shape of the tree this year — a widened base, giving it a solid, grounded feel — draws my gaze.
But I strengthen my resolve. I will myself to see it only from the corner of an eye. To work beside it, to let its presence spur and not derail the day.
Less than a week until solstice; the light must come from inside.
Some people put wreaths on their car; they deck the wheels instead of the halls. There was a time in my life — the “Carpool Years” — when that would have made sense.
For the most part, it makes sense to wreathe a stationary object — a door, a window, a lamppost.
The other day on my way to work I noticed a tall, dead tree with an equally dead branch all decked out with a, well, dead wreath. Dead only in the sense that it was fashioned of clipped boughs. It was still fresh and green. And it made me smile at 7 a.m.
Here on our street a neighbor has wreathed her mailbox. At night it glows.
Wreathed whimsy — ’tis the season.
Low skies and gray clouds made for a tough reentry yesterday. The pleasures of the table, of family and friends, of long sleeps and easy afternoons — all reverted to workaday tasks and tedium. Even the knowledge of more holidays in the near future, of how much there is to do between now and Christmas — even those thoughts didn’t move me.
So when I left the house at lunchtime, I made my way to the meadow. I needed the sweep of open land, of a path running through it, of birds on the wing.
And that’s what I found: quiet fields asleep for the season, a pair of robins (so soon? ), and a still pond without last week’s thin skin of ice — a still pond that is liquid once again.
Familiar sights, easy on the eye and stimulating to the brain.
Yesterday’s walk that did what the best walks do: send me cheerfully back into my day.
We’re several weeks ahead of schedule, but the girls were here and the weather was fair, so yesterday we drove to Snicker’s Gap to cut our Christmas tree. After Leesburg, foothills appear on the horizon and the road curves up to meet them. Soon after that, I spot the familiar hillside, parceled in fir and pine.
I breathed in the evergreen scent, took in the scene, livelier than usual this busy weekend. As with any annual tradition, I was measuring, calculating, thinking about where we are now compared with this time last year. A better place, I decide, shoulders relaxing as we trudge up the hill.
The trees are healthy and plentiful, and there is variety in each plot. Old trees and young trees, tall and short — giant blue spruce and scraggly pine seedlings — all share the same southern slope. As I watch the girls stride ahead I realize they aren’t the only ones who’ve grown up. The trees being cut today were babies when we first came here.
We have lived through an entire Christmas tree life-cycle: 10 years of rain and sun and wind and snow. Ten years of growing pains, of hour-long car trips here, some coerced, some not.
And still we return to saw the trunk and topple the tree; to drag it, lash it and bring it home. We drive west to seek the southern slope. We mark the years as best we can.
Yesterday’s feast, like every other Thanksgiving meal I’ve ever cooked, was proof that though the turkey gets all the glory it’s the side dishes, the humble sides, that deserve it. They are where the real finesse comes in, the true effort; they are more difficult to prepare and, arguably, more scrumptious to consume.
Here it was fairly light as holiday cooking goes. The yams were baked, the potatoes were boiled — and I wasn’t responsible for the green bean casserole.
But the stuffing involved dicing and stirring, ditto the cranberry salad. And the pies (though a dessert and not a side dish) are always labor-intensive, though I wouldn’t have them any other way.
On the other hand, the turkey is easy to baste and roast — and it sits regally atop the table, the centerpiece, the champ.
The humble sides don’t seem to mind, though. They have long since accepted their relegated roles. In exchange, they avoid the slow, protracted, death march of the leftover — no sad progression from sandwich to salad to hash for them. The turkey, they know, gets its comeuppance in the end.
(What to eat the day after.)
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade just ended — with all its balloons, bands, commercialism and faux cheer. Still, I had it on in the background as I baked the pies, made the stuffing and popped the bird into the oven.
As I heard the familiar tunes, salutes to the latest toys and cartoons (all of which I’m blessedly oblivious to now!) and, of course the obligatory salute to the Big Apple (“It’s up to you, New York, New York”), I couldn’t help but think about the part the parade played in my childhood.
Was it the parade that made me fall in love with Manhattan long before I had a chance to live there? Was it the parade that filled me full of Big City dreams?
It certainly played a part.
Today I’m thankful for family and friends, for health and warmth and work. I’m also thankful for dreams. They may never quite measure up to reality. But that’s not what they’re for.
And through the woods … traveling to the Thanksgiving feast has never been easy. But here in the megalopolis it’s taken on a new degree of craziness.
A nor’easter is expected to dump anywhere from two to four inches of rain in the next 24 hours. Snow and ice have not been ruled out. Flooding is a possibility. Traffic jams are guaranteed.
To gather at grandma’s all you needed was a sleigh and a team of willing horses. To reach family and friends at the modern table requires strategic thinking (should I leave at 2 or 1:30?), nerves of steel (which route through the mountains promises the least chance of snow accumulation?) and a go-for-it attitude.
But go-for-it we will. People are important. Whether they’re over the river and through the woods — or up I-95.
Thanksgiving’s late date has merchants worried. There is almost a full week less to shop this year than there was last!
But for those who aren’t eager for the Buying Season to begin, we have a welcome pause.
Time to catch the breath between one season and another. Time to work and write. Time to savor what we have before plunging into what we don’t. Talk about Thanksgiving!
