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Category: holidays

Haunted House

Haunted House

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The stairs creak, the floor groans — night sounds of the empty nest.

When the house was full of children I used to joke that we didn’t need those fake cobwebs, we had the real thing. Our house was messy because we were too busy to clean it.

The house is tidier now, but trick-or-treaters will be the only kids I see. No one to carve the pumpkin (though Celia helped with that last week when she was here for fall break). No one to watch “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and laugh at Bram Bones. No one to borrow my eyeliner for drawing a fake mustache.

Luckily, the house is haunted. Not with evil spirits, but with good ones. All the years, tears, giggles — all the drama — it’s here somewhere; I’m convinced of it. And on this day of spirits, it doesn’t take much imagination to find it. 

Perspective

Perspective

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A view from on high. It’s what we get from airplanes, towers, mountaintops, rooftops and other lofty places. It’s perspective. Our world grows smaller when measured against the immensity.

It’s a necessary corrective, an antidote to most craziness. It can also be lots of fun.

Today the indoor parakeets are spending some time outside with me as I work. To say they are excited is putting it mildly. They haven’t shut up since I brought them out here. A moment ago a baby bird landed on the table beside me, attracted by the exotic chirps of these unfamiliar creatures.  A change of scenery for them, too, that of the wild beside the tame.

What has the birds so excited? The same thing I’ve been treasuring recently — perspective.

Eggs!

Eggs!

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Consider the egg. I will be considering dozens of them today. Consider its potential. Consider it theoretically, of course.

If left alone an egg would become a larger food, with more protein and heft. But instead it’s consumed early in its life cycle. Which makes it precious. When Suzanne arrived in a small African village, her compound-mates offered her an egg. It’s the food of welcome —and welcome food, too.

Today and tomorrow, eggs all over Christendom will be punctured, boiled, blown, colored and hidden. Some of these eggs will have their yolks lifted, fluffed, seasoned and stuffed back into their whites. And then they will be admired and eaten.

But this morning, early on this day of preparation, eggs are still in their cartons. They haven’t yet been put to the test. They are still more potential than actual, which is what they always are, when you think about it.

A Day for Love

A Day for Love

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Woke up this morning thinking about love, all types of love, romantic and filial and maternal. Of the love of friends and the respect of colleagues. Of the love we’re supposed to show the stranger but (at least I) so often do not.

I thought about how hard it can be to love, and how easy.

And then I thought about having a day that celebrates love. Without expectation of belief or  patriotism. Surely unique among the holidays.

Just a day for love — and the expression of it.

Epiphany

Epiphany

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Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, the traditional end of the Christmas season and the point at which I begin to be faintly restless that our tree is still up.

But no matter, because today is about something bigger. Revelation, the ah-hah moment — sudden clarity.  Indecisive by nature (even my zodiac sign is Gemini, the twins), I find few moments of clarity in life. So I value them more.

Today I learned we have James Joyce to thank for this definition of “epiphany.” This morning’s “Writer’s Almanac” tells us that Joyce “used the word to mean the ‘revelation of the whatness of a thing,’  the moment when ‘the soul of
the commonest object […] seems to us radiant.'”

The soul of the commonest object radiant. Something to think about today.

Resolutions

Resolutions

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The usual ones are out for me this year (exercise! don’t worry so much! get organized!). In their place a more subtle yearning: to be centered.

Is this a resolution or a mantra? Can those be one and the same?

A new year, a blank slate we can write on with our actions and our choices. Probing this new year tenderly still, getting a feel for it.  The cartilage still soft and bendable. Intentions still pliable.

Here we are in the cold, hard winter — with the new year all soft and malleable around us.

Tolerable

Tolerable

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For the last few years it’s been postponed, softened. New Year’s Day has landed on a Saturday or Sunday so we’ve had a day or two to cushion the blow, the return to work or school.

This year, no such luck. We’re out of holidays. The vast tundra that is January stretches before us — not just 30 days but 31.

If the holidays have been good, restful, this is tolerable.

Wishing all of us a tolerable January.

Scattered

Scattered

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This year none of us will be together as the clock strikes midnight. We are scattered from California to Arizona to Virginia to Africa. And the two of us still at home will be at different places tonight (as is only to be expected when one of us is a teenager).

Another stage. Another adventure. A backward look, surely one won’t matter. A photo that captures the spirit of this year, a spirit of departure and of what many parents see of their children as they leave home. Their backs, their luggage — their faces toward a future we can scarcely imagine.

But a new year dawns for all of us, the young, the old, the somewhere in between. And surely this is good. Just the fact that it’s happening for us, for all of us, is good.

Photo by Claire Capehart

Week Without Days

Week Without Days

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What day is it, anyway?

Feels like a Wednesday,  third day after the “Sunday” that was Christmas.

Or a Saturday, with the same open spaces and relaxed demeanor of that end-of-week day.

It’s certainly not Monday or Tuesday. No back-to-workness about his day. None at all.

Ah yes, it’s Friday. With Saturday and Sunday still to look forward to.

There’s nothing automatic about this realization. Which means we’re living through a week without days.

It couldn’t have come at a better time.

Lighting the Way

Lighting the Way

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The luminaries were our neighbor’s idea, and I’m afraid we weren’t very happy about them at first. Saving plastic milk jugs, sawing their tops off, adding a layer of kitty litter and a candle — just more items on an endless to-do list. 

But we saved a few containers, our neighbor filled in with paper bags, and on Christmas Eve our suburban street was transformed.

It wasn’t just the way the lighted path shone in the dark. Or how the candles stayed lit through the drizzle and fog. It was how neighbors poured out of their houses, strolled along with hot toddies, chatted as if in a long June twilight. Someone played carols through outside speakers. Kids ran  around.

It was unexpected. It was magical.