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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Distance, illness and weather kept us from gathering this holiday as we usually do. But eventually, the east coast contingent of my family came together for presents, food, conversation and controlled chaos. We solved a few world problems — though gun violence and climate change continue to elude us — and had some laughs, too.
Now we’re back home watching the snow fall. No walking in the suburbs today.
It’s time to stay inside, read and make soup.
This morning I thought about a scene from one of my
favorite Christmas movies, one I hope we’ll have time to watch in the
next few days. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Jimmy Stewart has just
learned he faces bank fraud and prison, and as he comes home beside
himself with worry, he grabs the knob of the bannister in his old house — and it comes off in his hand. He is exasperated at this; it seems to represent his failures and shortcomings.
By
the end of the movie, after he’s been visited by an angel, after his
family and friends have rallied around him in an unprecedented way,
after he’s had a chance to see what the world would have been like
without him — he grabs the bannister knob again. And once again, it
comes off in his hand. But this time, he kisses it. The house is still
cold and drafty and in need of repair. But it has been sanctified by
friendship and love and solidarity.
Christmas doesn’t take away
our problems. But it counters them with joy. It reminds us to appreciate
the humble, familiar things that surround us every day, and to draw
strength from the people we love. And surely there is a bit of the
miraculous in that.
Photo: Flow TV
Strong gusts bend the bamboo beside our deck, riffle the hollies, berry-less this year. The sky is an angry purple except for a white strip along the horizon. Christmas is riding in on the west wind.
Yesterday’s last-minute shopping meant parking at the far end of town and backtracking to the bookstore. No gloves for some reason, so I crammed one hand into a pocket, used the other to hold the bags. It was almost dark by the time I got home; Reston Town Center was all decked out for the season.
Now I sit in warmth, willing myself to stand, walk upstairs and dress warmly enough for a windy walk. But first I notice how our tree lights are reflected in the window. They’re an overlay of cheer on a gray and unforgiving world.
