blessings | pull up a chair

snow, when it’s still white

i know. i know. it’s a little raucous out there. a bit like walking into a bowl of vichyssoise, whirring.

and once the world rustles from its dumbfounded look out the window, slams on the snow boots, trudges to the car, or the train, or the bus, it’ll all be so much blkkh. that gray-black mess of crusted-over car dirt, tire rub, city street, all tossed together, tumbled. left to leave us thinking this snow thing is a terrible nuisance, a blight upon the trek to wherever we have to be. end of story.

only this is not about that. this is about snow before the blkkh.

this is about snow when it’s still white. when it’s still.

this is about slipping into your mukluks, and giving snow the due it deserves: step out and just stand there. go nowhere, really. meander aimlessly. pretend its moon dust and tromp through it. crane your neck, watch it swirl toward you.

then do this: drink it in. listen to the snow sound. then listen more closely still, listen with your soul.

the snow, i am convinced, is God’s way of putting finger to lips, pursing, whispering, “shhhhhh.”

snow, if you listen, speaks loudly. but only in a way that the soul is equipped to hear. the snow is telling us to slow. to behold. behold wonder. behold mystery.

behold the miracle of mere air and water and the cold of a cloud, coming together, falling down. tumbling. a 15-minute ride from the sky to the tip of our tongue, if we, like a child, try to catch it. scientists clocked that. i’m not making it up. some day soon we will consider the universe of each little snowflake. apparently, it’s a sport. watching snowflakes. i’ve got a book, right here on my desk, a field guide to snowflakes, and it says so, likens it to bird watching, only colder.

but today is about the blanket of white, the blanket of quiet. the blanket shaken before us, every intricacy of every limb and twig and pine needle shrouded in, swaddled in, white.

to go out in it, to crouch under the bough of a tree, to watch it come down, down onto your eyelash, is to be filled, once again, with the mystery of the heavens coming down to our midst. intermingling, the divine and the utterly earthly.

maybe that’s why young children thrust themselves into it, onto it, prostrate, making snow angels. maybe they understand in a way we forget when we’ve had too many snows under our boots. maybe they sense the godliness in each six-sided flake. if you could dive into the celestial, wouldn’t you want to rub your arms and your legs, your whole being, through the thick of it? once again, look to the children.

albert einstein, a guy smart like the children, wrote this in 1930, in a paper titled, “what i believe:”

“the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. it is the source of all true art and science. he to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

open your eyes, my friends. open your eyes. the snow, falling all around us, is begging us to drink in, to taste, to behold the mysterious. to realize, in one single snowflake, we hold onto the infinite. in a whole world of snowflakes, the infinite holds onto us.

if we open our eyes…

tell a snow story. tell a tale of beholding the wonder of the world of snow when it’s still white. or, if you must, spit it out. tell us how the blkkh got in your way, made you mad. made you sputter. then, once you spew here at the table, you might feel all better. might then be able to slip on your muks, step out the door, sink into the wonder…..

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February 6, 2007

grammy tuesday

as long as anyone around here can remember, certainly as long as two of ‘em truly can remember, tuesday is synonymous with only one thing: grammy.

thirteen years. six hundred seventy six tuesdays. give or take only about one or two a year. at the very least, it’s 650 tuesdays.

that’s nearly two solid years of her life (ah, what a math wizard, i am…), utterly completely devoted to the love and tending of her only two grandsons.

from the get-go, grammy tuesdays have had rules different from the rest of the week. she is two parts indulgence, one part old-fashioned mama. there will be elbows off the table, chew with your mouth closed. keep your bottom on the chair. comb your hair. tuck in your shirttails. patch the hole in the knee of your jeans.

she keeps us, and our house, in line. she will fix the wobbly neck of the lamp. glue the leg of the chair. rig up a rather impressive concoction to keep the cold air from blowing in under the door. and once she threatened to rebuild the inside of the toilet tank, the part where the water whooshes down into the bowl, does its thing. i told her to stop.

she reminds us to turn out the lights behind us. to not let the water run. to recycle every scrap in the house. she launches into her shpiel about keeping the world fit for her grandsons’ grandsons.

she reminds me i forgot to water the herb garden. forgot to deadhead the daffodils. forgot to haul in the porch furniture.

she thinks it a waste that we still have the little white lights strung on the crabapple. can’t believe i let the little one stay up ’til past nine, on a school night. asks for the umpteenth time if i’ve gone through the toys and the clothes to give to the place where the people have little to none.

oh my.

she is, in many ways, my walking, talking conscience. sometimes i’m sure it makes me crazy, leaping over this should, dodging that.

but you know something: i love her like crazy. she’s my mama. and i know i’m lucky to have one. right here in my house, every tuesday.

my papa died a long time ago, 26 years ago saturday. my mama was my age now when he died. she was 50. ever since, she once told me, she’s turned over her life to making life better for all those around her. a vocation of mercy.

wednesdays are soup kitchen. thursdays, for a long time, were a very poor school in what was once called the slums of the city. the rest of the week she is running a roast chicken to someone, cleaning the trail in the woods for the schoolchildren.

tuesdays, though, she saves for her boys. tuesdays are a day for chef boyardee, that gummy blah pasta in red runny sauce, a something their mama would scorn. tuesdays are a day for cinnamon toast and alphabet letters, all mixed, smack in the mid of the morning. for sitting on laps and reading of eagles. for building train tracks that curve ‘round the room. for going to the zoo. for getting the animal fries.

tuesdays are days for listening to stories while mommy types in the other room. for keeping things calm while mommy pulls out her hair. for making chicken rice grammy, a thing that i loved when i was a girl and now i eat it again, many a tuesday.

she’ll be here any minute, because it’s half an hour ‘til nine. and she is, like clockwork, always too early. maybe she can’t wait to come. maybe she knows that we need her.

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February 2, 2007

vernal whisperings

if you listen, you can hear the first stirrings of winter loosening its grip. yes, the snow moon, that great white orb that cast its full light on the cold cruel landscape of last night, made it hard to see anything that was not white, or bluish white, a color even colder.

but in fact, and despite the wind chill, this is the day when myth and legend begin their vernal whisperings. there’s the old folktale about the ground hog and his shadow. but that doesn’t much catch my fancy.

what does catch it, locks it in its grip, is something i knew little about. until now. it is the jewish festival of tu b’shevat, the new year of the trees.

it is, it seems, all about vernal whisperings, the first hint of promise that all this, the harsh and the cold and the barren, will soon melt away.

as a woman married to a jew, as a woman who embraces spirit and rite and story and all things of the earth, this little holiday seems made for souls like me.

i had had an inkling that the holiday i had a hard time pronouncing (tu-bish-vat, more or less) had something to do with trees or planting trees. in fact, it is said that this is the day when God decides how bountiful the fruit of each tree will be in the coming year.

in israel, this is when the almond tree awakes from its winter sleep, erupting in clouds of tissue-white flowers, the first blossom of spring.

in ancient times, tu b’shevat marked the day of tithing. it clanged the final bell on the fiscal year. all fruits borne before this day, belonged to the harvest of the last year, and must be divided accordingly, a portion to the poor, a portion to the temple in jerusalem.

all of that was lovely enough.

but then i heard something about a special seder of seven fruits.

and that’s when i knew i needed to dig a little deeper. that’s when i discovered the thinking of the 16th-century jewish mystics.

known as the kabbalists, these deeply spiritual thinkers believed that we elevate ourselves by the eating of certain fruits on tu b’shevat. if done with holy intention, they taught, sparks of light hidden in the fruit could be broken open from their shells, freed to float up to heaven, to the great divine, completing the circle of the renewal of life.

oh my.

they go on, these marvelous mystics. they talk not about seven fruits, but ten. they break them into categories corresponding to four levels of creation. there are the fruits that need no protection, and can be wholly eaten; grapes and figs, among them. there are fruits that require protection but only at the heart; olives, dates and persimmons would be among these. then there are the fruits that need full protection, the pomegranate and avocado, both of which hide inside a leathery shell. the fourth realm, purely spiritual, by definition has no fruits: it’s just pure spirit.

the holiness of each fruit or nut is, according to the kabbalists, the soft edible part, the part you can bite into. the pits or inedible parts were thought to be impure. and the shells were the protection of the holiness. (makes you feel kindly toward that ol’ banana peel, eh?)

reciting blessings–there is a particular line from the torah for each fruit or nut, believe it or not–helps to release the holy spark of life flow trapped within them, the kabbalists believed.

ah, but the act of chewing, they tell us, kicks it all into some sort of spiritual overdrive.

get this: chewing is more powerful than reciting blessings, they believed, because humans have 32 teeth, and that is the precise number of times the word “elohim,” or God, appears in the story of creation.

goodness. it is morsels like that that make it so delicious to dig deep into something of which you once knew so little, but deep in your soul feel so drawn to. it’s the marvelous adventure, open to all of us, of cracking deep into the book of religions other than the one we knew first. it’s the weaving and steeping, the absorbing and unfolding, that i swear enriches the broth.

but back to the fruits, and the part that i think is the absolute swooningest.

along with the fruits of the seder, the kabbalists said there must be four glasses of wine at the meal. you begin, they taught, with a white wine. each glass after that adds more and more red wine, so that each glass deepens in color. the first glass represents the cold whiteness of winter, the next, the pale buds of spring, onto the deep rose of the height of summer, and finally the crimson of the autumn leaves before they fall from the trees.

you needn’t be jewish to want to drop to your knees on that one, the breathtaking progression, the resonance of the fruit of the vine with the rhythms of earth, the unfolding. a whole sensory reminding that the changing of season is a blessing beyond blessing.

and this is a day when we pause, when we listen, for the first stirrings of the deep underground.

abraham joshua heschel, the great 20th-century jewish scholar, writes magnificently of the sanctification of time in judaism. here is one thought to ponder:

“judaism teaches us to be attached to the holiness of time, to be attached to sacred events, to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of the year.”

and so tonight, as i light the shabbat candles, usher in tu b’shevat, a sanctuary i never really knew until now, i will sit down to a feast of the earth’s promise, to fruits and nuts and wine. i will behold the shifting of the seasons, the absolute truth of the returning of life.

yes, now winter is making itself abundantly present. but from the heart of the fruits, will break open great sparks of holiness, wafting toward heaven. from each sip of my ever-blushing wine, the taste of the turning of time.

i will know as i eat and drink that beneath the cold hard snow, the fruits of spring are stirring. are whispering sacred incantations. vernal incantations.

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January 3, 2007

blessed, blessed day

the plan is this: stitch one blessed stretch of time with as many moments of grace and delight as i possibly can.

already i have been out bowing to the moon, listening to the rush of the wind, the far-off cry of the trains rumbling into the city. the birds, they were quiet, nestled still in their limbs, in their slumber.

see, i hopped out early. barely fluttered an eyelid, saw 6 something winking at me in bright red numbers, leapt. not a moment to waste on this day of days.

listening to my own challenge from yesterday–the birdsong v. the treadmill–i pulled my red-plaid flannel robe tighter, slipped old shoes on my feet and went out to inhale God’s world, to bow to the moon. to use the burgeoning goosebumps as reminder that i am so extraordinarily blessed to be alive, here at the mid-century mark.

in days of old, every move mattered, mattered to the extreme, on my birthday. i made lists, stacked one blessed moment on top of another. and when the birthday ebbed, i ached, thinking i needed to wait a whole nother sweep of the calendar before once again i could indulge in such simple pleasures, stacked one on the other, all through the day.

over the years, i got wiser. realized the true gift was seeing each day as a blessing. stitching grace, beauty, magical moments into any old day on the page.

and so, for instance, i set tables. set them as if it’s my birthday. old blue willow plates, a basket of clementines, coffee poured into my old favorite mug, the red one with little white hearts all around, and a few chips at the rim.

i make rich simple foods, foods of the earth, unadorned as often as possible. a snippet of herb, plucked from my sill, is enough to send me swooning.

i breathe deep, i breathe lasting.

the one gift i give on my birthday is the rare and incredible gift of taking time. i will dally over coffee, take a long walk to no particular place. i will sit before the fire, writing, flipping pages in a book that delights. i will drink in the tick of the clock. i will, thanks to the public school schedule, be with my boys all through this day.

nothing fancy. not a drop. intentionally, consciously so. i will, all through the day, whisper a long-winding prayer: blessed God you have kept me aloft and afloat. have not let me bob under the waters. filled my lungs, filled my heart, filled my arms. i am awake to your gifts, lord. i am awake. and that, in the end, is the most marvelous gift.

may you, each one of you, live this day stitched with riches and grace. simple riches. the ones you can’t buy. the ones that come from living awake.

i sign off hoping and praying that your days and mine, we never forget that each blessed one holds the possibility for all that is breath-takingly, spine-tinglingly good.

that, after all, is the ultimate challenge: to live a day, not in a rush toward some other day, some other deadline. but deeply to dwell in the blessing of blessings. deeply to dwell in the riches within.

may there be even one moment in this day that’s unfolding when you find yourself whispering, ah this is a day that is blessed, this is a double blessed day.

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January 2, 2007

bring on the birds

it seems fitting, doesn’t it, to begin the new year with an ear to the symphony outside. the sounds we don’t notice. the birdsong we are missing, dashing in and out from the house to the car to the errands that never ever seem to stop.

i was just out listening. and i’m telling you, it was an awakening. bach and beethoven, they tried. but they never got close. never got close to the sound and the song that the little birds make.

i had a fellow over, a wonderful fellow, the sort you want to sip coffee and listen to all the day long. his name is tim joyce, and he is a bird man. he came for a story i’m working on, a story about birdscaping, which is, believe it or not, the fine art of figuring which birds you might attract, and then laying out a plot for doing just that. it’s the bird version of landscaping. only it’s all about bringing on the birds.

so for a good hour or more, in the finger-numbing chill of this january morn, we stood and we watched and we listened. there were, in no particular order, house finches, house sparrows, black-cap chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, and red-breasted ones, too. there was a red-bellied woodpecker, a downy woodpecker, an american crow, and darn it, european starlings. of course, there were cardinals, my signature bird. and last but not least there were juncoes and goldfinch.

what all of that means is that nestled in the branches of my pines and my old scrubby brush, i have whole civilizations with stories to tell and flutterings to delight.

this tim fellow, bearded and spectacled, unspooled tales of how the starling, a seed swisher and most social bird i now know, was an invader from europe, how they’d come generations ago, brought over by settlers who, so the story goes, thought a starling in the background would make a new york city performance of shakespeare’s “king lear” seem so much more authentic. who knew?

he told how a hummingbird, flying from the yucatan peninsula to a quiet little corner of, perhaps, southern ontario, would dart into my little yard if i put out a hummingbird feeder, dally for a day or two, and then in the fall, flying back south, would remember my spot on the map and make a certain return. imagine that, my very own hummingbird friend.

but, he cautioned, should i ever forget to put out fresh hummingbird nectar (aka sugar water) and that sojourner took a gulp of bird drink gone bad, i would be blackballed forever by that sweet little flapper. egad.

all in all, it enchanted. and it turned on lightbulbs galore. here, in my little corner of the world, close enough to the big city that i’m there in a blink, i could be brushed day in and day out by the spectacle of God’s winged creation. what it takes, most of all, is carving out time, carving out quiet, to sit and to marvel at all that’s around me.

what if every morning i started my day not with a leap to the treadmill but instead crept outside, bowed to the rising sun and listened for the bach and the beethoven already nestled in my limbs?

i’m curious. how do you bring the natural world into your every day? is it the stars, or the moon? the rising or setting sun? and what about the birds, do you ever stand at your window and marvel, or better yet, step outside and drink in their song?

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December 29, 2006

before the page turns

before the last page flips over and away, it seems fitting to say, in no particular order…

this was the year my bones got less wobbly thanks to a dancer named donna; my broken-necked boy got rescued, he did, thanks to guardian angels and samaritans, too.

a little girl with a brain tumor reminded me how simple it is, when she nestled next to her mama and proclaimed this lasting truth: “i can read, i can whistle, i have a loose tooth; my life is complete.”

another sweet girl with a brain tumor didn’t make it, but she got up out of her wheelchair and walked across the finish line, she did.

a quartet of builders pounded their hearts into my farmhouse kitchen, and everywhere i look, everything i touch, i see them, i feel them; one blessed builder didn’t live to see the end of this year and for him i will forever ache, and forever be thankful.
a wise editor named ross urged me to tell the whole truth in a tale that finally brought my skeleton out of the closet; an even wiser woman named linda gave me the courage, the backbone, to do so.

a wizened man from ecuador told my sweet will how he walked to this country, would let nothing keep him away; another from mexico told of crossing the desert for three days with nothing but orange peels and hard candy.

a plaza filled with passionate people would not let the world deny nor forget the suffering in darfur, and my boys, thank God, were there to soak in the passion, to add their voice to the outcry.

a college kid with pierced ear and huge heart fell in love with my rambunctious child, offering hope that someone out in the world might see the golden light in his aura.

a golden-haired girl, with a platinum heart, loved that same little kid, and filled his wednesdays with light, every week through the summer.

standing in the emergency room with one trembling 5-year-old, my dear friend and neighbor ran to our rescue, interrupting her birthday to let him leap to her arms and out of the terrifying horrible place.

month after month, our friends at the soup kitchen bathed us in gratitude, humbled us deeply with the simple act of telling us our supper was something.

two soccer coaches, our first taste of the game, cared not about winning; were gentle and sweet as two coaches could possibly, imaginably be.

friends jane, jan and judy, old hands each, took me by the hand, by the elbow, the shoulder, and got me through the great rite of my firstborn’s bar mitzvah.

my blessed magnificent rock of a friend, one from way back in the newsroom, flew here to stand in my kitchen, to be by my side, and teach my sweet will the fine art of ghetto fried rice.

a sweet woman named molly left a shabbat basket on my stoop, melting me thoroughly with her random act of deep kindness.

a man named dorel, who can no longer make words, delighted me endlessly with the gleam in his eye as we went over and over simple sounds, ah, buh and k, kat.

when the going got rough, i stood back and watched a man named pete be the consummate father, showering love on a kid he wouldn’t let get dumped.

on the other end of the line, when i needed him most, my old ER doc friend said the words i most needed to hear, and stayed on the line ’til all was clear.

a farmer named henry, week after week, quietly, wordlessly grew for the world the purest produce that i’ve ever tasted; his sister, the word smith, puts his stories in print, and reminds every one of us of the infinite wisdom buried deep in the earth.

in a million other ways, the friends who i love bathed me in goodness and light, made me laugh, dried my tears, held my hand, held me up. from the ones who brought donuts before dawn to our hospital bedside, to the ones who pushed me off the great blogger ledge, i ask and i beg God to bless them with grace and with all that is good.

it’s been one stunning year, and we’re here at the end. God bless you. God keep you. take a deep breath, take a dive once again…..

if perhaps you have someone who stood out in your year, for their kindness, their goodness, their most amazing grace, tack their tale here. no need to name names, we’ll all get the gist….

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December 28, 2006

breakfast for michael

i wish you could hear the sounds here. yes, yes, the bacon is sizzling, and so’s the french toast. but the sound that truly makes my heart sing is the sound of sweet tedd in rapturous love with his uncle.

uncle michael.

reason for joy.

michael, you see, is one of the four. four uncles, each so beloved. there’s uncle airplane, uncle piano, uncle computer and uncle everything. and now all four are spread all over the country; maine, california, the mountains of north arizona, and, soon, toledo.

when an uncle comes home, there is reason for joy.

michael happens to be emphatically so.

michael is the brother just younger than me; we came every odd year, the first four of our brood. then, years later, an even one, mind you, came the caboose, came the sweet angel bri.

ever since we were little, michael and i have been particularly close. we used to lay on the extra twin bed in each other’s room, and talk the bedtime away. in the way back of the wood-paneled ford station wagon, we swapped stories and secrets, looked out the window, spun tales of all that we saw.

two christmases ago, michael was nursing his wife through her final excruciating days. she died before january ended, leaving my kid brother, at 45, broken-hearted and widowed.

last christmas, to change things, he came to see us the day after christmas, once his church job was finished, the songs put away.

after spending hours of each day on the phone all that long year, nursing him through his unbearable grief, finally having him here in the kitchen was the embrace i’d been waiting for, aching for, each time we hung up.

you see, michael is brilliantly funny, brilliantly quick. and brilliantly shining with love. to know him is, i’m not kidding, to utterly love him, and love him we do. he has been sunshine as long as i’ve known him, and i’ve known him as long as he’s been. one minute he’s playing the charlie brown theme song, the next he’s juggling oranges. he makes a game of dunking chips into salsa. and tedd, at his side, laughs and laughs ’til it hurts.

so this morning, once again, beats christmas in my book. it’s breakfast for michael, and michael for breakfast. if cooking for someone you love is a giant embrace, then the feast i just made was a boa constrictor.

it’s one thing to love someone on a long-distance phone call. it’s a whole other thing to fry up the bacon, slice the cranberry-studded, almond-paste-swirled holiday bread. heck, we poured cream in the mix of the eggs and the milk, the dunking sweet soup that turns bread to french toast.

the coffee was spiked with dashes of cinnamon. the pomegranate seeded and sprinkled on clementines.

and then we all sat, we held hands and we prayed.

it gets no more delicious than michael for breakfast.

December 26, 2006

an ear to your heart

sometimes, great swaths of time can go by and it doesn’t happen. but it happened this year.

happened as i reached for the wadded-up clump that came in a box of other-sized things, all wrapped in the same red-with-white-snowmen.

little hands, you see, unable to wait when the big box arrived, had reached for the same lump and started the ripping, so this particular clump had some of its underthings showing. a brown-paper webbing, in fact, that was meant to keep something safe. but this something had my name on it, penned in silver on a snowflake cut from white paper, so when the ripping began we told it to stop. patiently, temptingly, its underthings showing, the lump it had waited all of these days.

there wasn’t much under the tree with my name on it this year, and for some reason i knew that this something i would want to open off to side, where i alone could drink in whatever it was.

and so, after the rest of the opening hubbub this christmas eve, in between gathering up scraps of paper and ribbons and ladling out bowls of white-hot white chili, i reached under the tree for the lump that was mine. as i unrolled the brown-paper webbing, i uncovered a layer of tissue with the stamp of a store that i love up in maine. stonewall kitchen, i read. and my heart started to skip.

you see, stonewall kitchen, a vast storehouse of jams and jellies and all sorts of dry mixes, also happens to peddle a blue-and-white pottery that makes my heart skip. burleighware, it’s called. comes from england.

the signature pattern is a rich cobalt calico. months and months ago, i splurged on a big fat oversized pitcher, marking the end of the kitchen construction and the start of the second half-century of me, which begins in just over a week.

never in my life have i wanted to collect anything (although there was a spell when the world, it seemed, had decided i was a bovine collector, and thus i seemed to reap cows in every size shape and utility), but once i eyed this burleighware, i thought, uh oh, this could be trouble. it’s blue and white you see, and i am a sucker for that.

cobalt blue sets me to swooning. and this burleighware comes in intricate patterns, each one transferred by hand, over in some charming barn in the countryside of merry ol’ england.

so back to my lump, now revealing its stonewall-kitchen origins. here’s where the magic starts to creep in.

i do not go on and on about “things” that i love. so maybe i might have once mentioned the shop, maybe twice. but someone was listening, someone was looking. paying attention to the thump in my heart that came from the blue calico pitcher, and a small flock of similar ilk that had crept into my kitchen in dribs and in drabs.

that, there, is the magic of christmas, the magic of gifting, the magic of utterly truly giving a gift. for in the end, as my dear becca (blessed art therapist who works wonders with the most troubled of kids) says, all that all of us want is to be heard.

and so, standing there, pulling back the tissue, pulling back the wrap, i found in my hands two tiny pitchers, both in calico blue. how did she know, was the first thing i thought. bless her for listening, bless her for hearing the thumpety-thumpety-thump of my heart.

they sit on my sill now, my white-with-blue sill, in the little thin window that charmed me, that whispered to me, the instant the builders slipped it into its place. there’s a bramble of bushes and a tall cedar fence out that window, but if you look carefully you can imagine a scene from a farm, all rolling and cows. and now, with the english calico pitchers, you might imagine an english farm scene.

but the best part of the window, now that they’re perched, is that someone was listening to the inner tick of my heart.

for a girl who spent years opening things that seemed to belong to someone down the road, around the corner, certainly at some other address, there is nothing so sweet, nothing so humbling, as the great gift of being touched at the tick of your heart.

perhaps it happened to you, perhaps someone heard the tick or the tock of your inner-most heart. if you care to, tell your tale here….

December 25, 2006

before the pit-pat of little feets

once again, it is wrapped in black. before the black turns to purply, before the streaks of light begin to steal away the blackness of the magic of christmas that i have come to love best: before the pit-pat of little feets tromp down the steps, streak across the hall, shout, it’s christmas.

don’t get me wrong, i love that chapter. it’s just that i love this one better.

it’s just me and the darkness and the twinkling of the tree, and the clock ticking, and the simmering of “smell” on the stove. smell is my old pot that sizzles all through the winter with a great heap of orange peels, and cinnamon sticks and cloves and bay leaves and water that turns syrupy brown what with all the sizzling.

sometimes i make a fire when i know the coast is clear and poor ol’ santa won’t be singeing his bottom, or the soles of his boots.

i’m usually alone with santa’s handiwork. in fact the sight of his plate (up above) tickles me to no end. we have left food for the reindeer, a big mug of milk, and the best of the sweets we have stored in our tins. this year it looks like poor santa had time for just a bite of the shortbread star and one little square of peppermint bark. seems like the reindeer didn’t get much. this might bother poor tedd, but he’ll get on with the business of the day, which in this case looks to be the very thing he wanted, a rock-n-roll guitar. santa should have remembered ear plugs for papa. oh well.

back to the part that is my christmas gift: the shhhhhsh of the morning when it’s me and the tree….

it starts, like it has for nearly a half century of years, with that first semi-conscious awakening, as those brain cells kick into holiday drive and send out a newsflash, it’s christmas morn. and since i’m the mom now i don’t have to hold myself in under the covers, i can unfurl, i can escape, i can dart down the stairs in my jammies, and drink in the magic of the morning.

i plug in the tree, turn up the flame under the smell, haul out the makin’s of my christmas morn cake. the one that will have the windows steaming on the inside, the one that years ago i discovered made me feel like a mama on christmas. baking in the kitchen, while little heads up above still swirled with visions of sugar plums. that’s what moms do, isn’t it?

this morning is all about christmas from the other side. this is all about making christmas my way, stitching it with the great tapestry of sight and sound and smell that stokes my heart, stokes my soul. this is christmas the way i always wanted it to be. this is christmas before the cacophony unfolds. this is christmas hushed.

curled in my red-and-white checked chair, mug in hand, staring into the flames, drinking in the magic of making christmas for others, i inhale a deep gulp. i hold it in my lungs.

this is a moment i wait for all year, and i don’t want to let it slip away soon. each christmas, how it changes; i am the mother these days not just of wee little ones. in fact, just now i hear 13-year-old feets. they make the floorboards creak. they hardly pit-a-pat.

i wonder if, 13 years from now, i will still hear those feet up above. or will he be out in the world, sending me an email some christmas morn, from far on the other side of the globe? saying, dear mama, i hope it’s quiet there. hope the smell isn’t burning. hope you could manage to get down under the tree and plug in the lights. hope you don’t mind christmas alone.

guess i need to go make christmas for the boys i love best. it won’t be christmas forever. only once a year do i get that fluttery truth in my half-asleep brain: it’s christmas, get downstairs. the dark won’t last for long.

here’s my whispering for each of you: may you find whatever you are seeking this christmas, the wisp of a dream come true, a hug from someone who really loves you, the magic of unwrapping something that tells you someone was listening, really listening. if there is good possibility a tear is spilling down your cheek, may there be someone to wipe it, someone who loves you, and maybe that someone is me. all the way from here to there. i know what it is to find a little dark corner on christmas and fill it with light, and call it your own.

quietly, softly, before the volume is cranked: merry blessed christmas. i wish you were right here beside me. we would stare into the fire. we would breathe deep. we would hold on to the miracle of the day before it unfolds.

God bless you each and every one.

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December 21, 2006

for the birds…

it is the day of the longest night, and so it seems fitting, it does, that this be the day we remember the birds and the little beasts that dart and that frolic out in the not-so-wild of our leafy backyards.

for years now, feeding the birds for christmas has been one of the quaintest moments on my calendar. alone in my kitchen, or with little hands weighing in from the wings, i plop out the peanut butter, smear on the cones, roll in the seed, tie with a string. sometimes i swear that patron saint of wild things, st. francis, that is, is there too, peeking over my shoulder, leading me on in this sacred creation. feeding the little winged things. making a tree for the birds just out my window.

i have searched high and low, looking and asking, isn’t there a particular one day of the year, somewhere in the world, set aside for this cutting out bread hearts, rolling peanut-butter pine cones, all in the name of returning the birds’ favor? so far, i’ve not found a day, so i am declaring it this one, the day of the long winter’s night. the day of the solstice.

so if you or your little ones might be so inspired, what you need, simply, is this: a stash of pine cones, slices of bread, a jar of good peanut butter, a tinplate of seeds. should you care to make a haute tree, ask your friend the butcher for a paper-wrapped packet of suet, a.k.a. the fat sliced off a good chunk of cow. if you go the suet route, you might want an old pot, for pity the poor soul who warms up his soup in the pot that last melted the suet.

have at it. cookie cutters make fine shapes of the bread, which then can be smeared in pb&j fashion. dunk in your seed pile, thread through a string, and, voila, my friend, you have a treat for your bird. pine cones are a variation on that same winged theme.

to make a suet cake, melt the fat, pour into muffin tins, add seed to thicken the plot, stand back and let harden. you might want to have left a once-knotted string or a raffia in the cup before hardening, or simply thread through after the fact. it’s all very simple, and that is the point.

it is the simple act of loving God’s creatures, saying thanks for the delight they bring to your heart, that makes it so magic.

that, and knowing as you settle your head for the longest night’s sleep that you warmed the belly of the great winged flock. and most likely, the heart of the one who first gave flight to those feathers.

bless you and yours this long winter’s night.