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Archive for December, 2013

We received a Christmas card from Germany last week, a greeting from a friend of our daughter’s, reminding us of the Christmas he spent at our house, far from his British family.  As I read Simon’s note,  I realized that it was also the last Christmas holiday that we—my daughters, husband and I—shared the season together in one place.  It was only a year later one daughter called from Beirut to say “Merry Christmas,” and the other traveled east to Florida to meet the man who would become her husband.

Our annual holiday celebrations have been changing over the past few years.  Sometimes we’ve traveled to spend the holiday with one or the other daughter; at other times, depending on who is living where in the world, one of them has come to us.  Now, as they create their own holiday traditions with their spouses and children, we will, as we are doing this year, be joining the throngs crowding the gates at airports, hoping the weather cooperates enough to get us to our destination as planned.

It’s a bittersweet time for me.  I don’t enjoy traveling during Christmas, but there’s nothing more joyous that celebrating the holidays with my grandchildren, reading  Clement C. Moore’s The Night Before Christmas, baking cookies, stuffing the stockings with clever little surprises, and Christmas morning, sharing in the children’s excitement.  Yet there’s nostalgia too—memories of Christmases past.

…Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang “Cherry Ripe,” and another uncle sang “Drake’s Drum.” It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird’s Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept. 

(From: “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” By Dylan Thomas)

As I drove home at night this week, the neighborhood was alive with colored lights and decorations. I pulled into our driveway, awash with memories of long ago Christmas times.  I remembered how, as a child, we’d climb into our old Ford station wagon every year, driving through all over our small town to admire the display of lights and decorations.  I recalled my father’s annual trek into the snowy wilderness to cut the perfect tree, of the bubble lights and themed decorations, packages piled high beneath the branches, and Christmas day, dozens of cousins, aunts and uncles gathered together for the holiday meal, everyone singing carols.

There are other memories too—ones less romantic but every bit a part of our family’s Christmas traditions:  I was assigned the task of painting a Christmas scene in our large picture window, my mother ever hopeful we would win a prize in the “best Christmas decorations” contest each year.  My artwork was colorful but untrained, and I was mildly embarrassed to have my work on such public display.  The honorable mention I earned one year only reinforced my belief that, despite my desire to be one, I wasn’t really an artist. Then there was the disappointment of my mother’s when we brought home the tree—never perfect enough to her liking, followed by the inevitable argument over placement of lights, and later, my father’s failed attempts to bring home the “right” present for his critical wife.  These things became a part of my family’s holiday traditions  just as the carols, hanging our stockings or opening gifts on Christmas mornings.  Now they are part of the stories we tell—and re-tell—each December as we decorate our tree.

As children, we knew there was more to it -
Why some men got drunk on Christmas Eve
Wasn’t explained, nor why we were so often
Near tears nor why the stars came down so close,

Why so much was lost. Those men and women
Who had died in wars started by others,
Did they come that night? Is that why the Christmas
tree
Trembled just before we opened the presents?

There was something about angels. Angels we
Have heard on high Sweetly singing o’er
The plain. The angels were certain. But we could not
Be certain whether our family was worthy tonight.

(From:  “A Christmas Poem,” by Robert Bly, in Morning Poems,1998)

Whatever your beliefs or religious practices, December is a month filled with celebration and family traditions.  Think about the holidays you celebrated as a child or at a particularly significant time.  What memories do you have?  What’s most vivid or poignant?  Write about holidays you’ve celebrated in the past—traditions you remember fondly or even the ones that you don’t.  Tell the stories ignited by this holiday season.

And to those of you reading this post, my wishes that your holidays be merry and bright, filled with the warmth of family and friends.

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Starting here, what do you want to remember?

Anyone who’s written with me over the years knows I often find inspiration from the words of William Stafford, who, for me and for so many who love his poetry, “offers a unique way into the heart of the world.”  His words resonate, and I return to his poetry time and again, discovering a line or two that invariably speaks to me.  This morning was no exception.  I rose at six a.m. as I always do, treasuring the solitude and quiet of early morning.  As I walked into the living room I saw the seventy or so greeting cards displayed on our book shelves, all sent by family, friends, colleagues and students as a surprise for my husband’s 75th birthday.  J., though loving, is reserved in emotional expression, and faced with another reminder of age, was less than enthusiastic to celebrate the day.  The cards came from as far away as India, Europe, Canada, and across the U.S.  He was, for a few moments, speechless, disbelieving that so many people would honor him with their cards and letters.  I watched as he read them, one by one, laughing at the humor, but with tears in his eyes.   Starting here, what do you want to remember?  Not, I hope, the fact of advancing age, but rather, the evidence offered to him that his life was—and is—full, rich with people who think of him with affection.

I think it’s difficult, perhaps as we age or when life strikes us a blow, to remember the gifts of our lives.  When I was much younger, I welcomed each birthday, each new year as an opportunity to start anew, revisit good intentions not quite realized and turn them into action.  Another year in front of me held promise, opportunity, and new adventure.  There were times marked by personal tragedy, illness or losses that I was happy to see end, and I turned my back on them with a sigh of “well, thank goodness that’s over,” fixing my sights on the year in front of me with all its possibility for something better.  I was always looking ahead.

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

I was waiting for the better to come, but it’s different now, for J. and for me.  I feel a mixture of nostalgia and reluctance to have time move so quickly.  I try to avoid reminders of our advancing years and the sometimes regret that I haven’t accomplished all I set out to do.  It’s a mixture of looking back or, as I contemplate that foreign concept of “retirement,” feeling anxious about what might lie ahead.  I forget, as I know my husband sometimes does, to remember what a full life I’ve led—and that I am still very much living in the here and now.

But I am more aware of the fragility and uncertainty of life.  My brushes with cancer and heart failure, the men and women who, weekly, write out of the struggle and hardship of cancer, have taught me how precious life is.  I am more attentive to the present than I have ever been, much more inclined to remind myself to pay attention, to live each day fully and find the joy in the small gifts life offers daily.  I return to Stafford’s words as a reminder.

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -

This morning, I wrote to remember the look on my husband’s face as he opened the box of birthday greeting cards from so many people whose lives intersected with his.  But as I looked up from the page to the window, an iridescent flash of color caught my eye.  It was a ruby throated hummingbird hovering just outside the glass, red and green feathers glistening in the morning sun.  It was a reminder, as if on cue, reminding me how important it is to stay attentive to the gifts of now.  As Stafford asks us,

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

(From:  The Way It Is:  New and Selected Poems, Greywolf Press, 1999)

Try writing this week by beginning with Stafford’s question:  “Starting here, what do you want to remember?”

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In the middle

of a life  that’s as complicated as everyone else’s,

struggling for balance, juggling time.  

The mantle clock that was my grandfather’s

 has stopped at 9:20; we haven’t had time  

to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,  

 the chimes don’t ring. One day you look out the window,

green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,

and a grey sky lowers the horizon…

“Gosh, it’s December already,” a friend remarked a few days ago.  “Where on earth has the time gone?”  “The older I get,” she said, “the faster time flies.”

I commiserated, feeling much the same.  It’s a sense of time racing by and made all the more fleeting by the rush of holiday activities.  As invitations multiply, I quietly balk, wishing I had more time to do the things I enjoy, to awaken to a day without any appointments, deadlines, or the never-ending list of “to dos.”

…Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging

us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,

sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh

of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up

in love, running out of time.

(“In the Middle,” by Barbara Crooker, from Word Press, 1998.)

 

Time is always ahead of us…”Where has the time gone?  It’s a question we’ve all asked ourselves more than once.  Put it another way, and the question becomes, “What have I done with my time?

Remember  the unorthodox English teacher played by Robin Williams in the 1989 film Dead Poets’ Society?  “Believe it or not,” he tells his students, “each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die.”  Williams’ students rallying cry becomes “carpe diem,” or “seize the day,”  a call to live life to its full potential.  Did that mean they were more attentive to time?

According to www.poets.org, the Latin phrase carpe diem originated in the “Odes,” a long series of poems composed by the Roman poet Horace  in 65 B.C.E..

Scale back your long hopes

to a short period. While we
speak, time is envious and

is running away from us.
Seize the day, trusting
little in the future.

Time…is running away from us.  Or is it that we’re not paying attention to what time offers?  In “The Gift,” William Stafford invites the reader to rethink time.

Time wants to show you a different country.  It’s the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.

It’s the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.
You get killed now and then, violated
in various ways.  (And sometimes it’s turn about.)
You get tired of that.  Long-suffering, you wait
and pray, and maybe good things come – maybe
the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.
You have a breath without pain.  It is called happiness.

                               It’s a balance, the taking and passing along,                                    the composting of where you’ve been and how people
and weather treated you.  It’s a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, “Here, take it, it’s yours.”

(From:  The Way It Is, Graywolf Press, 1999)

“Here, take it, it’s yours.”  As the crush of holiday shopping, socializing and gift giving intensifies in the next several days, time may feel like it’s racing by, or, as it used to when I was small and waiting for Santa, it may drag, one day stretching into forever.  What matters, I think,  is that we pay attention to time, to life.

 

Suppose your life a folded telescope

Durationless, collapsed in just a flash

As from your mother’s womb you, bawling, drop

Into a nursing home…

Einstein was right. That would be too intense.

You need a chance to preen, to give a dull

Recital before an indifferent audience

Equally slow in jeering you and clapping…

Time takes its time unraveling. But, still, 

You’ll wonder when your life ends: Huh? What happened?

(“The Purpose of Time is to Prevent Everything from Happening at Once,” by X. j. Kennedy, from The Lords of Misrule.)

Write about your relationship to time.  What has time taught you about life?  What gifts has time offered you?

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You look over all that the darkness
ripples across. More than has ever
been found comforts you. You open your
eyes in a vault that unlocks as fast
and as far as your thought can run.
A great snug wall goes around everything,
has always been there, will always
remain. It is a good world to be
lost in. It comforts you. It is
all right…

(From:  “Waking at 3 a.m.,” by William Stafford, in Someday, Maybe, 1973)

It’s dark outside when I awaken each morning, a time when the house is blessed by quiet.  As as I walk, neighborhood streets are still, their silence interrupted only by the odd passing car, early risers on their way to work.  I cherish these winter mornings, the comfort of darkness shifting into dawn, the shorter days and longer nights, even though I live in a place where the advent of winter is less noticeable than other places I once called “home.”

Yesterday,  the first day of December, the temperature i San Diego was a balmy 70 degrees, making the idea of winter seem all the more unreal.  As I gaze out my window and across the canyon, the slopes are still green, dotted by succulents, silk oaks, eucalyptus and palm trees, unfazed by the calendar date.  There are buds on my bird of paradise plants and a riot of fuchsia blooms on the bougainvillea.  Yet winter has announced her coming in change of the light.  The angle of the sun has shifted—it will soon be at its lowest arc in the sky—the daylight hours are shorter, and each morning, I darkness greets me when I awaken.

The advent of winter signals not only a change in light and seasons, but a time of celebrations, whatever what our religious heritage or beliefs might be.  In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice in our hemisphere occurs later this month, on December 21st, coinciding with the season of our major holiday celebrations.

Our winter celebrations have their roots in the winter solstice, the time when our hemisphere is farthest from the sun.  The winter solstice was time our ancestors associated with death and rebirth.  As the days grew shorter and the sun began to sink lower into the sky,  they feared the sun would completely disappear, leaving them to endure an existence of permanent cold and darkness.  Imagine the primitive fear that accompanied those dark winter mornings, a feeling echoed in the first stanza of “Winter Solstice,” a poem by Jody Aliesan.

When you startle awake in the dark morning
heart pounding breathing fast
sitting bolt upright staring into
dark whirlpool black hole
feeling its suction…

The winter solstice was considered a turning point.  It marked the return of sun and promise of warmer seasons to come.  Even though winter was far from over, the solstice a time of celebration, usually taking place  a few days later, the time that many of us now celebrate the Christmas holidays.

Aleisan’s poem echoes that same sense of promise that the ancients associated with the solstice, something I find I also feel in these dark mornings.  She reminds us there is comfort found in remembering the beauty of darkness:   stars close together, the winter moon rising, or an owl in the distance.  A sense of rebirth emerges out of the beauty in darkness.

already light is returning pairs of wings
lift softly off your eyelids one by one
each feathered edge clearer between you
and the pearl veil of day…

(From:  Grief Sweat, Broken Moon Press, 1990)

This week, why not use the metaphor of winter, of solstice, to reframe your experience with cancer or another difficult time in your life, a time when hope seemed to fade and you feared little more than darkness. Did your experience a kind of “death” and rebirth?  Move from darkness into light?  Discover a sense of life renewed?

It’s comforting to look up from this roof

and feel that, while all changes, nothing’s lost,

to recollect that in antiquity the winter solstice fell in Capricorn

and that, in the Orion Nebula,

from swirling gas, new stars are being born.

(“Toward the Winter Solstice” by Timothy Steele, from Toward the Winter Solstice. © Swallow Press, 2005.)

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