Thursday, December 26, 2013

light.



christmas is like a long, hard ride: the more you put into it, the better it is.

my favorite christmas in childhood memory was one of the first in the house that my parents had built, up on a snowy white hill surrounded by leafless maples and swaying spruce. we had all gone to the local small town. we had all searched and searched for gifts that would be 'perfect' for that particular person in the family. i had never spent so much time considering what pair of wool socks would best suit my little brother. i had never considered the soap my sister might like. i was sure those patterned socks would be perfect for my mom.

i had worked for the past few weeks in the wood shop of the local school, making novelty items out of scrap lumber, routering people's names into knotty pine, painting wooden christmas tree ornaments cut crookedly with a scroll saw then painted green, putting the mirror in another 'key rack' that no one had a use for. it was glorious.

everyone got socks that christmas.

then my parents went back to bed, my brothers and i went out to play hockey in the snow with my new net and puck, my sister started reading her book, and we were to reconvene for brunch. i remember quite vividly how fluffy the snow was, like stick handling the puck over snow after a goose down pillow fight. the sun was beaming. light glinted off of everything shiny or snow-covered, which was everything out there. my new sweatpants were bright red, like the paint on the hockey net. my brothers were flashes of blue and wool grey. we were giddy with the pleasure of the moment. mom was home. dad was home. we were proud of the gifts we had given. we were covered in light.

christmas has since devolved and then evolved into a time of midnight drives and sleepy presents, pressure cooker accommodations and the constant failure of myself to meet anyone's expectations. sometimes there was bedrest. sometimes there was christmas on the road. sometimes it was on the 25th and everyone was angry. sometimes it was before and didn't feel like christmas. sometimes we showed up a day later and every conversation ached like a hangover. yesterday, yesterday was evolution. we woke up in our own beds. the girls opened their stockings and presents. there was not enough, but this is a budget year, and they get twisted expectations from their friends at school. then we ate and all was well. there was coffee and gluten free cinnamon buns. there was bacon. it was christmas, evolved back into what it should be. and then it started snowing, big, fluffy flakes, covering everything in cold, white down. i was not angry.

now it's the time for resolutions, for promising to make next year just a little bit better, to plan a little tighter, to give a little more. now it's the time to ramp everything up as we hit the road and try not to screw up christmas under other people's expectations (not that i know what any of them are, let alone how to reconcile them with the realities of weather, driving, or my own little family). not really a problem; we all know that i'll fail to meet most people's expectations so there's no need to stress about the inevitable. next year though, next year i will cover all of us in light.

merry christmas.

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