Keep a green tree in your heart and a singing bird will come….Chinese proverb.
I’ve been nursing myself through Christmas for years, missing the breakup of my family, dealing with a fractured holiday where kids have to split in two to see all the parents, missing the young family I had, the young me so busy and so organized. This year, I realized my work…..on defining what I and no one else but I….want for Christmas has paid off. The heartbreak seems to have been sealed off, like a leak in an old boat. The vessel may be creaky, but she can sail. I’m enjoying myself. Small things delight me:
Buying the three living green wreaths that unleash my decorating and never decorating them the same but just letting creativity flow…..
Noticing the beauty of the Christmas cactus blooms when they finally open; the closed blooms themselves are so satiny beautiful and then when they open….wow…
Letting myself be fully present at whatever small or large Christmas do I’m at, and it doesn’t matter if the only pair of wool slacks I have are too tight at the waist; I’ll diet in the New Year….
Punting around the kids’ schedules but having something Christmas Eve day with them….
Singing my heart out at the Unity Christmas Eve service, all by myself if need be…..
Going with Youngest Grandson (2) on admiring Christmas lights walks. “Light,” he says as he carefully navigates himself near the lighted object. “One finger,” he says, as he’s been taught, as he carefully touches a single light of each object. His masked, furtive delight that he’s talked me into allowing him to walk down the sidewalk with me rather than placing him in the stroller could not be more obvious or more joyful to me. I get one more grandchild to do this with….
Buying reindeer antlers and a red nose for the car, laughing at how silly I must look because the cars I see with them on look silly….but happy, too….what if we all put such on our cars for this time of year…..wouldn’t that be a hoot?
So….a green tree did grow in my heart again around this season, and ten years ago I would never have believed it. I can’t be the younger woman with the world I once had, but I can enjoy the season again. Merry Christmas, ya’ll………
Karleen Koen — writing life 
As I read this I realized for the first time that Christmas is so often about the past in our lives — what it was before, what we had. So rarely do people experiment with Christmas and come up with a new creative experience cobbled out of what we have available to us THIS year. Which family member or house or activity…Perhaps that’s all this holiday needs in order to pop and fizzle burst anew. To be less melancholy.
Merry Christmas, Karleen!
Dunya says it so well…..coming up with a new experience out of what we have available in the now…..Merry Christmas, all…..
Merry Christmas, Karleen. Beautiful Christmas story. I remember the fear I felt about breaking up my own family–how it would affect Passover. By the time I found the courage and the means, my children were grown and Passover was held at my daughter’s house, with my assistance. Things were bumpy for a while, but smoothed out with time and changes in circumstances. Life happens for the best, at least I tell myself it does.
Merry Christmas, Karleen and all.
When I was much younger, I never understood why I people would say how hard the holidays were. Now I understand what they meant. Life changes and what was, is no longer but life is all about adjustment. Tweaking it until it works again. Sounds like you have done that. Best wishes for a wonderful New Year!
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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