singing bird

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………

Advertisement

troubadour’s song

Walking my not-yet-walking-year-old grandson (you know….you hold his hands and he staggers in front of you) in falling dusk as neighbors’ Christmas lights gleam and he gurgles and talks sing-song in genuine pleasure….so pleased with himself and the world….

Watching paperwhites stalks lurch up greenly….so greenly….(a little gin to the water helps)….seeing the fat bulge of the blossom hidden as yet by the green….knowing the white unfurling to come….

Talking with my nephew (his mother, my sister, dead 10 years)….he says, I love you, Aunt Karleen….and as I say I love you back, such a catch in my throat….it’s as if my sister’s spirit sits on my shoulder and in my heart…she’s with me for a moment, again….it happens too rarely, now…

Reading a hilarious note to Santa from my granddaughter….a note which asks him to sign where she has drawn a line to prove (prove being spelled proove) he’s real…..

Finding Christmas cards I like….lots of red in the illustration this year….loving the red, the art of the artist who drew the illustration….loving that this year there is time to do this ritual….wondering if in 10 years there will even be paper cards to buy….thinking it all moves on and on…..

Stepping back as my daughter and daughter-in-law begin to take Christmas into their own hands….where I am the guest to their doings….feeling odd and old but liking their fledgling maneuvers…. thinking, it all moves on and on and on….

What was your song this season?