Christmas Present

The book I chose to give myself this year was North Woods, by Daniel Mason, one of my stepdaughter’s favorite reading experiences of the year about to end, but on Christmas Eve I had fallen asleep without finishing Rumer Godden’s Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, a book I had searched out in my shop’s storage area after reading the same author’s novel about a young orphaned half-gypsy girl, The Diddakoi, which I’d turned to after an interval of other books that succeeded my reading of An Episode of Sparrows. (Phew! Does this count as a binge?) In many ways quite different stories, the three Godden novels in this paragraph have one thing in common: each tell stories of girls and women, and the young girls in Sparrows and Diddakoi and the young woman in Five for Sorrow all have much to overcome in order to find strength in themselves and happiness in their lives. 

So there I was, awake at 5:30 a.m. (as usual) on Christmas morning, with an engrossing novel yet unfinished and waiting for me. Also waiting for me, as she is every morning, was my dear Sunny Juliet, the puppy the Artist knew I needed. “I could live without a dog, but you can’t, so we need a dog.” Then, “Take that motorcycle money. Go get the puppy. Yes, I’m sure.” This puppy (I still call her that) is three years old now, and she has a clear and steady grip on her momma’s morning routine. First the momma gets up to make coffee and brings the first cup (mug) back to bed, where she sits up with a book or a writing tablet. The puppy curls patiently at my side, un chien croissant, or drapes herself over the momma’s feet, biding her time. When the momma gets up a second time, the puppy knows it’s only for a coffee refill, not really “getting up,” per se. 

"This is subtle, isn't it?" Sunny asks wordlessly.

But when the refill finally begins to cool in the mug, Sunny feels it’s time to make her presence felt with greater immediacy. First she takes a position more demanding of attention than her Sleepy Girl mode. Then, increasingly proactive, she stands up and begins to give kisses. I say “give kisses,” but this move is as much a demand as an offering. Fair enough. She has been a very patient girl for an hour and a half, sometimes even two hours, and that’s long enough! Besides, who can resist a happy, wiggly little dog girl’s kisses? Who would want to try? She's no fool!

My “plans” for the day, laid in advance, were simple. It would be a day at home, just Sunny Juliet and me. We would have our usual morning ramble outdoors before breakfast. Breakfast would be special, with little bites of pancake and bacon for Sunny, besides her usual dog food, and then, while the momma opened a few presents for the two of them, a brand-new beef bone for Sunny to gnaw. And maybe that bone would give the momma some quiet reading time.

Later: waiting for the "Okay!"

Every morning Sunny lets me know when she’s ready for me to get out of bed, even though she knows that going outside is still maybe an hour in the future. If I tarry too long beneath the covers, she lets me know I’m disappointing her (bark! bark! bark!), but once I’m on my feet, her patience returns, and I can have another coffee refill. On this particular Christmas morning I have time to fry up the bacon and assemble separately the dry and wet ingredients for the pancakes I’ll make after our outdoor time, sneaking in a few more pages of my book. 

Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy is one of Godden’s very Roman Catholic stories. The title refers to the rosary, and the protagonist’s continuing spiritual difficulty over the rosary stems from a painful episode—one of many—in her life journey. Lise, an American, a driver with the Army, arrives in Paris during the joyful chaos of the Liberation. When she becomes lost, on foot, in the crowds, her unintended life in France begins. I won’t spoil the story by revealing the many steps that take her from this beginning to her life in a French convent among a very special order of Dominican nuns, but I will say that the particular convent that comes to be her home sounds very congenial. There is hard work, with long hours, but also farm animals and the beautiful French countryside, and the work, while often dirty, is largely healthy farm work. The sisters eat well, too. Even during fast periods, there are feast days, so while not exactly lenient, the lives of the nuns are not uncompromisingly harsh.

 

In Chapter 8, Godden summarizes a year in the life of the convent called Belle Source, beginning in the earliest signs of spring in February: 

 

The Normandy February was usually wet and cold, but there were days of clear sunshine that reminded Lise of her childhood in England when there might be catkins; the willows turned red and the first snowdrops were out. There were no catkins at Belle Source but she found an early primrose in the bank below the aumônier’s house and a scattering of snowdrops.

 

At New Year’s Eve,

 

Another year was rounded, and nothing anyone could write or say, thought Lise, could tell the whole meaning of each succeeding year, of its unfolding; what is a day-to-day miracle is unexciting because usually it’s so sure—and yet it is a miracle; only if it’s taken away, as in a famine or drought, do we see that.

 

The day-to-day miracle of everyday life is what we so often overlook, isn’t it?

Sunny Juliet: my everyday companion

Living in the country with my dog, operating my little village bookshop, my life has its daily and hourly routines. Christmas Day is a quiet feast day at home. I am enjoying my reading of Rumer Godden and look forward to Daniel Mason’s book. Opening gifts and talking to and texting with family will be a pleasure. Will it sound strange, though, if I say I want to pay special attention today to my dog? The Artist never had a chance to meet her face-to-face, only to see puppy pictures, but this morning as I look at that furry face and into those bright eyes I say to her, “He knew I needed you.” By my side every day and precious in herself, she is a living gift from someone who knew me, who saw me, who loved me. I want to be present with my girl today. She deserves that. She is a miracle. Snow is a miracle. Love is a miracle. Light. Life.

(Now THAT is a Charlie Brown tree!)

-      12/25/2024, 8:25 a.m. And now, out into the snow we go!!!

 

Postscript: Images added before upload and after a lot of activity outdoors. In addition to all the usual neighbors—deer, rabbits, mice, squirrels—this morning we found turkey tracks in the orchard, wandering off into the woods. More miracles all around us! Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

Turkey track

Turkey trail

She always finds treasures!

The Last Word? Probably Not.

 

“You always have to have the last word!” 

 

That’s a show-stopper, isn’t it? Because if you respond, of course, it’s because “you always have to have the last word,” while if you remain silent, the accusation against you stands unchallenged. 

 

As the world turns and history marches on, though, mortal humans’ talking and writing days are time-limited, so no one ever has the last word. Nietzsche tried to have it by preemptively declaring that no one yet alive could understand him, but he’s been gone quite a while now, and challenges to his writings have yet to stop. What I’m getting at, however, in a very roundabout way, is that today will probably not be my last word on the subject of grief -- but as grief is once more my subject today, anyone who’s tired of reading about it might want to go elsewhere now.

A friend who has been in my life longer than any friends other than my two sisters recommended a book to me, Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air. The author was a resident in neurosurgery, apparently on the verge of a brilliant career, when he was diagnosed with the brain tumor that took his life shortly after graduation. Writing his book (his only book, what with his life being cut so short), telling of his lifelong search for meaning and his feeling that surgery was a calling and not a “job,” then recounting what it was like suddenly to be, himself, the patient – this was important to him at the end of his life, probably second only to his love for his wife and baby daughter. I read most of the book with tears prickling but not falling. It was his wife’s epilogue that brought on sobs, when she wrote –

 

I expected to feel only empty and heartbroken after Paul died. It never occurred to me that you could love someone the same way after he was gone, that I would continue to feel such love and gratitude alongside the terrible sorrow, the grief so heavy that at times I shiver and moan under the weight of it. [I added the emphases.]

 

It never occurred to me, either. It was a complete surprise. I was astonished and amazed at the gratitude that washed through me along with the grief, almost immediately, and now, a year later, I continue to be amazed by – and grateful for – the gratitude itself, because it is not something for which I can take any credit. If I’d had to work to feel it, I might well never have gotten there. 

 

Other widowed persons, men and women both, have had experiences different from mine. Some lost beloved partners so suddenly that there was no time for a single moment to acknowledge the final parting, while others went through years and years of gradual and painful diminishment and loss. Just as every relationship, every love affair, every marriage is unique, so is every experience of losing someone to death. The last gift of time, and the gratitude for that time, is one more way that I was blessed. One more gift, after so many, and I continue to be grateful to be able to feel it. 

 

(Metagratitude?) 

 

Let me be clear. Gratitude doesn’t mean I feel any less grief. The poet Saeed Jones said in a recent interview, reflecting on the loss of his mother (to whom he was very close), that happy memories and the pain of loss form “a loop that you live in” after the beloved dies, that loop a part of you from then on. We are forever changed. I don’t feel less grief, but I have, I think, probably been spared much of the anger that other mourners sometimes suffer.

 

My grief has also made me more open to the grief of others. Much as Dr. Kalanithi learned from his own experience as a patient the feelings his own patients must have felt all along, the shattering experience of losing a beloved can make us aware, in ways we could never have known before, what it means for others to lose those closest to them. This probably does not always happen – one might totally shut down to others instead – so maybe the opening is what someone who calls grief itself a “gift” (Stephen Colbert) was talking about.

 

“The loop you live in.” “Love and gratitude alongside the terrible sorrow.” “The bitter and the sweet … forever paired.” 

 

Loss without love would be trivial: “It didn’t work out.” Whereas deep love entails, in most cases, eventual piercing loss. Mais l'amour vaut bien la chandelle. (Or, to quote Billy Joel, “I’ve been a fool for lesser things.”)

 

This is who I am now: someone who was loved deeply and loved deeply in return and still love. But,  “My travels have changed me.” There is no "closure." There is no "recovery." Loss does not end. We just go on, changed.

 

Beautiful Music From an Old Saw

 

Sketch from that day in Paris

One September day in the year 2000, the Artist and I were at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, awaiting our train south to Avignon, where we would stay a couple of nights before picking up a rental car to meander our way back north. We were watching the arrivals and departures clicking over on the board and listening intently to hear, over the hubbub of a tightly packed crowd, announcements of departures from the loudspeakers when, floating as it were over sound so dense it seemed almost a solid mass, came strains of music ethereal. I had to find the source! We made our way through the noisy throng and came upon a small clearing, in the center of which was a man playing a saw. Yes, a saw – that old-fashioned carpenter’s tool, only bent with his left hand to different curvatures and bowed with his right like a cello. I saw it and heard it and still could hardly believe the beauty of it!

 

Oft-repeated bits of conventional wisdom are sometimes referred to as “old saws,” a usage that has nothing to do with the tool but comes from an old English word for discourse (‘saga’ comes from the same source), and so my introduction today is not etymological but metaphorical -- if that! More homonymic, really. 

 

Conventional wisdom has it that a sure way to happiness is to count one’s blessings daily. I’ve written about counting blessings before, although gratitude last year for me came not from following advice, conventional or more personal, but as a spontaneous emotional response. My husband was dying, and yet in the midst of agonizing grief I was overwhelmed and greatly surprised to feel gratitude, also. At the same time! Gratitude for the happiness we had shared for so long, as well as for family and friends supporting us in the moment. It astonished me that I would feel gratitude along with grief – that I could feel gratitude at all at such a time. (I would never have anticipated it.) But I was, if you will, grateful for the gratitude, too, as it got me through those difficult, unreal days.

 

As time goes by, however, and grief drags on, the spontaneity of gratitude is not always available. At least, that has been my experience, and that’s why I turn to the old saw about counting blessings. My need for conventional wisdom is especially strong right now, as day after day brings one anniversary after another of last year’s events. 

 

I will not even attempt to list all my blessings here, for truly they are infinite, but will focus on two that are deeply meaningful to me this January. 

 

I am grateful beyond what words can say that my beloved was spared the loss of his cognitive abilities and attendant loss of independence and decision-making, possibilities he dreaded much more than he feared death. [I re-read this sentence and realize that it is misleading. He did not fear death at all. More than once he told me (and I heard him say the same on the phone to friends), "I'm not afraid to die. I've had a good life."] His biggest worry whenever he had to have surgery was, would there be some problem with the anesthetic that would injure his brain and alter his mind for the worse? After an operation, his most pressing question was, “Am I still smart?” Yes, my love, you were, every time! He was himself, right up to the end of his life, and he went out on his own terms, as he had always lived. 

 

I’m certainly not grateful that he’s gone but deeply grateful that he was able to hold onto what was most important to him as long as he lived. Not everyone is so fortunate. He was, and his good fortune must be mine, too, now as always.

 

My other cause for gratitude this January of 2023 is the presence of my dog, that lively little puppy the Artist encouraged me to bring home, a puppy he decided was more important to both of us than the Italian motorcycle he’d been contemplating buying. I am grateful to my beloved for the puppy and grateful to the puppy for her presence. In the morning, there she is, and I say to her, “Good morning, sweetheart. I’m glad you’re here.” Then I look at my husband’s photograph next to the bed and say to him, “Good morning, sweetheart. Thank you for the life we made together, and thank you for Sunny!” 

He knew me. He loved me. We were happy and knew it and did not take our happiness for granted. In this world of so many woes, how wonderfully fortunate is that? And though I miss him every day, an eager little dog face makes me smile, and I have a companion indoors and out, and my two streams of gratitude run together into a river.

 

January. The “bleak midwinter.” We are under a winter storm advisory this weekend, though most of the snow should fall and stay above 7000 feet, that is, on the mountaintops. May we all be safe and be grateful this holiday weekend for the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

P.S. For an urban adventure featuring books, see previous post. Book reportage and stories of my Cochise County expeditions on Christmas Eve (wildlife) and New Year’s Eve (uphill climb) at links in this sentence. 

What Counts as a Gift?

 

Last year on Christmas morning I told the Artist that I wasn’t able to wrap the present I wanted to give him. He had bought an old cello that was missing a bridge, and I told him the next time we went to Tucson we would go to a music shop and I’d have a new bridge put on the instrument for him, along with new strings, and that would be his gift. But we never had a chance to make the trip, and today the cello leans against the wall, untouched, in its case.

 

His 2022 birthday gift from me was supposed to be the first volume of Proust’s epic work, which he had finally been convinced (by another writer, not by me) that he wanted to read. I ordered it early and wrapped it and hid it away. When I took the package to the hospital the day after his last surgery, he said he would wait for his birthday, a week in the future, to open it. By then, however, he was in a coma, and when he woke four days later neither of us thought of birthday presents, so I still have that book, still wrapped, never opened.

(Anyone whose life is as yet untouched by grief will no doubt have bailed out by now, and that’s okay. The rest of us, my continuing readers and I, are not having a “pity party” here: we’re only facing the facts of our lives and doing the best we can to keep living, day by day.)

I’ve been listening lately to Anderson Cooper’s podcasts on grief, 

 

…a series of emotional and moving conversations about the people we lose, the things they leave behind, and how to live on - with loss, with laughter, and with love.

 

-      CNN’s “All There Is,” with Anderson Cooper

 

Not listening in the order originally recorded but choosing titles one by one. Four so far. 

 

Anderson Cooper’s father died when Anderson was only 10 years old. His older brother committed suicide by jumping from their mother’s apartment balcony as the mother watched, helpless, afraid that moving toward him might precipitate the jump and hoping she could bring him back from the edge with words. That mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, lived on to the age of 95 but always kept her bedside calendar open to the date her older son died. In conversations with others who have known loss and grief of various kinds – deaths of parents, partners, siblings, their own children, some deaths sudden, others agonizingly slow – Anderson Cooper talks of his father's and brother’s and his mother’s deaths and the aftereffects on him as a survivor, both immediately afterward and continuing, as time goes by. His guests do the same with their losses. The conversations (each one different) are deep and moving as experiences and feelings are shared. 

It can be really hard to open ourselves to grief, because -- who wants to deal with pain?  But over and over in the podcast conversations comes a truth I had to learn by experience (and in retrospect wish I could apologize to friends whose grief I failed to acknowledge adequately in the past), which is that – okay, two truths: first, that pain is unavoidable either way, whether we open to grief or try to keep our hearts closed tightly against it; and second, that acknowledgement of loss, along with opportunities to revisit the departed in conversation with others and, for many of us, in writing, while it may bring tears, also brings a degree of solace. 

A much harder lesson – at least, for me, and Anderson Cooper says for him, as well – is to feel gratitude for one’s grief. Wow. Really! Gratitude in grief, along with grief – that I have felt all along, grateful for the support of family and friends and for the beautiful life the Artist and I had together for so long. But gratitude for the grief? (The idea came to Cooper from guest Stephen Colbert.) That’s harder. I’m not there yet. Not even close.

 

Or maybe I’m not thinking about it the right way? 

 

I can’t feel gratitude for the loss, certainly, cannot feel grateful that my husband died, but – for the feelings and insights that loss brought and continues to bring? Maybe? One of Cooper’s listeners mentioned vulnerability as grief’s gift, about being open to the world, open to other human beings, connecting on deeper levels. That grief and love are inseparable: if we love, sooner or later we will grieve; if we grieve, we have loved and continue to love. 

Still I ask the question: Can grief be a gift? No one who has not experienced profound grief can begin to have an answer, but if you have lost someone close to you, no matter how long ago, what do you think? Can grief be a gift?

Next question: How does grief, for you, fit into the holidays? I’m working on that one, too.

I would not raise these questions on my blog if I thought they were mine alone, but I know others struggle with the same questions, and maybe we can help each other -- if only by acknowledging together the questions we face. Because maybe none of us has answers. Or maybe what is an answer for one person is not an answer for someone else. I don't know!

Anyway, as always, thanks for reading.

Gift or Grind: It’s All in the Receiving

Although I do it every day, grinding coffee beans is not a "grind" at all!

 

When I was (belatedly) in graduate school at the University of Illinois, there was a wonderful coffee shop west of the main campus called the Daily Grind. “See you at the Grind,” we might say to a friend. “Oh, I was at the Grind.” Etc. Socializing did take place there, but usually only in the late afternoon. Earlier in the day, regardless of the number of people sitting at any given table, most heads were bent over books and notebooks, everyone reading and underlining and scribbling away. All of us regularly spent hours studying at home (some people until after midnight; my own preference was to get up at 4 or 5 a.m.), and there was no end to studying, but when we needed the comforting presence of others, the Grind was more help than distraction, so much so that when I think of my graduate school days, much of my nostalgia centers on the Daily Grind. You wouldn’t think that from the name alone, would you? 

 

This morning, the beginning of the day of the winter solstice, I was beset by all kinds of feelings, but I woke from dreams with a single thought: “We’re alive. We won’t always be alive.” It was not a new thought, not shocking or frightening. It didn’t even have a lot of feeling attached to it. Just truth. We’re alive. We won’t always be alive. The feelings came later, quite a jumble of them, when I looked at Facebook and saw a friend’s memory of her late son, then another friend’s memory of her late mother. May their memories be blessings to those left behind, I thought, and a third friend came to mind, one who is (as we all are, but she is close to the end and aware of it) in the process of dying, even as Christmas comes near. Our beautiful friend, so full of life and laughter!

Full moon, morning before solstice

solstice moon

On laundromat morning, I don’t get up any earlier than usual, but I certainly get dressed and ready to go to town earlier. As the pack made its way from ghost town to “civilization,” the full moon of the previous morning was fading on its right-hand curve, and, as always, I thought of Ahmed (another departed friend), who taught me to distinguish waxing moon from waning moon with the words ‘premier’ and ‘dernier.’ It is the curves of the miniscule ‘p’ and ‘d’ that hold the clue. So this morning’s no-longer full moon is beginning to wane, although the solstice means that our days now begin to lengthen again toward spring.

 

But before we were on the road, there was already Peasy.

the corner I share with Peasy

Peasy has half a dozen stuffed animals, which I try to keep corralled in my little book corner so we won’t be tripping over them everywhere in the small cabin, so when I told him this morning, “Go get your lion,” he first ran to the corner where most of his toys were gathered. But the lion wasn’t there, and he ran back to find it in the Artist’s corner. Has he learned the word ‘lion’ -- or is it simply that the lion, as the only toy still retaining (so far) its squeaker, is more fun than the other toys, his most valuable possession? Squeak, squeak, squeak! Joyously, proudly, he ran back and forth with his lion!

Peasy with lion, taking a break from running and squeaking

No morning is ever a “grind” to Peasy! He doesn’t care that one morning is pretty much like another. To him, each one is a gift. Another day! He’s alive! He’s with us! Life is fantastic! His enthusiasm is boundless and infectious, and we can’t help laughing and feeling grateful ourselves – for each other, for this crazy dog, for another day of life.

another glorious desert sunrise

Originally I had it in mind to write about grinding and milling – various methods from stones to mechanics – but really, do you want to read about that? Somehow I doubt it. You are basking in memories of Hanukkah or celebrating the winter solstice and/or looking forward to Christmas and a new year. And just maybe you have sadness, too, because someone you love is no longer with you or soon will not be. Turn, turn, turn – the seasons and the years. "Everything is temporary!" (my favorite line from the movie "Moonstruck"), I remind myself.

death in the desert (as everywhere)

Is life pointless because it is limited and ends, always, in death? Some people think so. Yet when it comes to gold and silver and diamonds and such, their value lies in their relative scarcity. For each of us, with one precious life to live, what could be more valuable?

All around us, even here in the desert, we are surrounded by life. I should say, by life and death, all mixed up. The earth teems with life and death, as do our days. Would you be a pioneer on another planet, given the opportunity? Not I. The way I see it, our species grew up on this planet and has adapted to it -- and tried to adapt it to ourselves, sometimes with disastrous results, but that is not part of my thought for today. Today I’m thinking only of what a gift our brief tenure is in this wonderful adventure. Not a single human being or even the minds of all human beings who ever lived, all those minds together, could ever have dreamed up such a vast, complex, incredibly fascinating set of wonders! 

So whether you give gifts or not or send holiday cards or not or bake cookies or light candles or have a decorated tree or do none of those things, I wish you joy in and of your life. Our future together -- as friends, as a species -- is, as our individual futures are, always uncertain, but if you are reading these words you are alive right now, and while we cannot hope to be joyful every moment we’re alive, intermittent joy is a recurring gift, n’est-ce pas? And gracious receiving can be as important as generous giving, I do believe. So if you possibly can, take a leaf from Peasy's book.

And Merry Christmas!!!

 

happy dog!!!

Books read since last listed (and who knows if I’ll squeeze in any more before year’s end?):

 

169. Sisman, Robyn. Weekend in Paris (fiction)

170. Wizenburg, Molly. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table (nonfiction) 

171. Duncklee, John. Coyotes I Have Known (nonfiction)

172. Palka, Kurt. The Hour of the Fox (fiction)

173. Hudson, Virginia Cary. Flapdoodle, Trust & Obey (???)

Wrapping, Unwrapping, and Wrapping Up the Old Year

Good morning! Last dawn of 2019!

In the days preceding Christmas, my writing desk displayed a row of colorful gift bags for local Arizona friends and neighbors. “Would you like me to find a box you could put those in,” the Artist asked, “so you wouldn’t be so crowded?” I thanked him but declined the offer. “I like to look at them,” I told him. For me, those colorful bags went some distance toward making up for the lack of the fragrant Fraser or balsam fir I would have had back in northern Michigan.

Outgoing gifts, only partially reflected in memorabilia-crowded mirror

Incoming gifts -- and ours to open!

Over on my bookshelf was a substitute “tree,” a shorter, less elaborate mesquite branch than the one I found and used last year, but something, at least, on which to hang Moravian folded paper stars and other ornaments from sisters and friends. I also cleared the remaining top of the bookcase of other items to make room for gift bags from sisters and friends. In that way, my book and writing corner served, for a little while, as our Christmas corner. 

lighting my corner of the darkness

Because I don’t know about you, but when the short, dark days of December roll around, I “need a little Christmas,” and I’m completely sympathetic to Jo March’s complaint that “Christmas [wouldn’t] be Christmas without any presents!” Poor as those “little women” felt, yet they managed to scrounge up gift surprises for each other and for their mother, and in my frugal life it means a lot to me to be able to do the same. 

Still in Michigan, and starting way back in summertime, I had great fun thinking up and making and buying little things and making a happy collection of items for the bags I would later assemble. But I’m lucky. I have sisters! The Artist thinks my gift bags are a “girl thing,” and maybe they are. I do know that my sisters and I have a wonderful time finding and buying things for each other. “Oh, Bettie will love this,” Deborah will say to me as we stand together in her friend’s gift shop, and I agree. “You’re right. That’s perfect for her!”

Gifts on any occasion need not be expensive or elaborate or enormous to say “I love you” to recipients. It is indeed the thought that counts. But giving tangible body to the thought counts, too, I find. For instance, my sisters and I typically give each other cute socks, tee shirts, books, holiday ornaments, and kitchen items, and whenever I put on a shirt or pair of socks from a sister, or pick up a book or admire an ornament or use something in my kitchen that a sister gave me, I think of that sister, and she is right there with me. The gift keeps on giving!

New shirt from a sister!

New socks from a sister!

New apron from a sister!

more new, heavenly soft shirts

Sometimes, surprisingly people other than the givers are with me, too, through gifts I receive. Such is the case with a book one sister sent me this year, a book of poetry by the cousin-in-law of a friend of the Artist’s and mine. I have yet to meet Cele Bona, but her poems are powerful, and her name and relationship to our late friend Al Bona, himself a friend we also admired for his poetic gifts, brings Al to mind, though he has been gone for years.

Years! They pass so quickly! Some years I send Christmas cards, other years New Year’s cards, and sometimes no cards at all. But the truth is that I enjoy buying bright postage stamps and taking stacks of cards to the post office almost as much as I enjoy going in with gift packages to mail. I often think of a friend who hated going to the post office (and now there are ways to avoid the p.o. altogether), but whether I’m at home in Northport, Michigan, or in Willcox, Arizona, the post office is almost always a delightful stop for me. I love the way the United States Postal Service connects us all, and when I go to the p.o. I feel that connection, a little the way I feel it when I go to my precinct voting place in northern Michigan (where I’m happy to say we use paper ballots!). We’re all in this together, these places say to me. We may be far apart in the moment, but these places, these rituals, these bits of paper and other stuff provide us with tangible links to each other.

A friend back home collects our mail and sends it on to us.

[Reminder: Gifts can be wrapped in brightly colored recyclable tissue or reusable cloth. Paper envelopes that hold cards can be recycled, and the cards themselves can be repurposed. Besides, it’s only once a year!] 

But just as I never tell anyone, friend or bookstore customer, “You have to read this book!” -- I only make suggestions or offer ideas -- so I do not intend to guilt-trip anyone into buying or giving Christmas presents. Whether or not one celebrates this holiday or any other, giving presents in the U.S. is, like so many other decisions in this freedom-loving country, an individual choice. Neither am I going to go all religious here (wouldn’t that be inappropriate?!) and dwell on the Infant as God’s gift or the gifts the wise men brought to the Infant, because the truth is that for centuries even Christians did not celebrate Christmas or exchange gifts. Is Dickens responsible for kicking off the holiday we all know today as “traditional”? Who knows, and what does it matter? Philosopher I may be, but there are some things I don’t want to argue about, and Christmas is one of them. 

And just as I will not guilt-trip anyone into giving gifts, neither do I intend to let anyone guilt-trip me into abstaining from gift-giving. I love that part of Christmas! I love looking for, thinking about, finding, selecting, buying, making, planning, wrapping and giving gifts for Christmas! It is a big part of my holiday joy. No colorfully wrapped packages? How sad! Maybe someday I will be an old lady in a nursing home, hunched up in a rocking chair and unable to indulge myself in what is, for me, a very modest seasonal orgy, but until then I’m not giving it up! 

For now, though, all the wrapped gifts have been unwrapped to exclamations of delight, bright bags and tissue are put away for another year, socks and tee shirts tucked into drawers, and soon it will be time to take down the ornaments and stow those in cupboards and closets, time to unplug and remove lights from the cabin windows. — But no, maybe I’ll leave those lights up a while longer. They are such tiny lights, such brave little lights, after all, and we do need our courage and indications of each other’s loving presence as we go into another new year, don’t we? So with that in mind, here is my wish for family and friends and everyone in the world, known to me or unknown: 

Amid the challenges and struggles that another year will certainly bring, may we find also hours and days of joy and gratitude and love, and may we return again and again to a calm center of peace. 

Happy new year, one and all!