Yes, it is the day before the day before. It was my intention, once my vacation started, to blog every night. However, my son decided to bring a particularly nasty bug home from school last Friday, so my entire household has been battling fevers, coughs, runny noses, and exhaustion. Today is the first day I have felt almost human since Saturday morning.
It was also my intention to do all kinds of Christmas prep over the weekend. Wrapping presents. Baking cookies. Working on my Christmas poem. Filling out our Christmas cards. That all went out the window, too. I am now on my fourth day of illness, and all I have to show for it is a pecan pie and a stack of Christmas cards that went into the mail yesterday.
Since I’ve had a lot of time to just lay on my couch, I’ve been reflecting a lot on ghosts of Christmas. People who are no longer a part of my life, by death or design. I think this time of year lends itself to this kind of nostalgia. The Christmases of today simply can’t hold a candle to the Christmases of our childhoods, when Dad and Mom and Grandmas and Grandpas made sure we got everything we wanted from Santa.
Sharon Olds gets nostalgic about a person she once knew . . .
The Protestor
by: Sharon Olds
(for Bob Stein)
We were driving north, through the snow, you said
you had turned twenty-one during Vietnam, you were
1-A. The road curved
and curved back, the branches laden,
you said you had decided not to go
to Canada. Which meant you’d decided to
go to jail, a slender guy of
twenty-one, which meant you’d decided to be
raped rather than to kill, if it was their
life or your ass, it was your ass.
We drove in silence, such soft snow
so heavy borne-down. That was when I’d come to
know I loved the land of my birth—
when the men had to leave, they could never come back,
I looked and loved every American
needle on every American tree, I thought
my soul was in it. But if I were taken and
used, taken and used, I think
my soul would die, I think I’d be easily broken,
the work of my life over. And you’d said,
This is the word of my life, to say,
with my body itself, You fuckers you cannot
tell me who to kill. As if there were a
spirit free of the body, safe from it.
After a while, you talked about your family,
not starting as I had, with
husbands and kids, leavening everyone else out—
you started with your grandparents
and worked your way back, away from yourself,
deeper and deeper into Europe, into
the Middle East, the holy book
buried sometimes in the garden, sometimes
swallowed and carried in the ark of the body itself.
Yes, people shuttle in and out of our lives all the time. My life has been blessed with loving parents and siblings. Friends who care deeply, feel deeply. Over the last few days, as I’ve slept and hallucinated with cold medicine and ibuprofen, I have thought quite a bit about my mother, in particular. This Christmas season, I will be playing or singing at six church services in the next five days. My mother is the reason I’m a church organist. She’s the one who made me take piano lessons for twelve years straight, and she’s also the one who volunteered my keyboard talents to our parish priest over 40 years ago. The rest, as they say, is history.
So, my mom is haunting me this Christmas, as are all the memories of Christmases past. Nothing can ever stay the same, except in a photograph or video. Even poems don’t stay the same. A poem that I read five years ago (maybe about a mother’s death) has a completely different meaning for me tonight. I had wonderful Christmases as a kid. A living room floor literally overtaken with presents. Tupperware upon Tupperware filled with cookies. Baked ham and rolls. I was really lucky.
Those days are long gone now, and I have to accept that. My business is now making those same kind of treasured memories for my kids. I want my daughter and son to look back with joy and longing at Christmases with my wife and I. I think we’re accomplishing that. Earlier this evening, my daughter phoned me from the road (she’s on her way home with her significant other). We talked for over 40 minutes, and it was all about all our family traditions, from pumpkin puff pancakes to watching Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.
So, I am on the mend, although, when I’m done typing this post, I’m going to go lie on the couch and stay there, probably for the rest of the night. Tomorrow, it’s gift wrapping, house cleaning, ham baking, and music practicing. (By the way, I got up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to work on my Christmas poem. Three hours later, it was drafted and done.). Tomorrow night? Two church services.
Tonight, however, I’m just happy that I’m feeling slightly better, and I’m looking forward to some good family time over the next few days.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for the Winter Solstice. He was just too damn sick to post it. It’s based (very loosely) on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
In celebration of the winter solstice, write a poem that begins 96% of the universe is made up of the dark and unknown . . . Your poem might posit what is the other 4% made of or perhaps share (with specific images) why you enjoy (or don’t enjoy) winter.
Winter Solstice Haiku
by: Martin Achatz
snow and wind all day
rabbit tracks in the backyard
winter syllables
moon trapped in branches
pine needles stitch the heavens
embroidered solstice
coughing at midnight
my eyes water with fever
my body blizzards
angel tree topper
face coffee brown like Jesus
ICE storm tomorrow
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