December 16: Nice Watch, Christmas Presents, Annie Dillard, A Martha Christmas

Later, because it was Christmas, Ives had somehow felt compelled to leave the nice watch he'd bought his son in the room, instead of returning it to the store.  He put it in his top drawer, as if his boy would come in anytime now to claim it.  That drawer was stuffed with school paraphernalia, prayer cards, baseball cards, playing cards, a Felix the Cat comic that Ives had illustrated himself, years before...

Since Ives' son is killed a few days before Christmas, Ives has already purchased presents for his Robert.  In particular, Ives bought a beautiful wristwatch for him, something suitable for a young man about to enter the seminary.  In addition, at the scene of Robert's murder, a police officer hands Ives a Sam Goody's bag, filled with the gifts Robert had purchased for his father, mother, and sister.  Record albums by the Beatles, Thelonius Monk, and Rosemary Clooney.

Presents are not the reason for Christmas.  Not even close.  We all know that.  I love getting gifts as much as anybody else, but the moment I love the most during the holidays occurs on Christmas Eve, around 11 p.m., at my wife's church.  It's a candlelight communion service, full of quiet music and contemplation.  All the crazy holiday preparation is done, for better or worse.  Christmas has arrived.

My sister, Sally, loved Christmas.  She loved buying presents, seeing the joy on people's faces when they opened them.  She especially loved spoiling her nieces and nephews.  In the weeks leading up to December 25th, she would spend hours baking cookies, wrapping gifts, addressing cards.  Sure, she got overwhelmed sometimes, but she never, ever wanted her family to feel unloved or forgotten at Christmas.

It's going to be a very difficult Christmas this year.  There's going to be emptiness, maybe tears.  It's unavoidable.  This morning, my daughter was so upset about last night's commitment service at the cemetery that she couldn't stop crying.  She stayed home from school today.  There is little I can do to assuage her pain.  Only time will do that.

Christmas is a season of light and giving.  I have to keep reminding myself of that these days.  As I drive home every night, I see trees glowing and blinking in living rooms.  A few nights ago, I watched Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye in White Christmas.  After I'm done typing this post, I will write my annual Christmas letter.  Tonight or tomorrow, I will shop for a few things online.

Christmas is going to come next week, whether I'm ready for it or not.  I know what my sister, Sally, would want me to do, though.  She would want me to make this coming yuletide as holly and jolly as I can.  And that's what I plan to do.  There will be eggnog.  There will be baked ham and pecan pie.  There will be Jimmy Stewart running through the streets of Bedford Falls.  There will be presents.  And there will be Santa Claus.

Saint Marty would never stand in the way of Santa.

from Teaching a Stone to Talk

by:  Annie Dillard

Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God.  I was still thoughtless and brute, reactive.  I knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love.  Santa Claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you'd been bad or good.  He knew when you'd been bad or good!  And I had been bad...

A Martha Christmas...

December 15: Celtic Cross, Holy Cross Cemetery, Annie Dillard, On the Lighter Side

They buried his son on Christmas Eve morning, 1967, out in Long Island, his marker a simple Celtic cross.  The burial was covered by the press, despite efforts to maintain privacy.  A lot of important people came, few whom Ives knew.  Zoom-lensed cameras captured the scene, and in an unfortunate gaffe, they published a picture of Celeste, Robert's former girlfriend, who had fallen apart and kept her distance from the family until the funeral, being held in Ives' arms, and identified her as his daughter.

Yes, Ives' son is buried on December 24th.  It's a dark scene, full of chaos and sadness.  A moment that should be small and intimate is a spectacle of cameras and celebrities.  The Ives' family must grieve under a magnifying glass.  There is no opportunity for privacy and heartbreak.

This evening, at Holy Cross Cemetery, my family came together to lay my sister to rest.  As darkness fell, our parish priest led us in prayer and song.  My seven-year-old son sobbed through the entire ceremony.  I could hear my father quietly crying behind me.  It was solemn and cold and, in a strange way, beautiful.  Snow fell last night, so everything was coated in a rime of white.  Currier & Ives sorrow.

It felt like a door closing, in a way.  Until today, my sister's journey was incomplete.  She'd been waiting these past months for this final moment of parting and tears.  I have to be honest.  I don't find much comfort in the idea of her in that dark graveyard tonight while I'm sitting in my living room, staring at the blinking lights on the Christmas tree. 

I know that it's ridiculous, but I almost feel like I've placed my sister on an ice floe and launched her into an arctic sea.  She's growing smaller, less distinct.  As she reaches the horizon, she lifts her arm and waves one last time.  Then, she's gone.  Forever.

I'm sorry if I don't have some comforting wisdom for you after my days of absence.  My semester's work is done, four days of massive grading behind me.  I will be the first to admit that these last three months of teaching have been difficult.  My focus has been very . . . diffused.  But I did the best I could.  Last night, after I entered my final grades on the computer, I didn't experience relief or satisfaction, like I normally do.  I felt . . . disappointed that I hadn't done a better job.

Sometimes, however, I have to find satisfaction simply in surviving a very difficult time.

The Poet of the Week is Annie Dillard.  I believe I featured her earlier this fall, but I find great comfort in her writing sometimes.  The following passage comes from her book Teaching a Stone to Talk:

We are clumped on an ice floe drifting over the black polar sea.  Heaven and earth are full of our terrible singing.  Overhead we see a blurred, colorless brightness; at our feet we see the dulled, swift ice and recrystallized snow.  The sea is black and green; a hundred thousand floes and bergs float in the water and spin and scatter in the current around us everywhere as far as we can see.  The wind is cool, moist, and scented with salt.

I have little else to say tonight.  It's good to blog again, to get back to some sense of normalcy.  My side of the world is approaching the winter solstice.  The longest night of the year.  Soon, the days will start growing longer.  Light will overtake the darkness.

Saint Marty is ready for a little more light in his life.

On the lighter side...

December 12: Compassionate Power, Forgiveness, Catharine Savage Brosman, "The Beekeeper"

As his hair turned white, his features took on a compassionate power.  On some of those evenings, when people would get up and tearfully describe their tribulations, Mr. Ives would listen, his face reflecting the conviction of a man who may well have seen a Cross-of-light or an image of the Holy Mother in the sky.

Ives is transformed by his tragedy.  In his grief and anger, he turns inward.  He believes in forgiveness, wants to forgive the boy who killed Robert.  Yet, he struggles, and it is through this struggle that he is transformed.  Ives is a good man, and, when given choices, he always chooses love and compassion over hatred and disappointment.

This post is about forgiveness.  I am asking you to forgive me for not posting last night.  My daughter's friend who's a boy came into town last night, and I took them to a movie.  Then I cleaned my house a little when I got home because we're throwing a birthday party for my daughter tonight.  By the time I was done with all that, I just had enough energy to brush my teeth and stumble into bed.

This weekend, I am going to finish up my semester's grading.  Papers and finals and research projects.  So, I'm asking you to forgive me, in advance, for the possibility of missing another post or two in the next few days.

I have not had the opportunity to draw many cartoons recently, so I am relying on Gary Larson, among others, to provide the artwork for the next couple of days, as well.  Forgive me for that.  I will return to normal programming in a few days.

I am also working on forgiving myself, for getting behind in my grading.  For not being done with the semester by now.  For not having my house party-ready this morning.  For barely having any Christmas shopping or baking done . . . I could continue, but you get the idea.

Forgiveness is about love.  Loving the people in your life.  Loving yourself.  Loving God.  It is through this love that transformation takes place.  Love can be like a bee sting.  It hurts at the outset, but it is through this pain that flowers are pollinated and blossom.  Ives takes on the appearance of a mystic through his struggles with forgiveness and love.  I have no idea what love and forgiveness will do for me.

Maybe Saint Marty will be transformed into Saint George Clooney of the Cross.

The Beekeeper

by:  Catharine Savage Brosman

In linen, hat, and gauze
she tends the humming hives,
a vigil without pause
around the honeyed lives.

A sting from time to time
reminds her of the bite
of love, which is a mime,
and shimmers in the light,

but shoots a poisoned dart--
and how the sweetest care
--a jewel, a tender heart--
can turn into a snare.

And so she meditates,
mellifluous, refined,
on memories of fetes,
still golden in her mind;

and when the autumn brings
its chills and idle hours,
she sweeps up brittle wings
and lives on garnered flowers.

Rubes Christmas Cartoon

Rudolph struggled with forgiveness, too

December 10: Inexplicable Energy, Son's Christmas Program, Catharine Savage Brown, "The Gardener," A Gary Larson Christmas

Ives standing beside him, with his arm around Robert's shoulder, felt a surge of inexplicable energy rushing through him . . . The goodness of God? he had wondered.

Pope John XXIII blesses Ives' son.  The Ives' family spends Holy Week in Italy, and, on Holy Thursday, after Mass at the church of Saint John Lateran, the Holy Father passes through the gathered crowds.  As he does so, he reaches out and lays his hand on Robert's head.  And Ives feels something.  A wave of contentment that Ives is convinced comes from God.

This morning, I attended my son's elementary school Christmas program.  I had to get there two hours early to get a good seat.  The gym was packed, from the folding chairs on the floor to the very top of the bleachers.  Grandmas and grandpas and mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles.  When that many people gather together, things happen.  People get rude.  They push and shove.  Stand up when they should sit the hell down.  Talk when they should shut the hell up.

And yet, there's a great deal of happiness.  The little kids, dressed in their Christmas best, shout and wave and sing.  When my son came into the gym, he searched for my wife and me.  His face split open with joy when he finally saw us.  Watching my son perform, I felt a wave of contentment, sort of like Ives.  For the first time this holiday season, I experienced some yuletide spirit.  And it was good.

Next Tuesday, we will be having an interment ceremony at the cemetery for my sister.  Her cremation stone is finally in place.  I spent the afternoon making the arrangements with the priest and sexton and funeral home director.  It was sad business, and yet I kept remembering my son's face when he first glimpsed me in the gymnasium this morning.  The pure and utter goodness that radiated from his smile.

Saint Marty will try to cultivate that feeling for the next five or so days, like a gardener waiting for his seeds and bulbs to bloom in a gray afternoon.

The Gardener

by:  Catharine Savage Brosman

To wait on sun and rain,
as heaven may propose;
to order his demesne,
or worry for a rose,

a man abandons time--
the trope of days and hours--
like poets for a rhyme--
or measures it in flowers.

He tends each plant and tree,
pursuing each defect
as if assuming he
were summer's architect;

and under autumn's skies
with pruners, rake, and spade
devises their disguise
for winter's masquerade;

then to the gardener's shed
to leave his tools behind,
and cultivate instead
the garden of his mind.

A Gary Larson Christmas

I love The Far Side