Mornings at Blackwater
by: Mary Oliver
For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.
And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.
What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.
So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.
Like Oliver, I have morning rituals--acts that I don't even think about when I rise from sleep. Like brushing my teeth. Shaving. Taking my puppy out for her morning ritual. I'm not sure these tiny habits fill my life with meaning. Yet, if I don't perform them, the world seems just a little bit . . . off for the rest of the day.
The day after Christmas always fills me with melancholy. After a month of frenzied preparation, I find myself empty. Because the whole month of December is filled with rituals for me. Writing a yuletide poem. Shopping for presents. Watching movies that I've watched since I was a child. Baking cookies. Attending Advent church services. Practicing music. Playing music.
Then, on December 26th, it all disappears.
Another unfortunate Christmas ritual that repeats itself, year after year, is what I call my Christmas Calamity. Every Christmas or Boxing Day, I wake up to some sort of emergency at my house. Frozen water pipes. Blocked sewer. No heat. Rarely has the holiday gone by in recent memory without something going majorly wrong.
At about 11:30 last night, my son woke me up to tell me that the internet wasn't working. Mind you, I was sound asleep. When I'm woken up at night, for any reason, it usually takes me a few hours to fall back into slumber. So, in the early hours of today, I found myself resetting my router, over and over, to no avail. At about 6 a.m., I contacted my internet provider via chat.
The first piece of advice I received was to restart my router. Again. When that didn't rectify the situation, Aisha, my chat buddy, tried to send some messages to my modem. And when that failed, she set up a time for a technician to stop by my house this afternoon.
So, after about three or four hours of sleep, I drove to work, annoyed and exhausted, with many of my morning rituals undone. My world was a little off. I sent a couple messages to my daughter and my sister. Eventually, early this afternoon, my daughter's significant other went over to my house to check things out. Within five or ten minutes, I received a text from him: "WiFi is working now."
He simply restarted the modem. An easy fix that I knew nothing about.
So, as the final days of 2023 dwindle, I am hoping that this year goes out with a whimper instead of a bathtub full of sewage.
The only thing that saved me from a breakdown this morning was another ritual: writing poetry with my friend, Gala. We try to do this every week, if our schedules align. It's an act that calms my unquiet mind. Centers me.
So, the rituals of Christmas are over, including the Christmas Calamity.
Tonight, Saint Marty is exhausted. That's another Christmas ritual.
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