Dribbles, Drabbles

Crazy Lady Keeping Christmas, Cracking Nuts

The tree still stands, dried needles crackling under my feet, wafting soul-saving scent into my cells. At night, twinkling bulbs and glittering glass soothe. A friend in winter-dark, I keep hope in its light. Mornings, when I nourish it with filtered well-water, I reckon: I may keep Christmas until July.

**

The new year swept me off my feet, not with love but with the first cold I’ve suffered in five years. I don’t blame the virus coughed indiscriminately from people’s throats at craft fairs and breweries, or the residue left behind on the Aldi shopping cart, or the shared paintbrushes at the sip and paint. I don’t blame anyone or anything—it’s a cold, for God’s sake—though I do recognize the role of my emotional lability as the year wound down and the new one—filled with uncertainty—ramped up. Grief has a way of germinating old seeds.

**

And new seeds. Indeed, any seed of unresolved, unaddressed sadness or resentment or anger or hurt will find its way to the topsoil of body, heart, mind. Soul. The solace of winter dark is the anonymity and quiet it allows for tending those tender seedlings. Gardening of a different sort.

**

Attending to grief opens me up like cracking a black walnut. The hull stains, black and seemingly unremovable. Then, the thwack of the hammer, sudden, dangerous, releasing the harder shell. Inside, the sweet meat, the shape and sound of my heart. Yes, grief tending is messy business, but the reward…

Six years ago, my mother passed; my father a decade before her. I feel their absence acutely—and their presence. And that of my ancestors—Kitty and Eric, Marion and William, Bette and Ralph, Rocky, Gordon, and so many others, dead and living. This Christmas, all sat at the table.

**

So, I will keep the window candles lit. The wreath on the door. The Tomptars in their hiding spots. The tree will stand, fire hazard or not, until my soul yearns more for daffodil bulbs forced in glass, Hellebore lifting through leaflitter, bluebirds collecting twigs. The sun warming my bones.

Peace…