Holiday Highlights

Here it is, in a nutshell. The holiday in review. It’s way too easy to discuss what goes wrong, falls short of expectations, turns out an utter disaster. The bigger challenge is to mull over what goes exactly right. Here are few moments, not in any particular order.

No. 1: Getting out the decorations.

This trumped the tree, which was purchased at a lot and then necessitated the purchase of a new stand, because our fifteen year old specimen simply would not hold the massive Douglas fir the kids picked. A trip to Walmart was made; they were out. Back to the lot, where a heavy duty stand was brought home; all the while the kids are yawning, waiting to decorate, only to be told finally that they’d have to wait till morning, as it was now eleven. The following morning is the moment I’m talking about: their faces as they unwrapped each ornament, so thrilled at the sight of even the ugly paper mache peace dove somebody made in preschool. They revere the gaudy, velvet trimmed globe I made when I was younger than they are now,  in the basement of our church. Their thrilled faces as they cry, “HEY! Remember this??!!” They took the plush snowmen and santas, tied them into the wooden train with twine and began chasing one another around the basement. How they love Christmas! Making that happen, knowing the good feeling we are creating—how long it lasts—that’s as magic as it gets. Merry and bright.

No. 2: The arrival of my brother

On Christmas Eve, outside in the snow with my sister around lunchtime, I was explaining what had happened in the previous ten minutes. My kids, hungry, over-excited, and short on sleep, had just become furious with each other, were stopped just shy of throwing punches and sent to their rooms. I was explaining the way this can happen, especially with my daughter, who never actually gets hunger pangs, apparently, or yawns (though, weirdly, hiccups are a sign of exhaustion), and why I needed everyone to clear out of the house until all this blew over when, hearing something outside the fence, she said suddenly, “Jim?”  I was standing in the doorway to the garage, so I leaned back to look out the window just as my sister opened the gate. “Hi guys,” he said, as though he lived down the street, as if we had seen him just this morning, when in fact he’d just driven from the west coast. He has never seen this house, has not been to town in four years. We have not spent a holiday together, or even all been in the same zip code, in over ten years. It was quite a moment, seeing all six feet four of him there in my driveway in the Christmas Eve snow.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about his arrival, about all of us being together until I saw my sister’s face light up as she cried, “Jim?” I felt my own light up, and realized I had not actually believed that he would set foot in my house. Certainly not that I’d see my son climb into his very long lap, my son who is rather shy but was drawn to this guy I’ve  talked about but of whom he had virtually no memory. Hearing your son call your brother “Uncle” is a profound thing. Your brother and your son. Then your husband and your dad. Those are the principal men in a gal’s life. In mine, the latter two never met. So these former two, their meeting–well, I guess that was moment No. 3, wrapped inside moment No. 2. Nice.

No. 4: The Owl in Lindley Park

Up early before the sun came up, I took the dog up Pete’s Hill, a popular walking spot that runs by the old cemetery. It was bitter cold, and I had forgotten, completely,  how I love a bitter cold morning. I used to love the opposite extreme: the Georgia July heat, around four p.m., when the air was so still and moisture-soaked you could barely take it into your lungs. The stillness in that kind of heat is analogous to the stillness in this kind of cold. Funny things happen to sound; it’s as if the world has a lid on it. I could hear my own feet crunching over the snow,  the faint tap of the dog’s frozen pads hitting the ground. Her breath, the jangle of her collar. Not a soul was out yet. After huffing up the first half of the hill, I came alongside the cemetery and heard it, a great horned owl. The cry is much gentler than you’d think it would be, coming from a creature that looks like that. I approached the fence gate and stood still, listening. It called twice more but I never saw a sign of him. My mother believes that an owl portended my father’s death almost twenty years ago. I’m not sure owls portend anything so much as they are a reminder of the great mystery that surrounds us.

No. 5: Eagle over the Boiling River

We all stayed at Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel for two nights, in Yellowstone. We used to take our kids there when they were little. They are still little, of course, but not as little as they used to be. The entire two days down there, I kept running into memories of that other chapter, now so clearly closed. Today they are big enough to ice skate on the homemade rink in back, but in year’s past we’d all try to sleep in the same room and our little boy would stand in his crib staring at us, talking. We left spilled milk, cheerio detritus and smashed crayons everywhere we went.  Tired all the time, wondering why in god’s name we bothered, we came here just to get out of our house. But that wasn’t all. It was to remember, like I was doing this year, how hard it was, and how unforgettable! This year, they could hike the whole way to the Boiling River without complaint, no sleds necessary. They even stripped down in fifteen degree weather,  braved the snow on bare feet, tender-footed it across the river’s chilly bottom to the place where this mysterious artery from the center of the earth pours into the Gardner River right at the 45th parallel, exactly half way between  the equator and the north pole. The walk through this natural phenomenon is a stroll through hellish extremes: icy cold water on your numb feet, then scalding water on your upper thighs until finally you get to a deeper pool where you can crouch and watch the  hairy algae waving underwater. It’s better than a hot tub because it isn’t a hot tub. It’s an honest-to-god river, two of them, coming right out of the ground, merging to form the most perfect bathtub. Across the way is snow covered sagebrush. Above you is emerald encrusted rock. And high, high above the river we saw a bald eagle, his snow white tail and head gleaming proudly in the sunlight, though not a finger of light had reached us yet. He was not looking at us, or even where he was going, but straight down at the water, hunting his breakfast.

No 6: Sadie

Our neighbor had to do an errand and brought over his 3-year-old and the nine month old baby, Sadie. He handed her to me with a bottle, saying maybe save the bottle because she can fuss when it’s gone, though she probably was ready for a nap. He left; she sat in my arms like a placid Buddha, staring around the room at our tree, our books, our furniture, none of which she’d seen before. She tugged at her hat until it came off. She smiled at my husband. My son became suddenly jealous, as did the dog, who sniffed and barked, and tried jumping up on the couch. But I could only stare at this creature,  having entirely forgotten the weight of someone not yet a year old, someone who drinks nothing but her mother’s milk. She began rubbing her eyes and when the bottle passed near her face, she lunged at it, so quickly I didn’t even have time to remove the rogue dog hair I saw on the nipple. Didn’t bother her. She fell into that trance  of Baby With Bottle. Her hands moved jerkily over her face, digging at her eye so violently that I pulled it away and blocked her. She kept trying to get at it, that delicate eyelid. Her fingernails scratched at the bottle like she was fighting something, which of courses, she was, for as the liquid diminished, her eyes grew heavier  and heavier, until finally, as the last swallow disappeared, they closed altogether. I plucked it out of her mouth and she hardly stirred. Her little hand flopped over my arm and she doubled in weight,  now entirely relaxed. People: there is nothing in this world like the feel of a sleeping baby. A sleeping puppy comes close, but a small, brand new, cheerful person trusting your fingers to cradle her legs, your bicep to pillow her head while she takes a little time out: that is Other Worldly. There is no traffic, no time, no reading, no music, no house, no wild animals. There is air going in, and air going out. Faint smiles, the occasional tongue movement. And that is all.