Good Dark / Christmas Day 6

The dark time works its magic.

Matteo and Marin always sit in the dim of the log house morning for his waking-up time, sometime between 6 and 7. She calls him her "birdy" and he calls her his "nest." (Marin just remembered that another milestone of 2007 was that we weaned Teo, and I concur, remembering that it wasn’t possible for us to get pregnant before she took that step.) After Marin leaves for work, Teo will sometimes sit in the circle a dim light creates in the darkness and contentedly turn pages in his picture books for a half hour.

By 10:00, when Teo and I finally get in the car, driving out of the Birch Hill forest into the open, where you can see the morning twilight with the eastern sky reddening, he’ll remark, "it’s getting darker."

In the middle of the day, when the sun is making it’s appearance on the horizon, sculpting long blue shadows with its golden light, we’re done with the morning activities, and driving up to Fox or beyond, ten miles, fifteen miles, to let the rocking and the warmth of the car submerge him in "sleepie-pie." I’ll ask, "Is Teo sleepie-pie?" The answer is always "no, I’m NOT sleepie-pie." Last week he sang this response for fifteen minutes to the tune of Jingle Bells before I gave up.

On the days the car doesn’t contradict him, we slink home, he eats a little, and plays a little, and soon we’re on the sofa reading books, and soon we’re in bed reading books, and he’ll accept sleep. The smaller-carbon-footprint nap.

When Marin gets back from work, the light is fading, and Matteo is waking up. Like a inveterate drunk he calls out for another round. "Juice and nurse," he cries, as if we were drunk bartenders. J&N is like an orange julius mixture with lots of water. The one thing that he reserves the right to choose about it, is whether or not the added water comes hot from the teapot. He’ll reject the whole thing if it’s a temperature he doesn’t want at the moment.

Sometimes in these mid winter days, Marin goes to work before 7 and comes back closer to 1 pm, and gets in on the nap. In the past month, she hasn’t been able to sleep past 4:30 am with her belly-tenant on early morning adrenalin surge, kicking her in the kidneys.

In the day’s sinking twilight, if I’ve done errands, or laundry, or dinner during the day, Marin can sit and read to Teo. By then, if he hasn’t been out running around in the fresh air, it’s too late. I’ve taken him out skiing in the early morning, or skating in the early afternoon, but not in the past two weeks. Actually, he will march around happily and at great length in the foot-deep snow (which is light snowcover for us – another low snow year) of our yard, but in minus-10 you have to be out there with him.

We bring back the interior dark when dinner is ready. The lights on the tree are joined by four candles lit on the table, and the rest is quiet darkness. We ask Matteo what he wants to give thanks for, and he comes up with something from his day – for swimming, or for the moon. He carefully lights a candle and puts it in a bowl of sand, then Marin and I follow suit with our gratitudes and concerns. Now the table is a blaze of light.

We hold hands and sing our Johnny Appleseed song, which goes, "Oh, the ____ is good to me, and so I thank the ____, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the appleseed." The word "Lord" has lost its standing as the blank-word. We use "stars" or "kitty" or "Opa" or anything Matteo is pleased with at the moment. Sometimes he holds our hands while we sing, sometimes his hands are busy putting food in his mouth, sometimes he’s snubbing our song, sometimes he’s just preoccupied with any something that takes 2 3/4 year olds away.

Like the present he’s going to open, as soon as dinner is over, during these Twelve days of Christmas, with his little headlamp on. Like a surgeon, he rips the paper off. Tonight it’s a balsam airplane. Carefully and gently constructed on the spot by Papa, the plane streaks off into the dark of the log house.

Oh, the Dark is good to me...

Christmas Comet / Advent Day 22

Advent? Yikes! Christmas is barreling down on us. I woke up this morning in terror, watching the tail of a comet whipping through the front door at mach 10. The explosion that awakened me was the actual comet, splintering our log house, a comet which no one ever saw, by the name of Christmas.

When I caught myself, I realized my brain was making lists. I still want to write a lot to people I love, and haven’t, I still haven’t figured out how to do the gifts that I have for people, I have to do a couple of days full time of work for the UU’s to get credentialed, and I have a sermon at the fellowship in two weeks, and a service this morning to read up on, and a Christmas Eve service we’re prepping this afternoon to read up on...

Waiting. Breathing.

Yesterday the weather was warm enough, like officially minus 8 but actually plus 8 up on the hill, so we took Matteo out skiing. He was all enthusiastic on the stiff, short boards he has, hand-me-down skis. We just strap his Steeger Mukluks in, hand him his beloved brand-new poles, and he’s off, shuffling, in high enthusiasm.

After two trips up the stadium hill, I swooped him up in his chariot, a module on skis which hangs on my hips by aluminum poles, now puffed out with a kid’s down sleeping bag for insulation. Matteo’s angles and chills sank into the spongy womb, we zipped him up, and closed the chassis. Ready for delivery. Marin took off home and I took off up.

We skied trails which took me down the hill in the 3:30 pm twilight. I was surprised and delighted that these weren’t lighted trails. The temperatures fell as I went down, and I could get no glide at all trying to skate ski ourselves out of the colder vale below. But even the trudge was fun. It has been two weeks since the weather was even zero-ish-balmy to do this.

The real gifts are not given, they are not earned, they are received. Life, health, attentiveness. The cold, the sweat, the shortest-day’s descent into darkness, little boy fast asleep in the chariot, head bobbing as I load him into his car seat later. How to learn to see real gifts, to frame life so that gifts can be seen, to open hearts to grace upon grace?

Last year when I couldn’t figure out what to give Marin, I fell back on the "twelve days of Christmas" strategy, which I think should be the norm for every family. The widely acclaimed "Christmas morning" strategy forces you to put everything under the tree, tear it all open, and be done with it. It requires a lot of front end loading, in secret, and the gifts need to be wrapped, that is, they must be physical things, toasters, books, electric ear-and-nose hair removers, stuff.

The "twelve days" strategy is different. It allows for rituals to continue, the daily sitting by the tree, the daily lighting of the candles, the daily singing holding hands, and the daily opening of the presents. And the presents can be gathered, created, and wrapped along the way, allowing almost two weeks of returning to the graced moment of giving and receiving. And the instead of "objects," 12 days allows for "subjects," experiences, promises, and such. Like promising to be the family movie-warrior, getting a family appropriate rental flick the third Friday of the month for the next 12 months, with a bottle of wine, a batch of popcorn, and a mid-movie backrub thrown in. Of course you have to remember it, put it on your calendar, but that beats standing in line at Walmart to buy a plastic and aluminum combo fondue set / deep fryer.

Now I’m showing my hand. This is a great strategy when you’re forty or sixty and you have everything. You cry: "Just what I needed!" Because I need to break into new experiences so I don’t get crotchety. I need to frame what experiences are already open to me so I don’t lose the gift, the gratitude, the grace. "How did you know I needed just that?"

For the hilariously creative tale of a religion-blended family trying to negotiate the best of Christmas without the prevailing religious framing, read "Irving the Snowchicken is Coming to Town." (write me if this doesn't open, I'll send it. It's worth it!)