holiday juxtapositions
life and death. beauty and grief. wonder and endurance.
I’ve been listening to cosy holiday jazz for the better part of a week.
I love the holiday season.
I’m told it was one of my mom’s favorite time of years. She was a magnificent gift giver and found immense joy expressing her love that way.
Many of my most vivid childhood memories with her are from Christmases.
We decorated our tree with golden garlands, a motley crew of ornaments, colorful twinkle lights, and an angelic tree-topper with flashing, light-up, rainbow wings that no one but my mom had wanted at a white elephant party.
When the final ornament was hung my mom would take off her glasses to look at the tree and me and my dad would stand beside her, blurring our vision so that we could see “what mommy saw”. The details fell away and it would transform into a glowing, column of colors and cheer.
The Christmas after we got Sadie, we learned that only felted ornaments and bells could survive the branches tail-height and below.
I remember putting on a favorite, velvet red dress that twirled just so when I spun around. I adoring the faux pearls in my matching crimson costume jewelry and the nylon texture of the white tights I wore to neighborhood holiday parties.
I remember the faint, waxy smell of the lipstick my mom so gently put on my lips and how hard it was to stand still for eyeshadow. I remember trips to see epic ginger bread constructions on display at a local hotel lobby and writing ‘thank you’ notes as a family after the last crumpled ball of wrapping paper had been recycled.
One year, my mom’s best friend shared that she hadn’t had a stocking growing up so my mom made her one. But she didn’t make her just any stocking. She made a stocking big enough to fit a baby elephant. She expertly concluded that her friend needed to make up for lost time with extra presents from then on.
My mother was also an ally way ahead of her time. The first year we lived in the cooperative community that I grew up in, a majority of the residents wanted to put up a large Christmas tree in the Common House. One of our jewish neighbors bravely spoke up and shared that growing up she had always felt both left out of and steamrolled by the loudness of Christmas and the erasure of Chanukah. There was talk of nixing the Christmas tree if it didn’t represent everyone because people were committed to disrupting patterns of exclusion.
“I have an idea.” My mom volunteered. “Would you be willing to share Chanukah with the rest of us? Could we celebrate your traditions and holy days with you?”
And we did. Every year from then on.
I loved Chanukkah. I loved playing dreidel for chocolate coins with other kids without understanding a single rule for how to play. I loved sitting on the carpet at the feet of one of our other neighbors as he read us picture books about the enduring lamp oil that inspired the 8-day celebration. I loved (and still love) making latkes and listening to Hebrew prayers sung to light candles and bless shared meals. I loved being invited in to such a rich tradition of community perseverance, mysticism, and determined gratitude kept alive a people that has endured so much persecution for so many centuries.
I grew up celebrating holidays from many traditions and wouldn’t come to realize how exceptional this experience was until many years later.
For the first time, I’ve caught myself wondering what traditions I want to uphold in the name of family and community.
I’ve started foraging and collecting heirloom decorations with the mindset of “what would I want my kids to grow up with and feel sentimental about?” It’s such a practice of play and doing things for the experience of wonder that they create.
I also find myself missing my mom fiercely this time of year. Feeling both close to her and reminded of how long she’s been gone.
I suspect that the holidays are complex and paradoxical for most of us.
I recently stole time on a weekday morning for a virtual knitting date with one of the dearest people in my life. She reminds me so much of who I understood my mom to be.
Her father-in-law is navigating the last days of life, and as we caught up she told me a story of coming home to find her husband and three brother-in-laws yodeling at the top of their lungs in by her father-in-laws bedroom. As he lay there fading in and out of awakeness, his four sons bellowed and serenaded him with the musical traditions of his Austrian homeland. His two-year-old granddaughter joined the fray, dancing, climbing on the bed, and injecting her unique, fresh flavor of Life into another goodbye in a long chapter of farewells.
With tears streaming down both of our faces, we sat in a tender moment of holding all of it. The beauty, the grief, the love, the exhaustion, the juxtaposition, the gratitude, the poetry, the hardness, and the immensity.
Maybe this is the make of what it means to actually come of age.
When we realize that Life is all happening all the time all at once.
That the holidays which are usually assumed to be celebratory are also landscapes of grief and family fracture.
That the hardest moments can also be some of the most beautiful.
That Life renews at the bedside of death.
That miss what we had while we look forward what we hope will come next.
It is in those moments I feel like I’ve finally grown up.
Like I’ve quietly stepped into adulthood.
That there isn’t a better normal that we’ll get back to but that Life is happening all the time all at once and that’s often the craziest, most beautiful thing about it.
That we persevere and continue to meet what comes and if we remember to do it together - as family and community - we’ll be better off for it.
We’ll be more whole and more able.
More tender.
More alive.
May your holiday celebrations buoy your spirit. May you connect authentically with people you love. May you find new ways to be generous. May you find quiet moments of peace to remember and give thanks for your own, sweet self. May you learn something new and important about someone else. May you slow down and be gentle with whatever weighs on your heart. May you let go with grace and courage. May you shed anything holding you back or harming you. May you embrace the new year with fresh perspective and greater resilience. May you be a force - big or small - in creating the world you want us all to inherit.
Good Homes Needed:
My dear friend adopted a pregnant stray on Molokai and now has 9 little sweethearts that need loving homes in mid-January. The pups will be about 9-10 weeks old at that time.
They have an Ohana (guest unit) at their home on Molokai that adopters can stay at to pick up & Alaska Airlines allows flights in cabin for little pets. There is also an air service that flies puppies to/from Hawaii.
There will be an adoption fee to cover costs of materials and labor to keep mama and babies healthy (think hand feeding 10 dogs many times a day!).
If the puppies are being adopted off island they will also need their parvo shots.
A note from the caregivers
Our Pet Parent Criteria:
You must commit to giving them a wonderful life with plenty of love & exercise, training, & make them a real loved family member. Spay and neuter at a healthy age is also important.
Please remember that these are puppies. Puppy behavior comes with the package. They’ll need basic training and potty training along with being provided chew toys to encourage proper chewing habits. All puppies require socializing from a young age to help them become the best, most well-rounded dog they can be.
Email or text me directly if you’d like to know more and I can put you in touch with Sadie’s humans to discuss and make arrangements.
Extra Goods:
Honoring the memory of Ethel and Jim. People who showed a young, lonely boy warmth, kindness, and love across divisions of race and class. May your descendants be healthy and happy wherever they are.
The movie Wind River is leaving Netflix soon. I think it might be one of the best movies I have watched in many, many years. I love murder mysteries and spent 3 months backpacking through the Wind River Mountain range when I was 18-years-old. It has an exceptional cast, incredible cinematography, and the screenplay is superb. Trigger Warning - the subject matter is haunting and if you are a sensitive creature like me, it will affect you.
When was the last time you hand wrote a letter? I spent some time in the last couple weeks writing thank you notes to donors for the organization I work for as well as cards to friends I haven’t heard from in a while or who have been on my mind lately. Yes, do it for them. But also, do it for you. It is such a small, sweet, stolen moment for yourself to sink into contemplation and think about someone you appreciate. Think about that tiny moment of surprise and delight you experience when you see handwriting on an envelope in your wee stack of mail, and think about who you might want to give that to…
My favorite Christmas song from my favorite Christmas album of all time: