At this time of year I lean in two different directions,I can be disturbed and made moody by the short cold days of December, or as hours of daylight shrink I can find wonder in the dark. This morning, December 13th, I woke in the still quiet not knowing if it was night or day yet. Slipping out of a toasty bed to quench a thirst, I saw it was seven am. I had the luxury of sleep while some of my community were making toast in their kitchens, or heating up vehicles in the dark.
I’ve shared complains about the dreariness of limited hours of daylight, but on this dark morning, with a slip of moon shining through the clouds, and streetlights still on and reflecting off the snow, I felt the dim light differently. Today in Calgary, Alberta where we live there will only be daylight until four-thirty pm, and even less tomorrow. So, what was it that struck me standing in my bare feet with the door open to the outside, noticing rabbit tracks across the yard in the remaining moonlight?
My Christmas to-do list is daunting; order the turkey (darn get that turkey!), finish shopping for this gift and that one, check supply of tissue, ribbons and bows, wrap and wrap and wrap, make cranberry sauce and butter tarts and shortbread, find the perfect tree, decorate the imperfect tree we get, make guest rooms look inviting instead of like store rooms for miscellaneous, and on and on and on. Yet something switched this morning to my “there’s too much darkness, I’m swamped, and tired” psych?
Could it possibly be the wonder of the season? I’ve recently learned of St. Lucy’s Day – a Scandinavian celebration that takes place today – Dec. 13th , marking the end of the longest darkest nights, bringing warmth and hope during winter. St. Lucy Day coincides with the winter solstice in the Julian calendar, and honours St. Lucia who distributed food during a great famine, and so this day celebrates light in darkness, as well as hope and charity. Friends and family gather together to joyously light candles, sing carols and relish gingerbread and saffron-flavoured buns.
And so, it was this morning, that I felt that shift, from dreading the long hours of darkness to anticipating the coming together of loved ones. I’m counting the days until our house will sparkle with lit up rooms, the doorway will be crowded with winter boots, and conversation and laughter will ring out around that yet to be decorated Christmas tree. This year we’ll have the gift of a new grandson coming home for relatives to adore. We’ll break bread (and butter tarts) with those we love. And in the darkness, there will be an abundance of light.
It’s the holly jolly season of brightness and light. But my family and my extended family have lost too many of our elderly this year – the chiefs of our tribes, my dear mom one of them. Mom loved Christmas – and like so many moms she created it – vintage Christmas cards hanging on a string, the favorite decorations glistening on a fresh cut tree, the gifts shopped for at sales throughout the year, and closer to the day – the table top lined with shortbread and nanaimo bars and those Chinese noodle chocolate cookies chilling on the porch. So all of it is hard this year, but Mom would want us to find the joy, to gather together and hold each other tight on a snowy night. (Mom – we’ll give it our best shot.) In her honour I’d like to share a favourite excerpt from my book Text Me, Love Mom that speaks of the joy, chaos and excitement of a family in transition at Christmas time:
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – The Queen, Alice in Wonderland
For part of a bright, but snowy December and into early January, our home was crowded with our kids and their friends home from university and jobs – along with snowboards and old skates in the porch, left-behind scarves draped over chair backs, and take-out Chinese containers leaning against eggnog cartons in the fridge. Once our two sons and their dad had completed their December twenty-third and twenty-fourth shopping mall blitz, adding to their two sisters more timely forays at artisan shops or framing their own works, the gifts had spilled out under the fresh scotch pine Christmas tree. The deluge of snow lent to the holiday other-worldly atmosphere. Every outing required boots, or at least high tops, sought out from the heap at the door. We’d all developed the technique of backing down the sloping road instead of plowing forward through icy drifts, and the sidewalk shovel-ers worked with the risk of a friendly-fire snowball being tossed at them from the front deck. There was always someone trying to find a sibling, or the truck keys, or else they were noisily trying to locate the contact lens solution over another person calling out to see if there was milk in the downstairs’ fridge.
For most of their long break we skipped family breakfast – as pre-Christmas I was out using the mornings to finish gift shopping, and post-Christmas I used the early hours to bring in provisions for the household. I’d almost forgotten how so much of my life had revolved around trips to various grocery stores for two decades. A few days before our kid’s departures were going to begin – I located them in the evening, in person or by text, “Breakfast together tomorrow at 10:30, okay?”
Zoë, our eldest, was more interested in the stacks of pancakes then previously. It had been a marvelous new holiday season for our family – because it was growing again. A few months ago, just before receiving her Masters degree twenty-five-year-old Zoë and her dedicated boyfriend of the last five years learned that the IUD Zoë used for birth control had failed them. “Got one past the goalie,” they were able to jest once we all passed the initial stress and concern of the IUD being surgically removed without interfering with the tiny new being. Zoë’s guy would touch her rounding belly and we would all grin like Cheshire cats. He was finishing a degree in architecture and was madly planning a renovation of their Vancouver home to accommodate a new baby. It was the twenty-first century – we were all okay with them transitioning to being parents before we helped plan the fun and romantic ocean-side wedding of Zoës dreams.
While brushing the snow off the car before driving our sons to the airport, a blur of white skidded past the hedge and across the road. It was a snowy white rabbit, running parallel to me. This was an unusual lucky omen – a white rabbit running parallel to you, but only if it was Sunday. And Sunday it was.
Our youngest, Lily, flew back to Montreal for the start of classes a few days later. She called me her second day ‘home’. “It’s so cold, Mom. I can’t even hang onto my phone – it’s so cold.” She was rushing to a grocery store to buy ingredients for my meat sauce. “Tell me exactly what you put in yours. I want mine to taste like yours.” She was quiet. Then, “What are you and Zoё doing? I wish I was still there hanging out.”
Zoё had been commissioned to paint a mural for an art show, but was free to hang back in Calgary for another day and return when the price of flights weren’t as inflated, promising me some mom and daughter time together. We were returning a maternity shirt that didn’t fit her, going out for a peaceful lunch and because, unlike the Montreal deep freeze, Calgary was being treated to balmy Chinook weather, we planned to take a walk along the reservoir. After all the lovely chaos of Christmas, a day of activities devoted to Zoё and I, seemed like bliss, but I was aware of the new hush Lily had returned to in her small Montreal studio.
“We’re not doing much, Lily. It’s quiet here. Make your sauce, and call if you need help.”
But Lily hadn’t been ready to disconnect. “Hey Mom. How will we work it when Zoё has the baby in June? We’ll be there right? How will we make sure that we’re in Vancouver?”
Funny, her brother, Cole, had asked me something similar. He had no interest in being around the delivery room but he wanted to be close by, “to film the kid as soon as it arrives.”
“We’ll work it out,” I told Zoё’s little sister, “It will be summertime. That’ll make it easier.”
The following day I took my eldest daughter to the airport, gave her blossoming body a firm hug, and handed her over to those security personal before driving back to this too quiet, too calm house. But imagining our first little grandchild, I feel less lonely. The baby’s other grandparents live in Calgary as well – and the bright bigger bedroom that was Zoë’s before a recent renovation, now has enough space for a queen bed and a tiny crib when they visit. Suddenly, the renovated house was beginning to make sense again… Despite the miles that separate us, our family was growing and this house, halfway up the hill, is still home.
Sweet, my kids would say. And so I’ll type to them all in their far away places, “Text me. Love mom.”
If you’ve enjoyed this excerpt, and would like to read more or know someone who will be captivated by this tale of a family sorting out this new stage of life Text Me, Love Mom is available from Amazon at https://www.amazon.ca/Text-Me-Love-Mom-Girls/dp/1771800712
What do Santa and the new release on Youtube – Disabled and Dangerous have in common? They both need to circle the globe. Disabled and Dangerous was released Thursday on YouTube to rave reviews and now we need to truly make it the heartfelt heist heard round the world. Watch the movie. It WILL make you laugh. Share it with a friend. Share it with a hundred friends. Eat cookies. And if you are able – make a donation to an ALS society near you. This is just an ordinary stick-up.
Text Me, Love Mom 