Radio Silence

The house is clean for the second and last time 2016. Relatives have arrived and for the next few days I get to be called mom and call someone else mom. Our slightly lopsided potted tree that will go outside and spring is covered with quirky homemade ornaments and reminders of special years — our first Christmas together, Our first year with Thing1 and then Thing2. The tree and the collection of gifts in the basket in front of it are smaller these days — part of an effort to focus more on presence and less on presents.

I’m sitting here listening to grandparents  unpack and smelling tonight’s slow cooker peasant food and the world outside our door disappears. I’m making a choice to delete social media apps from my phone for the next few days to focus on moments we’ll want to remember in the months to come. The only connection I want to have with the outside world and the next two days is when my mom and kids and I (my dad will certainly be asleep by then) sit down on the couch after our holiday feast and put on the Sound of Music as we did every year growing up when much of the country watched it on TV every Christmas night.

That movie inspire so many revelations each time we watch it. I find myself thinking not just about following dreams, but about how the redeeming power of love, about courage it takes to get off the sidelines and about small acts of defiance against injustice. Mostly what I think about is that while bad times in history can indeed be very hard, and they can last for a long time, but they don’t last forever.

As 2016–a year marked by uncertainty and rancor draws to a close, I don’t harbor any illusions that things will suddenly get better. I don’t know what it will take to get our nation past the divide or when or how we will lift up the most vulnerable among us instead of fearing them and each other. When we sit down to watch our favorite holiday movie on Sunday, however I’m going to remind myself and my kids that, with courage and hope, things do get better. That would be the best gift they could take into the new year.

 

 

Winter Roads

 

Winter Roads, 12×16 Watercolor

I’m getting paintings together for a winter show at the Spiral Press cafe in Manchester, VT and have been struggling to find a cohesive theme. But shorter days and cocooning are helping me find it.

You’d think the snow-covered mountains would provide obvious inspiration, but I’m an odd duck and it’s the mud and bare trees that get my brush going. There’s something inspirational in the cocooning too – not explosive like geysers and volcanos but soothing.  Right now, soothing is just what is needed.

Small Town Santa Redux

santababyweb

Thing2 was feeling a little down about the upcoming holidays and couldn’t put his finger on exactly why. 

I asked if he was looking forward to seeing Grandma and Grandpa again. He said yes, but he still couldn’t get happy. I asked if he was happy about presents and Santa. He rolled his eyes and said, “Mom, there’s no Santa.”

Suddenly I felt a little sad. I knew he’d been suspicious for the last few years, but he’d been willing to play along. It was easy to keep him believing a few extra years, thanks to our small town Santa rituals, but every kid reaches that age when the illusion is gone.   It was sad when it happened with T1, and, knowing T2’s ‘lasts’ are really the lasts, it was pretty sad last week.

Thing1 enjoys helping to play Santa on Christmas Eve as much as he enjoyed playing into the story, but until tonight, finding the magic on the other side of the myth was still nebulous for Thing2.

It was still on both our minds the other night when we took him to his elementary school’s holiday concert. 

T2 loves singing, and the music quickly chased away his melancholy.  His chorus group sang three songs, then he sang a few numbers with the rest of the fourth grade and the other ‘upper schoolers’, and all the kids were smiling. 

The concert wrapped up with the kindergartners and preschoolers belting out Christmas standards.  Singing with the kind of uninhibited joy that only a group of devout Santa-believing five- and six-year-olds can channel, they were rewarded for their enthusiasm with a surprise visit from the big guy. Not the Big Guy — the big guy in the red suit.

This year’s small town Santa strode down the middle aisle of the gym-turned-concert-hall and snagged the microphone from the music teacher. Songs now turned to screams of glee. The tiny performers forgot their cues and started jumping up and down and waving at Santa.

Santa assured all the kids that they were all on the nice list and hinted that a teacher or two was teetering on the edge of the naughty list.  He solidified his bonafides by naming recognizable names, and the older elementary students sitting on the sidelines grinned and laughed. Thing2 was beaming, and I noticed he was watching not Santa, but the kindergartners.  It was as if he suddenly realized that he was now a co-conspirator in the care and feeding of a holiday myth.

His ambivalence seemed to vanish in the dark as we walked through the muddy parking lot to our car, and now I’m thinking, when the time comes,  he’ll enjoy playing Santa as much as he used to enjoy leaving out the milk and cookies. (And we haven’t even told him what happens to the cookies once Santa is done).