So difficult to believe, when our children are still small, that as they grow, they will forget many of the details of their childhood. Mysteriously, our children seem to fall asleep when they hit adolescence, and their childhood memories slip away like a dream when they wake up in the throes of their teen years. What they do remember, feels like ancient history to them, even though their parents feel like it was only yesterday. A particular snowman. A field of fireflies on a starlit night. Lying on a blanket watching shooting stars. These are the memories that keep, and that we share together when the small child disappears in to the adult.
My son and I used to celebrate the turning points of the year. On our nature walks we sometimes made up songs and celebrations of the moment. Songs, I've found, are a way to keep memory alive. We remember that which is rhymed. This is why the ancient societies, which did not rely on the written word, committed their history and stories to verse. Today I would like to share with you a verse of a little song for the Summer Solstice.

December 24

I love these days
when every cottage is a shrine
bright and holy
in winter darkness
bedecked with symbols of an ancient story
and a living tree.

When the doors of the heart
are flung wide open
to let in the light—
when every heart becomes a hearth
for the sacred flame of hope.
Even if it's only a flicker.
Even if it's only for a moment.
It is enough.

Even if the story of love
is told in a whisper
and heard in a dream
between twilight and darkness,

waking and sleep,
it is enough.

I love these days

in the depth of winter

when a light shines in the cairn

and every cottage becomes a shrine

because we make it so.

December 22

Today I saw a flurry of birds
descend from the sky
and land on a small tree.
The sun stood still
and for a moment the bare winter branches
were decorated with small winged creatures.

In this season
a door opens for a time
and in these holy days
we see the beauty of the setting sun
and a flight of birds,
falling like stars
from the sky.

I remember.

I remember,
one Christmas day
when we went for a walk
and came upon a Holly tree
in red berries.
Little remains of the rest of the day
but the wonder of seeing that tree
on Christmas Day
when everything is beautiful
if we allow it to be.

December 20

The little fir tree in the kitchen looks beautiful today with a showing of old glass ornaments and a string of lights. I wish I had an old fashioned box of tinsel. It doesn't have the aroma of a balsam, but it looks like it's smiling and lifting its branches to the sky.

My eyes had grown accustomed to the brilliance of "pre-lit" trees, with hundreds of lights, perfectly spaced. These trees are like the studio recordings that pass for real music these days. Artificially tweaked and tuned to perfection—no humble human voice, no matter how strong or true, can duplicate the sound. All they do is ruin our ear for real music—the kind human beings make in time of joy, or sorrow, or just for the fun of it.

In the grocery store today a warbling voice rang out "are you listening? In the lane, snow is glistening..." It was an "older" lady who, to be honest, sounded a bit like Tiny Tim. I don't understand why so many ladies of a certain age have a tremolo, or why it kicks in when they're in the grocery store, singing in the check out lane. My ear picked up a smaller voice, steady and in tune, joining in on "a beautiful sight, we're happy tonight..." A little girl was singing along. I couldn't resist joining in on "walking in a winter wonderland..." The lady next to me, who a moment earlier was rolling her eyes, said "maybe we should all sing..." We should. With our imperfect voices raise a joyful song of Christmas.


We should never let allow perfection to get in the way of seeing beauty.

December 19

I cut a small tree to put in the kitchen on Friday. As I brought the tree in to the house, I noticed that something significant was missing—the beautiful aroma. No church incense can compare to the scent of balsam. No other scent so swiftly transforms the mundane in to the mystical. Even when we clear the tree and decorations away in January, the scent lingers. It's even a joy to vacuum after taking the tree down, because the scent is stirred up one last time. A Christmas Tree without the aroma is just a tree.

My Winter Solstice festivity felt like it was going to be just like the little tree in the kitchen this year—the form would be there, but the magic strangely absent. As happy as I am for Bran and Susie, moving in to their first home together today—they are too far away. Their departure, so close to the day, meant that two important people would be missing around the Winter Solstice bonfire. And the month of December was more about departure than arrival.

Yesterday I tried to cobble together a celebration of the Winter Solstice, as I do every year, but my heart wasn't in it. I felt stressed. Things weren't coming together and schedules were hard to coordinate. Three major appliances broke within three days of one another. But I didn't want to miss it. I didn't want to miss Bran and Susie and the Winter Solstice celebration on top of that. One thing led to another and I found myself on my cell phone with Mickey, crying. Mickey, being a wise woman, offered the gift of love. "Does he know how much you love him?" she asked as I told her about how sad I felt over Bran leaving to move so far away. And she affirmed her love for me.

Later that afternoon, I found myself on the phone with Patricia. This wise woman understood that I was having a hard time because all of the familiar trappings of the season had suddenly turned topsy turvy. Bearing the gift of Commonsense, she asked astute questions and drew me out about what was important—what would it take for it to "feel" like WInter Solstice? Who needed to be there for it to feel "right"? She told me that if I was working to hard to "make it happen" that, it wasn't going to happen. The form might be there, but like the little tree without the aroma, the feeling would not be. Knowing Patricia, she must have prayed for wisdom and guidance to fall on me—pronto.

When I got home my niece Laura called, my third visitation from a wise woman. Nobody love the Winter Solstice as much as I do, unless it's Laura. Since I don't have brothers or sisters, I can never have nieces or nephews to whom I am related by blood, but in my life I have been given the gift of nieces who are related to me by spirit. Laura "gets it". She was willing to drive down from Providence Rhode Island and back again in one day, just to celebrate the solstice with me. It's the thing our little family "does" for Christmas. It's our tradition. Laura came in, over the phone waves, bearing her gift. Ever so hesitantly, because we are sticklers for doing the solstice on or before the day, she suggested "Could we do it after Christmas maybe—during the 12 days?" Laura is a church musician, so she has to be at her church on Christmas to bear in the spirit for others, but she plans on coming to Connecticut for a few days, driving down on the 26th. Her boyfriend will be back from Florida and her sister will be down from Maine. "It could be fun to do it then" she offered "Instead of celebrating on the downside, we could catch the sun of the upswing..." Suddenly a new vision of a new celebration formed in our minds. It would be fun. Dale and Athene would be up from Carolina, visiting their family in Chinatown. Bran and Susie would be celebrating in their new home, but plenty of other dear friends and surrogate family members would be back in Connecticut. We could have that wonderful feeling of opening the door to let loved ones fly in like snowflakes. There would be time to organize the luminaries and get the bonfire together. I envisioned us gathered around the fire, candles in hand, doing the shepherds dance, and the horn dancers emerging from the woods to do the antler dance. Suddenly everything felt all right again. Laura bore the gift of mirth.

The Three Kings show up after the fact, bearing gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. The sun is long up, the season of darkness past. Not unlike many men on a holiday, all they have to do is show up. But the tree wise women were there for me in the chaos of the winter solstice when we try to spin an orderly galaxy out of stars flung to the far reaches of the heavens. As always we are the ones who bear much of the responsibility for creating the holiday so it's appropriate that the three wise women arrive before the day. I am grateful for their gifts of Love, Commonsense and Mirth.

December 18

As you all know, I grew up in Brooklyn in the Methodist Church, as austere an institution as you could ever imagine. Just a plain and simple cross on the altar, clear glass windows, and white pews. But on Christmas Eve, it all looked beautiful to me in the electric candlelight. (Methodists were practical. They used battery powered candles.) Hard to believe, but this Protestant girl was so much of a minority in my Brooklynese homeland, that most kids didn't even know what I was.

In Brooklyn you walked, no matter what the weather. Our "tradition" was to walk to church on Christmas Eve and get our loaf of Limpa bread after the service. Marge Sealander trekked out to Bay Ridge, where all the Scandinavians lived, and bought bread for everyone at the Swedish bakery. The Limpa is a sweet Rye bread—very delicious with sweet butter. My Swedish father loved it and the pickled herring (yuck) that is traditional Christmas fare in the land of fiords.

One year it was very, very cold on Christmas Eve and even though we'd eaten dinner, we felt inordinately hungry. The Chinese restaurant was still  open after the candlelight service. Thinking ourselves very rebellious we bought take-out for a midnight feast. I remember very vividly eating chicken chow mein with Swedish rye bread on the side and laughing with my parents about how "unconventional" we were being. This was the one and only time I ever remember laughing with them over being unconventional. We had Chinese the following year, but it didn't taste quite as good, and lacked the spice of rebellion, which I developed a bit of a taste for.

December 17

Where does the old year go?

This has been a chaotic season—not at all the usual Yuletide peace and revelry. As you have no doubt figured out, my child has left the East coast and moved to the West coast. From the dawnland of the East to the west of the setting sun. Now, I understand that this is what children do. They grow up in to men and women and they go off on their own adventures and in to their own lives.

Bran hasn't lived with us for seven years, but he was nearby in our old hometown, so he came home for the Winter Solstice and Christmas.

But how strange it is when the child turns in to a teenager, and the teenager grows up to be a man and sets off on a journey west, packing up his things, leaving even more of his things in your basement, and carrying the child-he-once-was inside him. And how strange it is that this is happening at Yuletide, my favorite season of the year. I feel a bit like the old year passing. Another chapter completed and you shut the book. Remember the old Groucho Marks quip "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read..." Inside a closed book, with pages pressed close together, it's very dark.

Bran and Susie opened up a brand new book together when they moved. Crisp white pages, waiting to be written on. How I envy the excitement of being young and starting out even as I cherish the "hmm, if I knew then what I know now" wisdom of, dare I say it, age. Joe and I look back at being that age and say "If I knew then what I do now...". Somehow this phrase can heal the past. "If I knew then that it would hurt your feelings, I would have done things differently." "If I knew then, what I do now I would have stood up for myself..." "If I knew then what I do now, I would have come home early just to play..." "If I knew then what I knew now I would have told you...." Somehow, it's possible to change the past by traveling back on the phrase, if I knew then....

In the meantime I've closed one book, the candle has flickered out and I'm sitting in the dark for a little while, but I welcome the new light I know is coming on the Winter Solstice. I will begin another book now. I don't know what it will be, but I hope it has a surprise ending, maybe even happily ever after.