This will be a very special Holiday for us. We have one child, now off in the Navy, and for the past few years, Xmas has been rather bleak. We haven’t even put up a tree.
This year promises a whole different holiday. During the summer, my husband’s son, Christopher, 29, came to visit for the first time. Christopher works in Washington, DC, in the US Patent Office, as a Intellectual Properties Investigator. Three years ago he became a Mormon.
We haven’t seen this child in decades. Divorce can take its nasty toll on so many things, and children are usually on the front lines. We had just given up ever knowing this child. But in through our front door Christopher walked and it was love at first sight. He is a tall, handsome young man, and funny to boot. He kept his arm around me and his father and it seemed that talking to Christopher was talking to my husband. They were so much alike. The mystery of DNA will always startle me.
The last time I saw Christopher he was not even two years old….and still in his crib. So seeing this beautiful young man who was so much an issue of anger and strife between his parents was a shock. For some unknown reason, this meeting had nothing of awkwardness or strangeness. It was just a father, son and step-mother having dinner and getting to know the other. It was just an unexpected joy for me.
Our son in the Navy, also named Christopher (just 24), met the other Christopher this summer, and they have spent as much time together as possible. He is an only child, and said to me recently: “Finally I get the sibling I wanted, no thanks to you, Mom.” LOL!
They spent Thanksgiving up at Christopher’s and that was wonderful, the mother down here, worried that her child would not have a holiday dinner, except the hard tack or whatever they eat in the Navy these days.
Friday night we were at a holiday party in the neighborhood. It was held at a new venue for our neighborhood, an internet cafe, apparently owned by the Japanese. It is run by a woman who lived for many years in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese. They are putting these cafes all over the country I have been told. This was a lovely new venue for our neighborhood, and we were having a great time. My husband Fred got a phone call from his son, and BOTH our Christophers are coming home for Xmas on a long road trip together from up there.
I haven’t been able to stop smiling since Friday. I tore the house apart upstairs yesterday, can barely move this morning, giving up my large studio and office to make a ‘dorm’ for the ‘boys’. I took another smaller bedroom and sqeezed my stuff in there. I am so happy to have this task to do, and this ’empty nest’ stuff goes just so far. It’s damn lonely actually, and having the sound and laughter of two young men, both related, in the house at Christmas will be the best gift of all. I have heard them on the phone, talking to each other, laughing and giggling, both computer nerds, and having that in our lives, even for a short visit at Christmas will mean so much to both of us. Plus the wood pile will grow with two additional axes this winter.
Life is never predictable. We never thought this Holiday visit would be possible. But life is also an ever-changing blessing.
Lady Nyo
A REASON FOR THE SEASON
I saw the Cooper’s hawk this morning. She landed on the chimney pot, probably looking for my miniature hen, Grayson. Four years ago she was a starved fledging who mantled over while I fed her cold chicken. She’s back this holiday, my spirits lifting. A good Christmas present.
In the middle of the commercialization of the season, Nature closes the gap. I have noticed squirrels with pecans in mouths leaping the trees, hawks hunting low over now-bare woods, unknown song birds sitting on fences, heard the migration of Sandhill cranes as they honk in formation. You hear their cacophony well before they appear.
There is brightness to the holly, washed by our early winter rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of wood smoke in the air and the crispness of morning means some of nature is going to sleep. We humans should reclaim our past and join the slumber party of our brother bears.
Jingle Bells will fade and our tension with it. Looking towards deep winter when the Earth is again silent will restore our balance and calm nerves with a blanket of peace.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2009, 2011
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