‘Reason For The Season’ ……And Happy Holidays.

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 starving fledgling 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 Christmas, 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.  Their chiding cries float down to our upturned faces.

–

There is brightness to the holly, washed by our late autumn rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of wood smoke in the air and the crispness of mornings means the earth is going to sleep.

–

We humans should reclaim our past and fecal plugs 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, 2008-2014

“A Reason For The Season”

Within the hope of Christmas, the Winter Solstice and other cultural holidays, comes the unbelievable tragedy of Newtown, Conn. Our hearts are broken.

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. 2012

A Christmas Miracle and I Can’t Stop Smiling!

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

“A Reason For The Season”, posted for OneShotPoetryWednesdays

I posted this in the beginning of December and thought it a good sentiment to end the month and the year.

Merry Christmas, or the politically correct form: Happy Holidays, though the Winter Solstice is in there somewhere.

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 starving fledgling 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 Christmas, 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. Their chiding cries float down to upturned faces.

There is brightness to the holly, washed by our late autumn rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of woodsmoke in the air and the crispness of mornings means the earth is going to sleep. We humans should reclaim our past and our fecal plugs 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, 2008, 2010

“A Reason For The Season”

In the Highlands....

It’s early in the Holiday season, but so many of my friends, neighbors and family are feeling the stress and anxiety of current economic conditions. We are encouraged to go out  into the malls and online to spend money we don’t have.  So many are losing their homes right now, don’t have jobs, face an unknown future.

It’s all around us, and not just in our country.  This is a world wide issue and it will break so many people.  The good  I am seeing is this: some sites and programs of re-gifting, downsizing expectations, returning to a simpler concept of these various religious holidays.  The glut is all over the map, and people  are tired.

I told my dear husband I didn’t want any presents this year, though we have not been hit hard like so many others we know.  I look around and think how to simplify, to un- clutter, how to get to the real issues that my values and spiritual leanings reveal to me.  It’s a question of not listening to the hype, the glut, the maddening rush for what?  More X-boxes?

This short 200 word piece was written two years ago, but I think it holds up well for the current season.

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 starving fledgling 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 Christmas, 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. Their chiding cries float down to upturned faces, neighbors outside watching in awe at their flight overhead.

There is brightness to the holly, washed by our late autumn rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of woodsmoke in the air and the crispness of mornings means the earth is going to sleep. We humans should reclaim our past and our fecal plugs 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, 2008, 2010

Originally published in “A Seasoning of Lust”, 2009, lulu.com

“A Reason for the Season”

Christmas Eve, early. The magnolia leaves and glossy red nandina berries  are spread….finally… over these old mantels.

Southern traditions are different.  I come from  the North and realize  now how decorating differs in both regions.  People used what they had.  Magnolia leaves are broad and glossy, and look lovely spread over overmantels, tucked behind paintings, and on mantels with these nandina berries I have only seen in the South.  The glossy leaves and berries come into their best in this early winter.  Nandina bushes are rather frothy, with orange, grape-clustered berries that turn to a bright red at Xmas.  Perfect.  Some pine cones, which down here tend to be all sizes…from tiny, perfect ‘buds’ to huge cones you can put an eye out with.

There are 4 fireplaces in this old house and all of them drafty.  This spring I am going to paint ‘firescreens’ to place over the andirons and close off the drafts.  But by the time they are finished it will probably be summer.

I am making mimosas this afternoon, and oyster stew for the evening meal, and then to bed.  It’s just Husband and House this year, as our son has left for Navy deployment Dec. 8th.  It is a tenuous and bittersweet Christmas this year; the first in 22 years sans enfant.

(We just received our first letter from our son:  a whole page and a half of closely written letter on Navy stationary saying it’s cold up there and the food is good (but not as good as mom’s) he has a cold or flu that showed up after all his shots, and  bemoans his Navy haircut.  Sounds like he’s doing fine.  Hope he has Kleenex.)

But the cats have his old room and they are very happy.  The dogs keep looking for their buddy….he has disappeared into the ether. He has a favorite cat, Hana, who is a nutcase.  She is a beautiful tortoise shell calico and  gets beaten up by another two females.  So she has ‘special needs’ emotionally as our son proclaims.  She must have because she sleeps in his sleeping bag…at the bottom.

It is gloomy outside, a cold rain  probably  perferable to the snow up North.  But I don’t know.  Each year I pray for some snow and this year we got 6″ March 1st.  Very unusual.

So hope springs eternal for some of that ‘stuff’.  This morning I noticed cardinals and bluejays squabbling outside in trees.  They divebombed each other but I think this will settle down because Winter looks like a long one this year.

This short essay was written last year.  It still works for me this year.

Merry Christmas.

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 starving fledgling 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 Christmas, 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. Their chiding cries float down to upturned faces.

There is brightness to the holly, washed by our early winter rains and the orange of the nandina berries has turned crimson. Smell of woodsmoke in the air and the crispness of mornings means the earth is going to sleep. We humans should reclaim our past and our fecal plugs 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, 2008