Christmas 2020
I’ve been thinking about the way, when
you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull
in their legs to let you go by. Or how
strangers still say “bless you” when
someone sneezes, a leftover from the
Bubonic plague. “don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons from
your grocery bag, someone else will help
you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to
harm each other. We want to be handed our
cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to
the person handing it. To smile at them
and for them to smile back. For the
waitress to call you honey when she sets
down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the
driver in the red pick-up truck to let us
pass. We have so little of each other, now.
So far from the tribe and fire. Only these
brief moments of exchange. What if they
Are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we
say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead – you
first.” “I like your hat.”
Danusha Laméris
I write this between the Advent Sundays of hope and love, two words that have taken on great significance in this difficult year. Despite the devastation of the global COVID-19 pandemic, our government’s response to it, and the deep and divisive political climate we have been living, Christmas still comes…with all the hope that each Christmas has always brought.
Merry Christmas! It seems trite, those words, but those two words have brought hope and love for more than 1,500 years. However you choose to celebrate this great bell-feast of the year, may it be a season of joy. For me, it is, as Truman Capote so beautifully wrote in “A Christmas Memory,” a season that “exhilarates [my] imagination and fuels the blaze of [my] heart.” I thank my mother for that, for it was she who modeled that blaze and exhilaration long, long ago. Oh, the cinnamon-scented, tinsel-glowing memories of all those Christmases.
For many, the news from the past five years is not new but may only be known in fragmented forms. Here goes…
TRAVEL: Still wintering in Mexico City, (now with Steve) although no longer doing any volunteer work. Mexico is a country that lacks a culture of volunteerism, and it just wasn’t worth going up against a system that didn’t understand. I love the country and CDMX, but I’m doing other things instead.
HOME & HEARTH: In chronological order….2.5 years ago I started to lose my mind. Eleven days in the hospital, six-months of recovery, strong drugs… It is only now that we can talk about this. I was only much later diagnosed with advanced neurological Lyme Disease. For weeks, I could do nothing—make my bed, prepare dinner, drive. I rarely spoke. I had no appetite and lost far too much weight. Eight months of antibiotics, six months of herbs, three months of powerful phychotropics. As the medications began to take effect, I began to leave the house, go for walks, answer emails. I didn’t drive for six months. You do not want to get Lyme!! It’s true—you really do see who your friends are. It’s also true that mental illness results from things other than “being crazy.” Lyme threw my serotonin-dopamine level so out of whack, that only time and medications could correct it. When the brain is damaged, it takes a very long time for it to heal. When I came through it, though, the strangest thing happened: I was happier, stronger and better than I’d been in years and it's still that way. I can truthfully say, this made me a better person, although I would not wish it on anyone. The human body is still an enigma. Easter 2019 fell on the heels of my full recovery. The holiday now makes sense. I truly understand what Resurrection means! I had “died,” but was returned to life. For that I will be forever thankful and grateful.
No sooner was I better, than Steve fell on ice, broke his leg, had to have surgery and was cooped up for three full months. In the spring of 2019 I saw the full consequences of a hiking accident I’d had in Maine the preceding summer. Spinal stenosis is very painful. What followed was epidural after epidural that finally saw resolution with surgical intervention. Miracle!
On the 9th anniversary of my mother’s death, in an attempt to put a happier spin on the day, Steve and I approached the subject of marriage once again. After 41 years, it was time! On June 21, 2019, in front of 50 dear people in our back yard, the ceremony, led by Carole Hull, almost a sister to me for more than 50 years, performed the most meaningful rite the photographer had ever seen (or so he said when he dropped off the photos.) We’d successfully passed the “in sickness and health” portion of the chosen traditional vows. Except for a brief spritzle of rain, a sign seen as many as a heavenly blessing, it was a glorious first day of summer and start of a new life as officially married! Woohoo! Joy in Mudville. Hospitalization and Marriage—Amazing bookends to the 2018-2019 school year.
The next day, Steve retired! Big stuff in two days!
That August, we went to Europe: Paris, Switzerland for two weeks, (thanks to our German friends, Herbert and Ursula, who gave us their home in the lovely little village of Ligerz), then to Normandy and Omaha Beach. It was, at least to both of us, a bit distressing to see people playing on the beach where so many men had met horrific deaths.
In November, we drove to Boston, sailed south on the Norwegian Jade and spent 14 days on the Caribbean. In January, we left for Mexico City together, rented a phenomenal house in the southern part of that beloved metropolis. Alas and alack, all travel came crashing down when we left in a hurry in late March. Not wanting to go through NYC, we flew to Ciudad Juarez in northern Mexico, crossed into El Paso on foot, rented a car and spent a pleasant week traveling the 2000+ miles home. We were able to spend a socially distant evening with Bob and Carole Hull in Wichita, KS as well as a lazy Sunday morning driving in and through the exclusive suburb of Ladue, MO. Finally in New York State, we spent my dreary, cold and wet birthday in Fredonia, where I’d gone to college a gazillion years ago.
And so it goes. We, like the rest of humanity, are all in this together. This is a global teachable moment, and we all need a respite, I’m so glad the season of hope is upon us. As Mame said in the classic play by the same name…
We need a little Christmas
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinet.
Yes, we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute.
It has been so nice to see evidence of Christmas so early this year. Apparently, many feel the same way. Merry Christmas comes from the inner most part of our hearts. May 2021 bring us hope!
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