Season of Joy

(written Christmas afternoon:)

I am not a religious person, and I chose to have a quiet Christmas this year. It ended up being a little quieter than I expected, because it turns out that practically everyone I know in this small town goes somewhere else for the holidays. So my vision of hanging with friends turned out to be spending a small amount of time with one friend (so as not to wear out my welcome) and a good deal of time alone.

My mother passed away the year before last and she was always the center of our family Christmas, the place we all gathered, and she made it very festive even though her religious observance consisted of watching midnight mass from St. Peter's. I wanted to find a way to celebrate Christmas on my own terms, knowing that those days are gone for good.

It seems like the right time of year to reflect anyway; to hold faith in the return of light, symbolized by lights and Christmas trees and mistletoe and everything that stays alive. Death is not all. Loss is not all. So I try to attune myself to the season, love the low light in the afternoons, the bare shapes of trees. I have tried this Christmas to be especially mind-ful of these gifts, and grateful; to content myself with small things. And to reproduce in a small way the things I loved so much about past holidays. So on Christmas Eve I baked biscotti (to give to the one friend), placed and lit luminarias on my front porch, called my family--and at midnight turned on midnight mass from St. Peter's.

It was a little lonely and sad, but it was also enough, though just barely. I am able to feel blessed, so I figure I've done well. Later I am going over to feed the chickens for someone who's out of town. It's cold, but the light sure is nice.

Winter, Part One of Many: The Zen of Leaves

What Is To Come

My intention is to post as much as possible, hopefully every day...but no promises. My inclination is to post more personal and less political stuff, but we'll see. There are so many people doing great political stuff, and the last years have caused me to look inward more for those reference points that help me make sense of the world. I plan to concentrate more on local and Utah politics, over on my other blog Redrock Critter. I will also be posting more photos than I have in the past. Just because.

Oh, and hot flashes? I have had such hot flashes, I can't even tell you. But so far at least, menopause seems to have made me not crankier but more mellow. After all, when you have spent half--no, all--the night throwing your covers off, then throwing them back on, who the hell has the energy to bitch about anything? I mean, come on. Life's too short. Welcome to the new, nicer me.

Uh....Hi Mom?

Starting up your blog after such a long time is like calling your mother after six months...where to start? I'll skip the part about how guilty I feel and how I promise to do better. I never do do better anyway.

I am currently living in Moab in a lovely old house that just WILL NOT stay warm but I am enjoying every moment nonetheless. I have remembered how to love the beauty of winter...the bare-bones trees, the snowy ground, the fall's dried seedpods still clinging to the rabbitbrush. I will be here over the holidays, having decided not to subject myself to the ordeal of holiday travel but mostly because I want to be able to celebrate/mark the season in my own way, in my own town, in the circumstances which I have so gladly chosen. It turns out that almost everyone and their dog will be leaving town to travel to family, or just to travel to avoid the whole Christmas drama. But not everyone, and not me. I am decorating, I am baking, I am entertaining, I am sending out Christmas cards and throwing myself into the whole scary, glorious mess. I have made my stand, or my bed or whatever and by god I will lie in it. It's not that I refuse to be sad or lonely, just that I refuse to fear it.

It will be a zen Christmas. I like that.