2008-12-18

We are moving fully into the glory of the Christmas spirit now! Today the house was filled with the tantalizing aroma of Melissa’s baking and Mick got up on the roof in the late afternoon rain and secured the lights that outline our gabled and complex roof lines to make our beloved Camelot light up like a gingerbread house!

Melissa also finished the present wrapping and put the gifts under the tree to make a very festive display. Her every package is a delight to study, with berries, rose hips, evergreen and pretty bows and ribbons on each package. It will be a loss to open them, for they are truly works of art. I am so grateful to her for this, as it brings my wonderful Mother back to me. Here’s a poem I must have written thirty years ago, when my Mama was still alive:


“Jesus Christ, come to life
Jeannie/Jason, Mother, Wife,
To both of you, Earth and divine,
Thanks for giving us Christmas time.

“The elegiac, somber tones of winter now draw nigh,
Yet in that deepest darkness, the Son of Man arrives,
Clothed in wooly blanket, the ox and ass nearby
Nurturing his human-ness, praising God on high.

“I used to take for granted all our Christmas spirits’ wealth
The mistletoe and Christmas lights, the gifts to wrap in stealth
And though I’m older, now I see she gives all of her self.

“One winter, Mama will be gone, and I shall be full sad
For Christmas in her house is all the Christmas that I’ve had.
All the glorious packages, all the moments sad,
All the potlatch sharing, with a heart so glad.

“It isn’t that my family neglects or rejects Love
But rather that my Mama outpaces all who move
While father and son-in-law “Bah Humbug” soft they prove
Though their names are on our presents their Scrooge-ishness disprove.

“We always go to midnight mass, to worship and to sing
Glad hymns of exultation, great “Alleluias” ring
Then up at dawn on Christmas day to see what Santa sends
Mama’s hands cut Danish—so Christmas Day begins.

“Now, dear Papa, I mean no hurt to Thee.
You make the house aglow with lights, a colored harmony
You stuff the festive bird with yet another recipe
And in your own way, sometimes you’re so sweet I want to weep.

“But Mama, you’re my Christmas. “

So, thanks, Melissa, from the bottom of my heart, for bringing all that back to me! You’re the best!

While Gary worked in the office and Mel in the kitchen, Mick slogged through the wet and cold to work with leaves and more leaves. He got about half of the work done on his biggest leaf-bagging customer, who lives amid a forest and wants all her leaves bagged. Last year, the total of her bags of leaves was 230. This year he is up to 160 and says he may well exceed the record tomorrow when he attacks her back acre. Imagine, after all that, soaking wet, he started on our outdoor lights when he finished maintaining his equipment!

I finished researching a question for Buke on parallel lives and sent that off to Gary to send to her. Then I continued to do research on “distortion”, which is her next question for me. And in the cracks, I cleared my desk writing e-letters to folks who have moved, whose Christmas cards from us have been returned, to ask them for their new contact information.

Mel left with her sweet breads in hand to give to the people who have helped her with our tractor and farm truck on Avalon as well as the solar batteries, around bath time. Gary said good-night after the Gaia Meditation, at which he offered the closing prayer. And Mick and I toddled off to bed with sugar plums dancing in our heads! I love Christmas!