I've spent a lot of this year being sad and worried about the future. I've had some good times too, but this year has been different. Or, maybe I just measure things differently now.
You know what I'd like for Christmas? I'd like my eyes to light up like a Christmas tree when I see someone I love, meet someone new, or happen upon some little happy surprise in life. I'd like more little happy surprises, the kind that are just waiting for me wherever they are and wherever I go.
I think my eyes have lit up like this in the past. I see it in pictures when I was with friends or family. And I want more times like that. But I also want them to light up all on their own, and I want the source to come from inside, not outside. This is what I call renewable energy.
It's the last week of the year. Tomorrow I'll be with my family, and I'll get to have Christmas the way a kid has Christmas because I'll have four of my nieces and nephews around. I'll get to see their smiles as they rip open presents. Even better, I'll see them the night before, when, even better than a smile, their eyes will be alight just thinking about ripping open presents.
But I'll know it's more than that, because it was more than that for me when I was their age, forty years ago. I'll know that it's also about snow and magic and twinkling lights and bright stars and cousins and playing in my Aunt Jeanette's attic and cookies and carols and black and white movies on television and feeling more love on that day than any other and knowing that it's all so much bigger than I am, with a tail as big as a kite, and I'll reach for it and never quite touch it, which makes me reach all the higher year after year..
I'll see them in church when the lights go down, and each candle is lit, and their thoughts turn to a world way outside of their own, and they'll see the magic and know that it's not just the presents but the love.
I'll see me as their eyes sparkle, me as a little girl, in 1973, in church on Christmas Eve, singing "Away in a Manger," at the Christmas service. And then I'll see my sister with her long brunette hair dressed like an angel, standing in the balcony over all the church, her arms stretched to heaven, and my heart will swell up and I'll whisper to all around, "That's my sister."
I grew up and took Christmas with me to England, Saudi Arabia, South Carolina, Utah, Tennessee, and Indiana. I spent many years with someone who hated this time of year. I let that person ruin it for me for many years. I purposely froze my heart, not allowing it back in, out of fear of being thought I was stupid for loving it. Then that person left. And I became even colder, cold with resentment. For years, I would flee the country on Christmas in an attempt to avoid its notice. Yet it kept finding me. One year, it even found me in a barrio in Chile.
And then a few years ago, it found me in my own home. It caught me unawares, it knocked on my door, and having no other guests darken my door step, I welcome it in, offering it a meager hospitality. It lit a little fire in me that started to grow again. And my heart thawed and it found a safe place in me again.
What kind of presents will I rip open in 2014? I think it all depends on how good I will have been and how generous I will have been with myself.
I guess I've made my wish.
I wish for me to be more generous with me in 2014, which means I better be good.
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I wonder if anyone else grew up on this album, Sunshine and Snowflakes?
It's out of print, but what a magical time 1973 was. And 2013 for that matter.
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