I didn’t get as many Christmas cards this year. I get it. Christmas can be so incredibly busy, and I’ve slipped out of your lives. Buying presents is hard. But this year, I didn’t have as much problem with Christmas as I usually do. I whispered the songs too early and too late. The Christmas ornaments didn’t have to go on perfectly. I wanted to send out the cards. I wanted, I needed to buy some presents for people, to keep them in my mind for a bit.
I’m still not good at buying presents.
I didn’t end up sending out Christmas cards. I usually dislike the idea of writing a year-in-review card. How can I put a whole year of my life onto one page? Oh, I like getting your cards, to think of where you went and what your children and grandchildren are doing. I like to imagine you spiraling in your lovely orbit. I have trouble imagining your sixteen-year-old driving. I remember her on her belly trying to get my kitten to come out from behind the piano. But I like trying to imagine the adult she’s become.
This year, though, I wanted to send out a year in review card, too late for Christmas, too late, even, for New Years. But I’m still not late for thinking about my year last year.
It was interesting. You might not think it could be, but it was interesting.
I didn’t travel. Some days, I can’t get to the grocery store because I need to lie back on the couch. I know. You want to know what it is that causes this. The best my doctors come up with is dysautonomia or post-viral syndrome.
That’s not what I came here to talk about.
See, in 2020, I learned different things. We all did. But in 2021, you all went on vacations again while I stayed home. You started up your yoga classes in person while I tried to figure out how long I could sit at my chair on the deck before the shaking got to be too much for me.
Here’s my year in review:
I found bits of creativity. I wrote poems instead of books because poems take less focus. I drew gift tags instead of pictures. I closed my eyes and imagined the meaning of art in our world. Our culture undervalues art, but we need art. We need to make and see beautiful things. We need the interpretation and the clarity that art gives us. I looked at art. I imagined so much art.
This year, I read books. Big surprise, that. Remember that time when we rushed through a quick coffee and talked about what we would read if we were stuck on a desert island with a crate of books? I have unlimited time to read books from my couch island and the books still pile up around me. There seem to be an infinite number of books that I’d like to read, still.
This year, I contemplated trees, time, and love.
I have so much time, but also so little. There’s infinite time between one second and the next. I wonder if the trees can’t really feel us here because we flutter about them so quickly the way we have trouble seeing the wings of a hummingbird. I’m convinced that my cedars can feel the weight of my house on their toes, like a little girl learning to dance with her father, and that if I lie back long enough, they know I’m with them, even for one of their seconds. They move, but I can’t see it because my time is too quick. For us and trees, the space between time keeps us separated.
I used to travel to find the miracles in the world, a mile-deep canyon, an Irish beer on tap, a rushing river. When I wasn’t 'going somewhere,’ I felt bereft, as if all the miracles were out of reach. On a walk one day, a walk in a place I’d visited a hundred times, I found a tiny miracle, a pale green fungus with a bright red top. I stopped to look more closely at what I’d thought I’d already completely explored. I started taking pictures to find those miracles on those walks. Miracles were out there in nature, I reasoned. They were closer than I’d thought. Buddy, my walking buddy, was patient. Buddy was kind. He didn’t rush me to get to the top. I had plenty of time to try to focus. But early in 2021, Buddy died at only 9, and even my short wandering walks ended. That hurt, not just losing the walks, but losing his quiet presence. What I learned not taking my walks in 2021 is that these miracles exist even in my own house, in my yard, on my deck, and in my imagination. Think of the miracle of falling asleep alone on the couch and waking up with your fingers buried in the plush of a cat on your lap. If you keep your eyes closed for a minute, the beauty of that fur is indescribable. Imagine the potential of a single leaf on a single twig of a tree that’s only six months old. Imagine the places you can go in your imagination, all the way to a cat’s-eye nebula if you want. In 2021, I found miracles are like time. There are an infinite number between one moment on a couch and the next.
And as I looked at the inevitability of death, I saw love. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to find love and to be allowed to keep it around me for so, so long. Oh, there are a hundred movies that would try to convince you that just one moment of love is all you need. Between one second and the next, love is infinite, that is true. But I’ve been blessed with long and extended love, not just a moment of it. Maybe, you have too and all you have to do is lie on the couch for a year and contemplate it.
Thank you for listening, jules