On finding a respite

I'm taking a moment to catch my breath

Is it resignation I’m feeling? Or is it something else? It occurs to me that this short period of relief right now just might be a gift.

“Have you seen my other sock?” I call to my spouse Janyce who is in the kitchen pouring a second cup of coffee. “I must have dropped it on my way from the bedroom to the couch,” I think.

It’s Saturday morning and we’re up again before the sun. Someone left the outside light to the garage door on all night and in the orange glow I can clearly see a cottontail rabbit through the window hopping around at the door. The sight of the rabbit stops me from rummaging about looking for my phone, my glasses, and the cord to my laptop. The rabbit nibbles at a patch of grass by the door, then it freezes with its ears upright and its one black eye facing me, wide and round, before it darts off, bounding back into the vines.

I double back to the bedroom to find my sock, stopping to crouch down at the base of the artificial tree, and wiggle the wires in the outlet until I get all the lights to come on. Every year I have the same thought about this tree, about bagging the whole thing up and tossing it to the curb. I think, “Next year, I’ll get a real tree and buy a whole new assortment of glittering ornaments. The house will smell of fresh pine and be lit with a 100 votive candles. We’ll spike the eggnog. We’ll turn up the volume on a jazzy Christmas playlist and I’ll fit into a tight red dress.”

But inevitably, something holds me back and I bag up the same worn tree and toss it on the basement shelf with the boxed ornaments, just in case I need it again. Yesterday, I was actually relieved to find it downstairs. It’s not a bad tree. It’s the exact right size to stand in front of the hanging tapestry. I can trim it by myself in minutes and it can stay lit well into March, which is how I want it these dark days.

Janyce has joined me on the walk back to the couch with her computer. “You want me to turn on the music?” she says. I found a Celtic Christmas channel on Youtube the other day and we’ve been playing it in the background for days. The soft hammered dulcimer and floaty flute music matches the solemn spirit of this silent house. She sits down beside me and hands me another cup of coffee.

My friend Kristen sent me a photo with a text message the other day. It was of her son sitting in a kayak on the nearly private lake just steps away from their new cabin in the woods. The sun was setting against the black conifer trees. The sky, lit in gold and reflecting in ripples on the surface of the midnight blue water, set the perfect stage for his silhouette in the distance like a lonely floating buddha. “What is everyone doing for Thanksgiving?” she texted.

“None of us are getting together,” I said. Later I wrote back, taking another look at the photo, “What a respite it must be there.”

Janyce and I drink our coffee silently and watch our dog shuffle across the room, so slowly now, plopping himself down onto his bed.

Is it resignation I’m feeling? Or is it something else? It occurs to me that this short period of relief right now just might be a gift.

The sun has now risen and morning light fills the living room. We have a clean kitchen, there are no glasses to wash, no silver forks to polish and put away, and we have the whole day ahead to tend to errands. Maybe we’ll take a walk later on the beach at the Chatham house and return in the afternoon for a strong cup of Irish tea and another piece of our homemade mince pie. Or maybe we’ll do nothing. Absolutely, blessedly, nothing at all.