Christmas moment

I don’t have much use for holidays. That’s not true: I just usually spend them depressed or grief-stricken (like 80% of Americans). So despite my efforts to keep myself above the water, so to speak, on Thanksgiving, I did not succeed and sank down again into a lot of hard feelings: of being completely alone in life (despite the fact that I did not spend the holiday alone, but with my ex and daughter); of being bad at creating emotionally warm situations, hosting, or holding anything together without huge amounts of stress; of past holidays with my grandparents which were full of people and food-abundance and champagne, and a world that only lives in my head anymore. I made an effort by having rosé champagne and making pasta, the food of Italian forebears, and key lime pie from a recipe I’ve had since 1992, from my grandmother. It’s on a postcard because she always used to mail me such things: postcards, comic strips, newspaper articles, on which she would make some cheerful commentary, her writing full of underlines and exclamation points. She possessed constant energy and enthusiasm and was able to relate fabulously, instantly, to anyone. These are not qualities I inherited.

So, Thanksgiving, and now we’re all about to wash up on the shores of the next holiday—and I inhabited a moment of a holiday feeling last night that surprised me because it was nice and reached back to things I used to feel. Sara and I were walking to the car from the Mexican restaurant we often go to—she eats the guacamole with a spoon—and the night air smelled of some delicious, faint smoke similar to sweet piñon smoke (I remember from living in New Mexico; it seemed the winter months were full of it). It was about 65 degrees out, but due to the humidity of this place there was a chill that felt wonderful. As we’re walking, we hear bells from a nearby church. I ask Sara about the bells and she says they’re “singing.” She wants me to carry her, so I do and once we reach the car we just stop, with me still holding her, and stand and listen. She is not squirming or fidgeting for once, so we can have a moment of not fighting, of just being together, physically close and under the same spell. We can see the church: grayish, stone, beautiful; and the music that is impossible to describe but sounds like any church bell, an old, delicate sound that doesn’t quite belong on this earth. I had a thought that this is the kind of parent I can be. There are things, so many things, I can’t do well: but I can do this. I can enjoy beauty with my child. I can stand here and be here and somewhere else at the same time, somewhere that is about beauty and imagination (my true homes). It’s something. There were also blue icicle lights hung on the porch of the shotgun house across the street. The house was dark so there was just the peaked shadow of its shape, and the mysterious soft lights creating a little space of privacy and joy.