The Haze and the Holiday

It's a funny year, here.

Mama, not employed yet. But not relaxing, either, under the unemployment benefit timeline, a sense of urgency running through each morning. A current of excitement over the new possibilities, her restoration, and where it will all end up. It's the ideal time to be an optimistic pessimist.

New hope, out there. A strange feeling of collapse and correction all around us. A belief that balance will be restored, but not without the price we'll pay from this tilting earth under our feet, everything sliding off course, catching in the corners or slipping off the edge for good. We don't know what it will look like when we're righted again.



Meanwhile, trees are bought and besparkled. Nora is introduced to the mythology of Santa Claus, this magical time of short days and long nights, a mash-up of secularism and Italian Catholicism and Paganism and who knows what. Decorations are brought up from the basement -- tissue paper lifted away to reveal memories that are sometimes hung from the evergreen branches with a giggle or a whispered affection, other times wrapped up again quickly and put away, too raw to be on display.

Nora tells us that she wants to see snow. She loves to drive around at night and look at the Christmas lights. She tells our tree "hello, i'm so glad to see you!" each day.