A Merry Little Christmas Reflection

Writing about a day helps me put it to rest, and it seems fitting that a day like Christmas ought to be finished well, if nothing else.  

Last Christmas I drove around Shoreline and Edmonds for a few hours, making the occasional phone call but otherwise being morose over my family's inability to celebrate the way I wanted. (Sidenote: holidays come with expectations on steroids.  An ordinary family dinner becomes The Family Dinner in which one must be jolly, eat a crapload of pie and turkey and enjoy general goodwill, or else you are that family, the dysfunctional one that pushes potatoes around their plates and makes awkward conversation to cover up the sound of cutlery scraping porcelain.  For this reason I like the concept of a "merry little christmas".  Little.  Not extravagant.  Low expectations, like making it through the day without slamming the door, or getting every family member to play a game of Hearts for at least 20 minutes.)  

After ending my gas-wasting foolishness, I flopped on my bed and turned out the lights, stewing in my solitude until my Dad knocked on the door to join my vigil and find out why I ditched the house and left my sister in panicky oblivion.   

This Christmas bookmarks a year of change.  For one thing, my family was actually jolly without very much prodding at all.  And we did play many many games of Hearts and no doors were slammed.  Change.  Since last Christmas I have been to South Africa, graduated from college, moved out of Spokane and back again, then out again and on to Seattle.  It all seems like the hokey-pokey, actually.  I have begun a job and then quit.  I spent 3 months living with a professor and his family.  Friends have scattered to Houston, North Carolina, Denver, Bend, and Latin America.  Dear ones have known sorrow, upheaval, and bewilderment.  For most, the change has crystalized into wisdom, and forced transformation out of comfortable and maybe unhealthy ruts.  

So I am glad to note the last year's changes, and open my arms to the ones coming.  At least we can count on everything changing.  It is oxymoronic to find rootedness in shifting sand, but there is humbling hope in knowing the future will surprise.  

To conclude, the following is a gem from Marilynne Robinson's Home: 

He laughed.  "Well, it's a good house."

The house embodied for him the general blessedness of his life, which was manifest, really indisputable.  And which he never failed to acknowledge, especially when it stood over against particular sorrow.