Word of the Week - 39

Painting by Spanish artist, Dino Valls.

Word(s) of the Week: SEASONAL AMBIVALENCE

Even before Thanksgiving the fidgeting part of my brain started making trouble.  It decided the only thing that would feel like the Christmas it thought it needed was to have it be 1958 again.  I could be 13, my 8-year-old sister and I could ride the bus downtown to shop at the dime stores, then have cokes and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch at Woolworth's counter.  Even though I'd be past the age of actually, actually believing in Santa, I would still be years away from being able to sleep through the night on Christmas eve.

Not the Pasadena Woolworth's, this was downtown L.A., "longest lunch counter in the world."

It is the same fidgeting subdivision that started a feud with Christmas after my son was terribly ill in the hospital for most of December eight years ago.  The lights, the music on the radio, the sight of shoppers or diners through restaurant windows as I drove home to our empty apartment all those nights became intolerable.  I didn't want to be reminded of a fear so deep.  Christmas became the fall guy.  Which, as I was cluelessly unaware, made his first, second, etc., Christmas less than festive for my son who only wanted to celebrate as normally, joyfully, as possible after his ordeal.  He was thrilled to be here in fine fettle as each new December rolled around.  I wanted to sleep from October until April. 

Painting by Amanda Blake.

Time, meditation and coming to my senses have helped lift that soggy blanket from my shoulders.  While my energy and health, our fortunes, are not as they once were, our capacity for gladness seems robust.  Since love is one of my year-round antidotes for sinking spells, along with beauty and music, I am aware of an even stronger urge to fling it far and wide, a continually thrown bride's bouquet, as the year closes.

We all become confused at times, forgetting that nothing is ever really as much about what we receive as what we give.  Seeing familiar and difficult dates cycle back to us on the calendar does not mean they will batter us anew.   That I am not 13 is no impediment to glimpsing, sensing the magic I've always connected to these days when night falls early and the nostalgic glow of Christmas lights (I could never decide which was my favorite color) keeps warm the dreams in our child hearts.