There is light snow cover on the ground as we head into December. I’ve pulled on my heavier coat and my boots crunch as I head toward the barn for the evening feeding. Winter has arrived.
The holiday season has arrived as well. As time during Covid continued, I felt a sense of questioning as to whether or not the holidays would actually happen. My logical brain told me of course they would. My emotional brain questioned that. How could the holiday season, normally filled with such sparkle, come in such a challenging time?
Our son and daughter-in-law had purchased plane tickets to come home for Christmas from LA. Living across the country, we don't get the chance to see them more than one a year, at best. This past week they called and told us that they had canceled their trip due to the recent shut downs in LA and the gathering restrictions in Vermont. My logical brain understood and even felt a tiny bit of relief in not having to worry about any of us inadvertently contracting the virus, my emotional brain wept.
Paul has played the Messiah in Stowe for over twenty five years. It has become a staple in our holiday season. Many times we have arrived in a large group, covered in ugly Christmas sweaters, singing various parts that have nothing whatsoever to do with the section we are sitting in, and felt grounded by the purpose and the community joining voices in such beautiful music. This year the church will be dark and there will be no soprano falsetto coming from the bass section.
Each year we open the holiday season by attending A Christmas Carol at the Flynn Theater in Burlington. We arrive in a large group, covered in ugly Christmas sweaters (see the pattern?) and settle into the beautiful old theater to watch a production that we have seen, year after year since our kids were small. The theater is always full and we sit arm to arm. Everyone relishes the warmth after walking to the theater in the frigid December night air. Paul leans back into his winter coat wrapped around him on his seat and begins to doze before the production begins and my elbow prompts him back to sitting upright. Afterward as we walk quietly back up the empty street past the darkened stores toward our parked car, our son Ethan recaps the production, both in song and, if we are lucky, in spinning and dancing. His breath visible as he lifts his voice to the stars. Not this year.
Our traditions make us feel safe. They give shape to important occasions and help our children to understand what family means. I feel adrift without those traditions. Can I live without them? Certainly. But I miss them terribly. Besides, it is really difficult to drink hot chocolate with a mask on.
For the evening feeding I slide open the hay-barn door, heft a half-bale into my arms and crunch across the snow to the sheep-barn door. Mrs. Chubbers nose greets me, sniffing around for her grain fix. As I turn to close the door I look up at the barn light over the doorway. I notice fat flakes of snow drifting down through the shaft of light. I tilt my head up and watch the snow fall silently from the black of the night sky. I can see stars overhead watching me. In the silence this feels like everything and it feels like nothing. I take in a deep breath and taste the peace of it all. I'm reminded, almost jolted to it, that it really is everything; right there, right then: that moment has everything in it that I have been concerned about missing. All I have to do is be in it.
Happy Holidays. I wish you all moments of peace with everything in them and the wisdom to find them; in your children's faces, the falling snow, beautiful music and each other.
Melissa Perley