Merry Christmas?
This past week has been so intense in so many ways, that I’ve been wishing for nothing more than an hour – one measly hour – to sit down and write. If I don’t get the time in the morning, it just doesn’t happen. And so, the lull from my end. Perhaps it’s gone unnoticed, as you’re all running around too. When will I steal my hour? Now is not the time. But I’m going to start and hopefully find time to circle back and finish.
I’ve spent days trying to wrap my head and my heart around the Newtown heartache and I just can’t come to grips with it. I suppose the ability to tune out or turn off some of the bad is indicative of some modicum of mental health. It’s survival really. But I’m finding myself not wanting to put these children and their teachers and their parents in a little drawer and shut it with a click. I just don’t want to.
Maybe it’s the time of year – fraught and heady – busy and lovely. Maybe it’s the fact that so many of them were first graders – Devil Baby’s age. So tiny. And so many. My God.
Within minutes of hearing about the shootings, I had to be at Devil Baby’s school for a gingerbread party. I had to stop in the bathroom and stifle the sobs – give myself a pep talk or Devil Baby would know – she reads me like a book. I had to get it together. Wiped tears, bright smile, frosting, skittles in cups, crushed candy canes, muted whispers with other mothers. It was terrible. Also beautiful. Little people with their chapped lips and static-y hair, colored sprinkles, sneaking licorice bites, ignorant, innocent.
When things like this happen, we’re supposed to hold our children close. We’re supposed to give thanks for our loved ones and count our blessings. I get it. All of that is true. But I’m struggling.
I’m having trouble because those people in Connecticut are just like me. There is nothing that differentiates them from me. So as I carry on with my little Christmas traditions and get all teary at all my Christmas concerts, instead of feeling thankful, I feel crushingly fragile – because that’s what we are. Our sturdy little babes are fragile. Our peace is fragile. Our lives are fragile. Even our country, the muscular jocular USA, is broken. Beyond repair, I think.
And also, what about them?
The same things happen every year at this time of year: the parties, the concerts, the plays, the scramble to find tights, the little handmade gifts from school. Normally, it’s a source of comfort, of celebration. It’s a chance to stop and think and say yes, things are good. Thank you. But this year, I feel like I’m clutching a ball in each hand and I’m powerless to let go of either. In one, a cold, heavy ball – impossibly dense and dark, dripping with anger and despair. In the other hand I have a ball of light – it’s warm and lovely and holds all that is good, all that I love.
This year I am walking around holding these two warring truths in my heart. And this year, the twinkly lights and the children’s voices and the smell of cookies and pine trees are tinged with a great deal of sadness.
Do we need the dark to have the light? Not this way, we don’t.