The Epi-Tome of Coziness

Full disclosure here — the photo above was taken almost five years ago…we have no snow on the ground here today. I use it here because when I stepped outside this morning, the weeping willow — larger now — was festooned with cardinals just like in this photo. I didn’t have my phone with me, so I have no photo, and it wouldn’t have been as dramatic as the one from 2015.

Male cardinals have an endearing habit. They cock their little scarlet heads to the side when looking at something. You can see them doing the math. You can almost see their nonexistent eyebrows knitting together in concentration. You can almost see them talking to you about upcoming migratory events, or weather patterns, or cardinal sins. The willow was full of them this morning, and they flew a short distance when I disturbed them. Two crows argued their way across the sky from north to south, and the sublime smell of wood smoke drifted to me as I stood there in the chill without a jacket, looking around for the old barn cat, whom I haven’t seen in more than 36 hours now.

We had planned to eat breakfast at a restaurant across the state line, since I’d received a gift card for the place from a client last week. But a solid night’s sleep in our recliners under the mellow ebb and flow of the Christmas tree lights had placed us squarely in a cozy mood, unwilling to leave our home for the brusque world at the foot of the mountain. So here we sit, sipping better coffee than that served by any eye-rolling waitress with as-yet undefined hair color in any restaurant. Here we sit, listening to Dixee snore in her bed, and talking about the ineffable joys of fried catfish and tamales and patty melts. And all this while still trying to decide what to have for breakfast, which I will cook.

Another Sunday in Advent, and I am as untouched by Christmas this year as I am by clickbait news of promiscuous celebrities or of political machinations. Ritual has always been important to me, but this year, I find that I am without ritual, even small ones. I’ll never be a real, official Catholic because I simply cannot pretend that certain things don’t exist. In fact, in my solitary hours, I realize that I am retreating further and further from missals and rosaries and novenas, backing into my own intuitive questions, my own mysteries.

But the changing interior tide does not sadden me, nor does it alarm me. I can see some things now with a clarity that has eluded me for years, and this calm clarity has its origins in my growing ability to simply stop pretending. Pretending that I see something that I do not see, pretending that this person has authority simply because he declares it to be so, pretending that I need this particular aspect of life, pretending many things.

The inner core of who I am and what I know and what I am trying to find is always here with me. If it is startled by circumstances, it always returns to where it was. This is one of the quiet revelations. This core always returns to me.

Right now, the cardinals are back in the branches of the weeping willow. They are chip-chipping at each other with their cocked heads while the cows amble past on the other side of the fence. And I still need to cook breakfast, and to call for the old barn cat again.

~ S.K. Orr