First Sunday in Advent

How the winds howled today. We lost power briefly, and the little artificial Christmas tree on the front porch was knocked down, and the leaves hissed across the metal roof and over the beaten grass in their swirling and liquid patterns, but it seems to have calmed down now, after sunset. The weather was relatively warm, about 60F, for which we were grateful. Mrs. Orr finished decorating the interior of the house, so we’ll enjoy the coziness for a month, until Boxing Day, when the itch to pull it all down and store it all away will overtake us. I read some Catholic blogs and I know that traditional Catholics don’t consider the Christmas season to even start until Christmas eve, and they put all their decorations up then and leave them up for a fortnight or so. Another reason I wouldn’t fit into their world as I am. The clannish mountain folk among whom we now live believe in something called “Old Christmas,” and I am intrigued by the idea, but I have gotten so many different versions of what exactly this means, I don’t know which one to trust. Traditions are something with which one must feel natural; they can never be forced nor enforced. Perhaps I’ll have it all figured out by Kwanzaa.

We finished the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers today, all save two or three slices of turkey breast. Now my thoughts are turned to fruitcake and egg nog, of which I will taste once December pushes in with its chilled hands and takes over. I walked in the woods this evening, the first time I’ve done so since we returned from Texas. The air was clean and mild, though I did need a jacket as my bones have begun to ache with an insistent throb to which I’m still trying to accustom myself. Old injuries, the ancient batterings I inflicted on my body when I was young and drunk on adrenaline, are now whispering at me throughout my days, and their taunts cannot be ignored. We sit in our chairs at night and, like all the old folks we ever knew in our lives, catalogue our lumbagos and grippes and agues. But we are able to laugh at ourselves, so there is some comfort in the masochistic rituals that we have, down here in the dark evenings, in the space between yesterdays and tomorrows.

Tonight my mind is on the man to whom I spoke last Wednesday, the man who was about to be evicted along with his daughter and aging dog. I have worried about them for the past four days, and I hope that this week is kinder to them than last week was. While we were grocery shopping over the weekend, I watched an elderly man shuffle slowly and deliberately up and down the aisles, selecting cereal and bread and soup, his face pale and his gaze preoccupied. Has his life turned out how he thought it would? Does he have someone with whom he can sit in the evenings, someone who knows and loves his voice? Does anyone look at the creased and unbarbered back of his neck, floating in the collar of his too-large flannel shirt, and feel tender love for him? Does a dog or a can know the caress of his swollen knuckles and his yellowed fingernails? Do the pretty young people with their strong, pain-free bodies smirk at his velcroed tennis shoes, or at his mussed hair? Does he go to church, and how is he received there? Does he sleep on his side, or on his back? When was the last time he laughed out loud? And when was the last time someone confided in him? He and so many like him are kings and princes on this earth. To me, they are.

Yesterday, I was surprised by a red-winged blackbird at the feeder out back. Thought you’d have flown down yonder weeks ago, I thought, watching him flit from branch to branch, awaiting his turn after the chickadees and titmice and cardinals had theirs. Just a few more days and November will be gone forever, rewritten into December and rebranded and repurposed into wintertime. The little things are slumbering now, hidden away in the ground or in barns, twitching in their chilled dreams. perhaps calling out to a friend or fleeing a predator in the long night hours.

The season of Advent begins, and the year rolls on towards its conclusion.

Rest well, my dear friends.

~ S.K. Orr