In some ancient memory, I must have been an alligator because what I
love is warm, shallow water; a rococo of foliage; flowers. Thus, the dark and
cold of the winter solstice has the tones of mourning. In October, when the
light takes a decided slant, shifting from summer’s white to winter’s gold,
there’s always a sense of sadness. Oh, there’s the memory of snow, and none of
it is romantic: the sound of my booted child-feet crunching through the ice frosted chevrons and swastikas left by tires on the
road, some part of my skin burning with the cold, walking past other people’s
houses with their lights; or later, ever struggling for purchase each step at a
time in inadequate shoes, until the one time my shoes failed and the snow came
up against my socks for a mile, frost bite, my feet rarely ever warm ever
since, ever since; so many times waiting for public transportation as a huddle
against the salt and slush for the years of college and grad school; the three
days I spent in bed, never warm enough, because the after-night-class-train was
late and I got too cold, then those three days waiting for someone, somewhere
to bring me an aspirin to break the hypothermic shivering fever—no, I hate the
cold. Christmas means winter, and winter is cold.
Christmas is also a symbol of
family reunion, of traditions and folklore specific to genetically connected
people. For me, kinfolk are a fiber-optical auditory presence followed by a
long-distance bill, and there are only one or two voices infrequently heard.
Despite the war-cry of family connectedness that resonated in relatives who had
seen the mid century ravages of war in Europe first hand, had lost siblings, my
own eyes have not beheld anyone related to me in actual physical proximity for more
than a decade. When my few friends discuss their own kinfolk, I feel an
existential distance, a disconcerting alienation. In secret, I am proud of my
parents—now both dead—for their education, their sense of global culture, that
they made sure we knew, as children, what a symphony sounds like, what fine
dining was; my regret is that I did not hover at my father’s knee when he tuned
up brakes on my mother’s Valiant, or reconfigured a radio, or meditated on
nuclear reactor physics, the blue smoke of his cigar a personal icon of
profound thought. By the time he died, at the cusp of my womanhood, my mother
had found a job that while it did not use her degree in chemistry, still used
her mind; yet, he left three women in mourning, and my memory of those years is
one of darkness and absence. Christmas put the bright lights and party voices
into a higher contrast to the shadow of our lives then; my mother never
recovered from her grief, though she lived for nearly forty years, every day
waiting to join her great love, my father. She taught me both passion and
patience; she taught me her rage at gender inequities and stupidity. Now they
are both dead, and I search for connection, for shared sensibility, too often
finding superfice, artifice and fear.
Thus, without kin or lore, I have created my own traditions. Even when
my personal poverty was numbingly extreme, I upcycled, repurposed, painted and
gave as gifts. One year, with my only
tools being a few scavenged sheets of art paper and childhood-coveted box of 64
crayons, I taped the sheets together, spent a week drawing haptics and
zen-tangles, cut the sheets into squares and mailed these as cards; I have
glued construction-paper cut-outs to squares and mailed them; in recent years,
I have made block prints, this year hand coloring each print one by one. Interestingly, even this most modest of gifts
is received with the same echo I hear all year, that of separation. One art
store clerk once pointed out that I was sending frameable art, especially since
I number the prints (although they are
all different as siblings from each other). Each year, I send dozens of cards;
I peer into my rural mailbox even more eagerly; yet, each year there are fewer
and fewer responses, fewer and fewer reciprocations. I began to fear that
the cards were too ugly,--for isn’t it
true that my childhood school experience was one of being bullied, of hearing
harsh hate daily—so I began sending pictures of the prints as they dried via
email, via social media; no, people seemed to like them; why the silence, the
frost, the shadow?
In the years I spent in beloved New
Orleans, Christmas was the preamble to Mardi Gras,
delightful Mardi Gras, egalitarian Mardi Gras, where even the most arrogantly
ancient families breathed the same street air
during parades; where decorations converted the red berry, green holly
of the solstice to rich colors that sometimes coincided with the first flowers
of spring. In Mardi Gras, every one is happy, strangers can borrow your
plumbing and taste your beans, no curses
in a traffic jam and total strangers have told me I am beautiful; shop owners
gladly understood and sold my cards, figurines, art; audiences drunk or sober
heard my words through my voice or through the page and reciprocated with a
happy roar. For me, Mardi Gras is the happiest of holidays; for me, Christmas
can be the most fraught, for so few are
truly kindly—it is a holiday of hypocrisy, methinks, and sadly so.
