this year.....
i want the "little" back in Christmas....
little crystal white lights strung together
like a chain of softly uttered prayers
offered humbly
over the top of this cluttered world.
just a simple white rosary of lights,
that no one puts away when the holidays are over.
little.......like the moment
when all the crowded cost co isles slipped from view,
as I heard an older couple
singing a familiar Christmas carol on a karaoke machine.
soft and reverent, their paper thin voices rained over the sound system
as gently and fragile as an unexpected snow.
suddenly i was five, sitting in church between my brother and parents,
as the voices of the elders broke my heart
in the way you want your heart to be broken.
I want those long ago little footsteps of my son
sneaking down the stairs way too early on Christmas morning,
when the sheer delight of possibilities
was enough to take his breath away.
and that little note he left for Santa
beside a generous plate of just baked gingerbread cookies.
Dear Santa,
Please share the cookies with your reindeer. And could you please find
the missing key to my treasure chest and leave it under our Christmas
tree so I know you are real?
Love,
Adrian
i remember
when a tiny silver key
hardly the size of the first snow flakes of winter
could keep the magic of believing alive.
i spent most of that night
desperately searching
for a key that would open his treasure chest.
and as fate would have it......i did!
i left it on the plate
with a few less gingerbread cookies.
in the morning it was adrian's first destination.
he gripped that tiny key in relief and wonder.
i don't remember how many years past
until i knelt before that old trunk
my grandmother had given to me
when i was a child....
and so many years later,
i to him.
S l o w l y
i placed the familiar key in the old lock
and gave it a careful turn.
it was a hot summer day
and what met me was the faint,
perfect smell of Christmas.
stacked to the top...
silently waited
a humble collection of frail little branches
retrieved from each hallowed pine
of all our holidays together.
always the last vestige of Christmas
to be taken down and
adrian's most difficult to release....
carefully
without notice
he had kept a remnant of each beloved tree.
may the smallest most tender
memories of Christmas
tie our hearts to both seen and unseen miracles.
may all the disparate shards of life knit themselves together
under a pure silent blanket of snow.
and just for a few white hours,
before scads of new sleds and brightly bundled kids
weave their spirited footsteps
across the soft horizon
let our world be transformed.
as my husband and countless others
clammer for a little more time,
as our grown son longs for different "little" things
and announced just today...
a baby hedgehog, yes, a hedgehog!
i hear that older couple singing....
have yourself a merry little christmas,
let your heart be light..........
i smell the perfect scent of pine.
and send this simple hope...
that a soft snow will fall
forgiving all our short comings
and deliver us pure white
to the waiting new year.
......that some small forgotten memory
will fill each heart
with a surge of love and wonder,
that no one puts away when the holidays are over.