In December 2015, I wrote the blog below the *** break. It seems like a message from a much different time–and it is. So many things have changed. Kamiko is eleven now and, rather than begging to build gingerbread houses, she is giving me advice on COVID clothing (“Why do you wear the same thing every day?”) and makeup (“You should wear pink lipstick.”) Of the two uncles in the 2015 post, one is a new dad and the other will be a father in a few months. The tipsy auntie is the mother-to-be. There were no charades this Christmas Eve and only four of us at opposite ends of a very long table. BUT with the new year and new vaccines, we have reason to look hope, so let’s look forward to better times. “See” you in the New Year!
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Last week (December 2015), I published a copy of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Now, Kamiko is back in Marion for Christmas, asking me if we can play all the games we did last year (games of which I have no memory), put the gingerbread house together RIGHT NOW and–although it’s midnight and all the adults are exhausted–play a quick game of charades before she sleeps. So here is a reprise of “A Child’s Christmas in Marion.” Whatever holiday you do or do not celebrate this time of year, I hope you get some time off to enjoy yourself and I wish all of us a kinder, more peaceful 2016.
With apologies to Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”—
One Christmas was…like another in those years around the sea-town corner.
Birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills
It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy.
Cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires.
There are always uncles at Christmas. The same uncles.
Auntie laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.
Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight…I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill….I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness and then I slept.
MERRY CHRISTMAS 2015
