Things that give me a sense of plenty: an empty drawer, closet, or bookshelf. Spaces you could fill whenever. A beautiful day where you don't take advantage of the weather, instead playing piano and not taking a moment to notice the warmth of the sun on the back of your neck. Perhaps in those days I am a moon person.
Yesterday was like that. Christmas day, but without the family obligations of getting dressed up or making elaborate dishes or carting presents here or there. In past years, that's made me sad. I've felt the loss of the hubbub of all those people, felt the loss of that rush you get being with people who make you so excited and amped up like my cousins and family did when I was a kid. As an adult, I haven't been able to get over the loss of that as all the cousins have moved on to do their own thing and my own family has unraveled and become a set of beautiful scraps I examine in individual pieces.
But this year, nearly everyone spent Christmas in in a solitary family boat and my circumstances didn't feel so weird. Or maybe I spent time feeling grateful to the down time in my house, after having the previous week had our electrical panel fry and needing to suddenly live at my mom's for several days. Maybe I felt more grateful for the ski day Christmas Eve than in previous years given how much shorter the lines were, how much better my kids skied, how my husband came along and how easy it all felt to enjoy. Probably the answer is gratitude. It almost always is.
Because yesterday, I felt no depression about the loss of the people I didn't see, or the activities I didn't get to do. I never really got out of my jammies though I did paint my nails the bright red I loved as a little girl. I enjoyed a solitary walk with the dogs after lazing about and luxuriously wasting most of a gorgeous day playing piano inside. I stared into the mountains and thought about the size of the moon and how it marked a passage of time to know when it was last that shape. I thought about blue. The sky, colors of paint. Blue.
There's a character in Toni Morrison's book, Beloved who at the end of her life contemplates color.
Yesterday as I took my walk, I looked at a world too big to photograph with skies too blue to describe and I understood how she could lay in resignation and just think blue. A Plentiful Blue Christmas. It was lovely.
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