you dive in deep, head first into a snow globe of your own creation. you breathe in paper snowflakes, the flurries falling to your feet just bits of paper, blinding white and everywhere. there is no sun, just lights on a string, and no sky, just rope after rope of swaying paper chain. you think you can hear silent singing, but maybe it’s just you humming in your pretty voice for when you know that someone’s listening. and in your snow globe you aren’t alone, there’s a woman there, an old vietnamese woman, so old, with tiny claw like hands. she’d sewn her son a stocking, once, many years ago, given him a christmas dream…but he’d gone away and left it all to rot. ‘take it,’ she says, ‘it’s been 30 years since these things have been loved.’ so you hang that stocking for your baby, find homes for the things that she held dear. plastic trees and tinsel garlands, ornaments and old pom poms, flower lights, deer, and crepe paper santas. and you bake and decorate, prick your fingers with embroidery needles, fingers that smell like burning wood, fingers stained with a thousand flecks of paint. and you wrap and cut and hang and make and cook and clean and there is no sleep inside your little snow globe, up all night and you watch the moon fade. santa suits and bedtime stories, stripes and bells and hats and plaid, feather trees and a singing tie, hot chocolate and irish creme, poinsettia petals red and pink, a waiting tiger and handmade gifts, the feast of seven fishes and a winning apple pie, christmas elves and chicken eggs…nothing else is getting in and nothing ever is getting out and everything inside that snow globe is completely, perfectly right.
now those days are packed away inside a dozen mismatched boxes.
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Poor Brigs
I’ve been missing your blogs lately. Your writing always takes my mind on a little adventure. And your family is beautiful!