Saturday Musings, 29 December 2012

Good morning,

An hour's worth of eloquence just went off to the land of accidentally deleted material, and I am loathe to reconstruct it.  I curse this technology. My old Mac has died; my son's Dell jumps to delete every time I hit the space key, and I drafted the Musings on my tablet.  When I tried to copy the material, the entire thing deleted.  While "Alt, C" meant "copy" on the Mac, it evidently means "cut" on the tablet.  Pardon me, therefore, for the resulting brevity.  The memories of Christmas and New Year's Eve once deftly here recorded now exist only in my brain. I swear, what I wrote shone with brilliance.

My little brother visited last night, with his son Deion, en route to St. Joseph where Deion is even now registering for a baseball showcase, at which a hundred small colleges, D2 and D3, will gaze on him and other high-schoolers, determining to which of them they might make overtures.  Frank's call asking if they could stay with us came on the heels of my early New Year's resolution  to repair my relationships with my siblings.  That resolution, in turn, followed a quiet Christmas with my in-laws, partaking in their rituals, missing the rituals of my family of birth.  My life turns another circle, my hair turns a little more grey, and the time of my reconciliation looms.  I might be a bit belated in my efforts to mend the tears in my life's fabric, but I have taken up my needle, and some good, strong thread.

Frank and I toured my home, gazing on things that once belonged to my mother.  We speculated on where each stood in our childhood home.  He touched the blue pitcher with a large but gentle hand, and stood in front of the picture of Mary with the babe, surrounded by shepherds.  "In the hallway?" he queried, and that jived with my memory.  A red glass cornucopia rested on the top shelf of my mother's china cabinet.  Dust now lies on each of the handful of pieces that I have from my mother's home.  We only briefly mentioned the items stored in a brother's basement, which apparently vanished in a burglary.  It's all gone; there's no need, no use, no reason to wonder where it really went.

As Frank and Deion backed out of our driveway, my son stood beside me, holding a cup of coffee.  "I played light sabers with that kid," he recalled.  "We used trash can lids for shields."  A long time ago, another century, another city.  The cold drove us back into the house, where we washed dishes, and brewed another pot of coffee.  Then my son decided to sleep for a few more hours, and I took my coffee upstairs, where I wrote my usual drivel, though slightly better, I'd like to think, now that it has been accidentally deleted.

On New Year's Eve, many decades ago, my brothers and sisters and I banged on Club aluminum pots with wooden spoons, calling New Year's wishes to neighbors who stood on their own porches. Gunfire, fireworks and honking horns rang out over our neighborhood.  When the commotion subsided, my mother beckoned us back into the house where hot cocoa and pastries awaited.  We sat at the breakfast table, straining against sleep, making silly jokes to stay awake.  Eventually, my mother chased us off to our rooms, and we snuggled under the covers,  confident that when we awakened, the dawn of a fresh new year would offer hope for our heart's desire.

From my little desk, where the Saturday sun struggles through the heavy clouds and streams through my window, I bid you each a very Happy New Year.  I hope that 2013 holds joy, and prosperity, and the comfort of cheerful companions.   If you have torn fabric of your own to restore, I hope for you, the chance to smooth the raveled edges of thread.  At midnight on December 31st, take up a wooden spoon, go outside, and make some noise.  Then drink a little hot chocolate, and nibble on some cookies   without regard to your vow to lose weight.  And sleep.  When you awaken, a whole year will be ahead of you, a   year with new chances to forge strong bonds, whole empty calendar pages to fill with delightful adventures, and open hours when you can settle down to browse the pages of the book you've been longing to read, or listen to the dreams of your children and the ambitions of your spouse. 

A new year dawns.  Make the best of it!

Mugwumpishly tendered,

Corinne Corley