Christmas Musings 2017

I've always  loved Christmas, but as it's changed through the years, I haven't always changed with it. So the last few years, instead of trying to recreate "the perfect Christmas," I'm more interested in capturing the present iteration. Because really--comparing the present to past will by necessity show one as lesser. Beyond that, it is only today that exists in real time, and I want to be fully present in the present.

I've also been experimenting with a type of poetry called an American Sentence. 17 syllables, and thus this Christmas Musing:

Can anything ever feel like Christmas? And by that very phrase fall short
Of cumulative childhood magic where fantasy and reality
Blur together in nostalgic haze--enchanted mists built of giggles
At midnight, Santa visits, cookie crumbs on his plate proving him real.

Months of dreaming culminating in twinkling tree and presents beneath.
We grew up, and in place of past magic created Christmas dreaming
For our kids, thus breathed the wisps of wonder once again. Then they grew up.
And there is no capturing of past twice removed, so I surmise...

Christmas is not a magic to create. It's a moment to live.
Let us live it fully, freely, dimmed by no taint of comparison;
Lessened by no impossible longings of childhood reminiscing.
Complete in itself. Perfect for the one-off event that each day is.

Oh yes. We shall capture Christmas this year, and it will be beyond compare.

Blessings on your Christmas and may it be not what once was, but steeped in the richness of today.

Empty Nest Season: Last Child

Well, clearly I've been doing other things than keeping my blog updated. Sorry! But thankfully I doubt that anyone has actually died or even been caused to have a bad day because my last entry is stalled in --gulp!--December :-/

But anyway. I just posted a YouTube video about a poem I wrote when my last child graduated from high school, and wanted to put it here in text so it can be read without mistakes and for further pondering, should that help your heart in your own parenting journey.

Last Child

Last night was the last time

I'll sit on hard metal bleachers

Eyes searching through hundreds of red-robed graduates

For that one familiar face.

My child's.

Last night was the last time

I'll brave thousands of parents on the field

To find that one precious person surrounded by all the others someone else loves as much.

There she is and she's smiling.

My child.

Last night was the last time

I'll have a schoolchild of my own

And all those years of ABCs and schedules and catching buses by the skin of teeth

Are over with one last march to measured music,

And I wonder if I should laugh or cry

For this last child.

We've loved and nurtured and taught these dear ones and now that they are fully fledged, it's time to let them fly. No, not just fly. Soar. Soar to new heights, exploring their lives and what they are capable of doing and being. Their journeys are their own. We have ours, in which they figure large.

But they are more than just part of our journey, and that is one of the challenges of an empty nest season: rejoicing for their journeys even as our paths divurge. It is good. But it's not always easy.

More later on the Empty Nest Season...