May this find you cozy!
Corona Christmas
In my head I am singing,
Bring me some figgy pudding!
Bring us some figgy pudding!
Bring all some figgy pudding!
Bring it right here!
I don’t know what figgy pudding is exactly
but I want to demand it,
want it served hot with spiked egg nog in a stuffy cafe,
after standing under a streetlamp with swirling snow,
caroling, after exchanging hot breath
and hugs with my fellow carolers.
My husband has decided we should wear plaid nightshirts
after finding his father’s while sorting his mother’s belongings.
This is his first Christmas without parents.
Last year I unpacked three boxes,
arranged angels, snowmen, a quartet of Santas.
Dear Anne, his mother, directed me from the chair
she spent most of her hours in,
tv remote in one hand, The New Yorker magazine in the other.
Her last years in assisted living she occupied a triangle,
from bed to toilet to chair.
My husband’s nightshirt must be at least 30 years old,
it has slits on the side.
I remember my step father in such
and wondered if my mother found it as sexy
to slip a hand up the side
while they are making coffee.
What a gift to be wanted in flannel.
A therapy client texted that she had ruined Christmas
because she asked her husband for help and started a fight,
She requested like this, you never, I always.
He described her as a grease fire
and threw water on her instead of a blanket.
She wants a blanket, craves teamwork and tolerance for her frustration.
She is ten years younger than me,
I remember you don’t, I’ve had it!
I remember when perfection was my north star.
This newfound levity is not of my doing,
but the secret gift of age,
with a softening of skin, bone, the senses,
flesh is traded for faith.
This holiday I started drawing instead of lamenting.
I googled Scandinavian folk art,
soothed by the symmetry, the simplicity.
I watched tutorials for how to create art
on an iPad with a stylus,
features for mirroring, erasure, cutting and pasting,
with the touch of a virtual palette
I can fill in shapes with Crayola clear color.
I have such, an iPad, a plastic pencil,
but I also have retinal fatigue from Zooming with clients,
my rods and cones aching to fill in
the visceral texture of a body, the breath.
I used a black pen and white paper,
a crusty bottle of white out
that required much shaking and five applications.
I drew again and again until
my right and left brain, my vision
became a braided challah bread loaf,
rising.
I remember a line from the movie Six Degrees of Separation
in which an art teacher proclaimed that all kindergarteners
are master artists, as long as she removed the painting
before they add too much.
The work of a lifetime, embracing just enough.
My children are away more now, some caring for their own wee families,
some sheltering with found circles of friends.
On a bright red ribbon, I hang their elementary creations,
so grateful for art teachers everywhere,
including my children’s who inspired
the perky penguin whose tufts of fur are rendered with broad brushstrokes,
the copy of John Lennon’s white dove,
a calendar with watercolor nature scenes.
This month, December, is honored with birch trees,
thin white columns with rough slashes of brown
suggesting where bark breaks.
From a distance they seem so real!
Next month a crocus, then lupines in May.
When I look closer, I see the amethyst flowers,
clustered like grapes,
are made from little thumbprints.