Last Friday around 4:45, I checked my phone and saw a text from my mom that read martinis tonight? I had just finished my last session of a long day, a long week. There had simply been more than I could handle with equanimity and I felt shaky. I had a pile of notes to write and it was nearly dark outside.
My response? OMG YES. I decided the notes were for the next morning, packed everything up, and walked home through campus, through the park, down the cracked sidewalks to my house which was dark and still on the outside, bright and busy on the inside. I dumped my bag by the door, checked in with the kids, and made a screen time plan with Beatrice that I knew would be flouted the minute I shut the front door behind me. Then I walked to my mom's house, taking the alley and entering through the tall gate into her backyard, where I saw a sight that stopped me in my tracks.
There was the menorah, aglow in the center of the bay window that faces out back. It was the sixth night. Each narrow candle wore a beautiful halo around its flickering flame. The bright light it cast into the darkness in which I stood outside was so improbable. The only reasonable response was to breathe, settle, and allow the stillness to touch me, if only for a moment.
Then I went inside and told my mom all about my crushing week, and drank and ate a lot, and felt like a grateful imperfect human connected to another human in a fragile precious world.
Before I sat down early the next morning to tackle the notes, on a whim I found a squat little candle and set it on my kitchen table. I made coffee and lit the candle and pulled out my laptop. Inhale, exhale. There I sat, picking up the clinical pieces of the week and putting them where they belonged, with a tiny fire to remind me that a person can really only do one thing at a time.
Beatrice and I went to our old church - the one we once attended with Mike, and left soon after he died - to make an advent wreath a few days before that. I had gone to services two or three times by myself, nudged when a friend kindly invited me sans pressure to give it another try (shortly after I mentioned I was feeling adrift at/about church in a previous post). Beatrice was totally not into busting in a new-to-her social environment and I can't remember now what I initially bribed her with. Turns out there was cookie decorating so that worked pretty well. In the end I made the wreath outside in the courtyard without her, chatting with old friends, as she hooked up with two other kids and ran wild and free all around the church campus. I couldn't have been happier.
Then on Sunday Beatrice grumpily agreed to come to church with me. On the walk there she replayed her worries about me ditching her to have boring adult conversations with old ladies and also what if the kids don't include her? But the kids are, it turns out - at least sometimes - angels. They welcomed her and just before the service, one of them ran up to Bea and asked if she wanted to torch with her in church.
Sure! she said, happy to be included.
Then Bea paused and looked at me. What's torching?
I explained it meant being an acolyte. Carrying a tall candle and being part of the church service. Wearing a red and white outfit. Ruthie, her new friend, insisted she could train Beatrice up in the next ten minutes and pulled her into the sanctuary.
I sat there, dumbfounded. What was happening? My shy and hesitant Beatrice, my church-averse darling, donning an acolyte's ensemble?
I need not tell you how full my heart was, watching her process in, smiling beneath her mask. I tried not to be embarrassing or weird, or make eye contact for too long and cause her to second guess the whole thing.
The part that really sent me over the edge was seeing three or four friends - women who have welcomed my presence back in this old stone building after such a long absence with nary a question or hesitation - whipping out their phones and snapping photos of this unexpected bright moment, grinning at me with their eyes, indicating they'd text the pictures later. They knew. We all shared it.
That evening we listened to Sufjan Stevens sing Christmas songs as we do every year and decorated our tree, which is now dripping with symbols and reminders of the many chapters of our lives, including Mike's childhood with ornaments from his family and mine with the candy cane I made in second grade and the little wooden church to commemorate my dad's new job in Providence in 1980, and all the Christmases of our children's lives. It was the least sad, most sweet tree-decorating since we lost Mike. After that we went to my mom's and ate latkes and lit the candles and opened her presents with friends.
How I long for ritual, for everyday ways to invite the sacred into our lives. How bounteous is this season in the ways it answers that desire for holiness! There are so many lights in the dark.
Last night Gabriel and I went to Target. We needed a few odd things and were already out after picking up books at the library. We so rarely run errands together; it felt good. We strolled past an aisle of candles and he noted I was on a real candle kick these days.
Yep. Let's look.
We pulled down our masks to stick our noses in all of them and commented on their fake smells, until we found an enormous glass candle with three wide wicks. Three! It smelled fake too - but awesome-fake. Amber Applewood. Whatevs. We called it a mobile fireplace (wish we had a real one) and decided we absolutely needed it. It's your advent present, Mama, said Gabriel. We'll light it at dinner and feel warm.
And that's just what we did.
