Anxious Anticipation

   For many, today marks the Christian holy-day of Christ-Mass, a day of families gathering and ovens being turned on and church bells ringing and welcoming even those coming for their one annual visit.  Stores, for the most part, are closed so that even grinch-like companies bow down to employee wishes to be home; not all of course, for there are flights to catch and cars to still gas up, police and fire and hospitals and restaurants to keep going.  And in many parts of the world, this holiday has been and gone...as the song says, Christmas future is far away, Christmas past is past.  The build-up to this day of remembrance in the U.S. has been one of crowded parking lots and last-minute shoppers, greeting cards priced at nearly $8 and turkeys and hams virtually flying off the shelves.  In my personal experience, I had never before seen every single parking space taken at Costco.  But along with all of this I still witnessed patience...people letting cars cut in despite the long waits, friendly hellos and laughter despite hurried schedules, and neighbors dropping by unexpectedly.

   At one neighbor's home and dinner some nights before, we were all asked for our favorite Christmas memory, quite a task considering that my wife's mum was 88 and our friend's aunt was ten years past that.  Mine happened to be my Santini-like stepfather doing the best he could to explain why my milk and cookies, gobbled down by Santa each year, was still sitting on the table that morning.  "Santa's not coming anymore," he said to my puzzled face.  Yes sir!  But looking back, that was probably the only way he knew how to break the spell; as an officer there was no "beating around the bush," as he was fond of saying.  But others at the table that night had many other tales and many of them quite surprising.  What stood out for me was my wife and her sister and their mutual memory of their father apologizing for not having anything to give them; their mother was in the hospital giving birth and they was little or no money to spare.  "That meant the most to me," my wife's sister said, "that he would come to both of us and tell us that he was so sorry but he had nothing to give that year."

   I rather enjoy this time of year just for its slurry of mixed emotions.  People tend to feel the gamut of ups and downs, the anxiety and awaiting, the frustrations and the pleasantries.  Even glancing at the greeting cards surprised me when the major company Hallmark had on its display racks a card in our conservative town that read, "Merry Christmas to my mother and her wife."  Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Muslim, Hindu, none of it seemed to matter for this brief period.  Everyone sppeared to be open.  It was that time of year when people seem to look both back and ahead, noticing how quickly time was moving, higlighted by year-end issues of magazines.  Discover encapsulated this when it put the total solar eclipse over the U.S. as its number one story of the "top 100" stories of 2017.  Said the magazine: In a time of so much bitter division, it's remarkable that an astronomical event just a few minutes long had the power to bring us together, gazing in joy and wonder at the universe.  And what a year it was.  Both our ideas of human and dinosaur evolution fell by the wayside (both are much older than historians and scientists used to think); the sun's core was somehow found to be spinning at a faster rate than its outer mantle; the first superbug bacteria made its appearance as resistant to any antibiotics we humans could produce (scientists are worried that bacteria are adapting at a much faster pace than anticipated); that despite all of our efforts and the accumulated production of over 8 billion metric tons of plastic we have (and still) recycle a miserable 9% of it; and that should a major nuclear war break out and if just some of the 15,000 nuclear warheads are unleashed 100 million people would perish in the first 30 minutes...

    But there is hope.  That last figure came from the group founded by Beatrice Finn to abolish nuclear weapons, ICAN.  She was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; she is also just 35.  On my screensaver I rotate photos from many time periods and one popped up from years ago, a visit which took me onto a glacier; it was touristy and thrilling, the chunks of ice chipped away so that our crampons would grip the crude steps, our views into a few of the minor crevasses set far enough back that we would all gasp in awe without the fear of it collapsing before our feet, the gray and gravelly water streaking out from below the glacier's end so purified and full of minerals despite how it appeared.  It was enough to remind all of us of nature's magnificence and impermanence.  But to imagine then that as far as I could see, or perhaps even imagine, a piece of ice just like the one I was on would break away in 2017, an iceberg large enough to shift the weight of the remaining ice...one trillion tons of ice, an area just shy of 2000 square miles. 

    Things change, from our evolution to our lands and weather.  Everything is adapting...and perhaps anxious as to what the new year will bring.  Still, this part of the year gives us a chance to recognize that change, even those of our emotions and feelings.  There are many less fortunate and many surrounding us with love.  The trick now will be to retain that feeling for just a wee bit longer this time, to carry it onward and inward, to extend it outward and pay it forward.  We can do it; as Beatrice Finn's group says...I Can.  This holiday begins with all of us...and should have no end.  Merriest to all of you!