Last week's drive from Montreal to central New York started out under blue skies: this is the beginning of the St. Lawrence Seaway, with the Pont Champlain in the distance. There were a couple of huge boats in the canal, easily breaking up the thin ice as they moved through it -- but the Great Lakes shipping traffic will end pretty soon.
Quebec roadside.
Adirondacks -- not that you can see them very well in this picture, taken out the window as we whizzed down the Northway!
Amsterdam, NY: a city of mostly-abandoned mills on the Hudson. We stopped at this auto parts store to buy new windshield-wiper blades.
While J. was inside the store, I took this photograph of the mill behind it.
At "home": the view from the porch the next morning. So much for sunshine! But we had holly berries and a lot of warmth and brightness inside.
I'm still busy with singing, work, and getting ready for the holidays; somehow this year everything really did converge at once. Except for my music obligations, though, Christmas itself is simpler for us than it used to be. I miss the family and friends who are no longer with us, especially at this time of year, but I'm also noticing a growing sense of of acceptance and calm in myself, a desire for simplicity, and less internal pressure to do all that baking and shopping and gifting and visiting I used to do. Things don't have to be perfect: I don't have to be perfect. I trust that the love I feel is expressed all the time, not just at Christmas, and I've let go of most of the expectations (both of myself and others) that used to lurk around the holidays like icebergs, threatening to sink the whole ship. It's a relief to recognize this, and I wonder, looking ahead, what such an unburdened Christmas will be like ten or twenty years from now, should I still be here.
Paradoxically, as the trappings of Christmas -- both physical and emotional -- lighten, it feels like the season is regaining some of its mystery and joy that I remember from early childhood. Doing less opens up a space, and within that space, I find I can see much more. O magnum mysterium, we will sing on Sunday. Yes. One doesn't have to be literal about the Christian story to feel mystery at this time of year; the wheel of the seasons turns, and then stands still for a moment, inviting us to stop, too, and find the light hidden in the dark midwinter stillness.
Beth,
As are so many others, your December 20th entry is lovely. Thank you.
Joan Botta
Posted by: Joan Botta | December 20, 2013 at 10:58 AM
Will you sing the Victoria O Magnum? I used to sing that with my madrigal ensemble; I still love it.
Your last paragraph is beautiful, and gives me a feeling of hope.
Posted by: Rachel Barenblat | December 20, 2013 at 11:05 AM
yes, tomorrow the days will grow longer.
on e night a long time ago on the longest night of the year i nearly froze to death on a mountaintop in the northeast kindgdom. it was seven and a half hours of pain i had previously thought unimaginable.
the anniversary of the day does not pass without remembering the EMT telling me "sorry about the bumpy ride, darlin', but we can't spare the ponies" the day does not pass without remembering the bitter pain, the steel grey of the sky at sunrise, the waiting game of
death versus the rescue.
tomorrow i'll go outside to play in the early morning and then stay in and make cookies and craft projects with a friend.
we have come to the growing of the light.
may the light grow within you.
Posted by: flask | December 20, 2013 at 06:38 PM
I don't know what it is about this Christmas, but it feels different from anything I can remember. Perhaps it's a change in the weather patterns, more extremes, less predictability. Or maybe it's simply ongoing change inside me. I don't know. But it's all in the here and now, and to be experienced as it is.
Should this be the last communication between us before Christmas, may I wish you and your family the season's best. Stay warm and happy.
Posted by: Tom | December 21, 2013 at 07:25 AM
Lovely post, Beth, and the photos capture that wintry bleakness very well. I'm one of those people who don't find much in winter to appreciate, apart from lovely snow-landscapes seen from the window of a warm room. I share your sense of preferring simplicity to the stress of Christmas obligations but I wish I had your memories of traditional home Christmases. I hope the New Year will be good to you and Jonathan and I'll be thinking of you singing.
Posted by: Natalie | December 21, 2013 at 08:02 AM
Thanks for this.The Friday before christmas is traditionally our drop in christmas party for neighbours,friends and clients.Its a full house all evening which frankly sometimes can be tiring and it would be difficult to put a game face on.I heard on The Friday CBC Tempo a portion of J.J. Ryba's Czech Christmas Mass which i had never heard before and i was much taken with it.I think partly because for me it had a european sound like some of the german christmas carols on records my parents played this time of year growing up.I was upstairs playing the czech music when the first guests started to arrive.The music gave me calm and renewed my spirit.I was a much better host
Posted by: john | December 21, 2013 at 03:21 PM
Of course, music puts you in a privileged position at Christmas but you've earned it and it's only right you should be uplifted by the combined effects of your faith and the delicious rectitude of the chromatic scale (and modes and twelve-tone stuff where necessary). In my previous novel I used choral participation in the Glagolitic Mass as a way towards the moral redemption of my much battered Judith. Fearful cheek on my part of course but it was felt - if only on behalf of my character.
Posted by: Roderick Robinson | December 23, 2013 at 02:12 AM