Here's To the Next Times

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Sweet potato pie and Earl Grey Tea

It’s the middle of December. I awoke this morning to a world wrapped in cotton wool, all sound deadened in the mist. Today, we’ll add our star lights to the front porch.  We’ll take out our Christmas books and begin to read them. We’ll turn on the Christmas music. Soon we’ll decorate the tree.

And here’s where we are this year: Still in Virginia. Still in the last house we moved into, except for our youngest daughter, who has moved on to a place of her own. My husband is now working for a different company, and he’s finding his work there quite satisfying.

My son has happily changed his university major to athletic training, works all the hours God sends and has managed somehow to make the dean’s list for at least the last two semesters he’s told us about. My oldest daughter works at two hospitals and assembles electronic components, takes riding classes, belongs to a drama group, and several social groups as well as taking literacy tutoring every week. She has a lovely boyfriend.

Our youngest daughter loves her job at an animal shelter in a nearby town, and is settling in to her new digs in a neighborhood that seems to suit her well. I love the place. We text or talk every day, and we get to see her almost every week.

Sadly, we lost our cat, Panda, this year to old age. He was thirteen. His ashes are buried in the back garden under the new fig tree. But before we lost him, he had time to enjoy many happy arguments with his two new friends:  Starr, also known as The Devil Herself, and Jackie Chan, the Ninja Kitty, two kittens that we took it upon ourselves to house and provide for.

Now I have a wonderful word for any of you whose children or close acquaintances go to work at an animal shelter. It’s the handiest word ever if you use it, which I didn’t. The word is: No.

Our dog Scout remains as wonderful as always, just with more gray around the muzzle, but as ever, still a puppy at heart.

I continue to substitute teach, mostly at my favorite elementary school here. I also occasionally work for a company that organizes moving and estate sales, which I quite enjoy. I am blessed to work with overwhelmingly lovely people.

The mist is lifting now. Birds swoop and dive around the multiple feeders in the front garden. The hawk that lives just into the treeline must be hunting elsewhere this morning. Foxes live in that part of the wood as well. One of them occasionally saunters across the back garden at first light. I see him sometimes sniffing the woodpile as I pour my morning coffee.

It doesn’t seem like over two years since we left England. And then again, it seems longer. Sometimes it feels like time is one of those big rubber bands that stretches and stretches and then snaps back with a pop.

This is our third Christmas back in America. It has been such a long transition, this last one, the move from England. It has been so full of twists, good and bad. Such drama. And while I told myself I embraced my new life, still, I held a great part of myself back.

A moment of silence

 I have found it quite difficult to let go of the memories of what was our daily life in Harrogate, and to compare it with our life here: Our neighbors there, our friends, our home, our back garden, our doctors, dentist, favorite shopkeepers, pubs and restaurants, schools. The Harrogate Theatre, that wonderful old place. And Betty’s. Oh, Lord.

Without thinking about it, without realizing it, for the longest time, I silently held back my affections from this place, resenting it only because it is so different from the life we had there. Then realizing what I was doing, I stopped and took a good look around.

 This is not Harrogate. But it is a wonderful place, and we are lucky to be here. And now that I’ve forgiven it for what it is not, I’m really beginning to love it and to see all the wonderful opportunities the area offers.

Still, we’ll always love Yorkshire. Always miss it a bit. I’ll probably always pathetically tear up at the first strains of Jerusalem. Can’t help it.

It was a warm Thanksgiving this year. After a meal of fried chicken, baked salmon, mashed potatoes, green beans, creamed corn, collards and biscuits with lemon cake for afters, the five of us waddled out to the woods behind the house for a stroll on the trail. It was mild enough to remind me of my childhood Thanksgivings in Alabama.

We  meandered mostly together through the woods along the creek, gathering pine cones for the fire place.

It is a never-ending source of wonder to us that these big people in our lives are the same ones who used to be so little as to fit in our laps. And they won’t understand for years what it’s like sometimes for my husband and I to be with them as they are now, remembering how they used to be, and who we were when we were younger with them.

Or know the frustration of being unable to remember some of the last times--the last time we tucked them in bed;the last time we kissed an owie; the last time we read them a story; the last time they fought over who got to sit next to one of us; the last time we picked them up from school.

American fireplace--English post box

The frustrating thing about last times is that you don’t always think about or even know when they happen. Not for years.

Such is life. So here’s to the next times. The ones that we hope are coming. Here’s to watching It’s a Wonderful Life  yet again, and decorating the tree. Here’s to having our big, festive meal on Christmas Eve, and sleeping in on Christmas Day, and eating leftovers. Someday other family members will join us. Some Christmas we’ll be on our own.

A daily reminder

Because as we have found, life is mostly transition. And like my mother told me many times in an inadvertent lesson, “Don’t nobody want to fool with a fussy plant. Get you one that’ll bloom wherever you put it, and can take some rough handling.”

So Merry Christmas another year. We wish you happiness in whatever and however you celebrate. And we hope that you are always able to bloom wherever you are planted.

Still waiting for Santa

 Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays.  

Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

Leann