it's Christmas time

the tree is up.  it's gia-normous. it's so big, that a birds nest fell out when we were putting the lights on. it's beautiful and so green and it smells so good.  there aren't enough ornaments and there aren't enough lights.  so i snipped a big branch of bougainvillea and filled in the gaps with the bunches of white flowers- like snow. to me, it's spectacular.  it makes the house look like Christmas.  it reminds me of the decembers of my life.

the other night there was a Christmas caroling evening event at our neighbor and friends house.  we sat outside under a tent lit with tiki lamps and we each held a candle and sang together.  someone played the keyboard, someone played the flute and everyone sang. the sky was so full of stars and the night was so dark-except for those stars and it was again, not cold, but perfect.  my kids were home sleeping because of their two late nights of school peformances, and mike was sleeping because of jet lag, so i was there with my candle and my memories.

there is something about our sense of hearing and our sense of smell that can open that other dimension and let us go back in time.  i sat in that plastic lawn chair, under the palm trees, in the warm air- but as we sang i was somewhere else.  i was sitting in a hard wooden pew in a small church in bryson city north carolina surrounded by my sister and brother and my mom and dad.  i was sitting in another wooden pew in wenham massachusetts in the church where mike and i were married, at midnight mass singing with his family.  i was in our home church in decatur, i was in our old church in san francisco. i was all of those places and i was missing all those people.  i was especially missing the 4 other people i've shared all my decembers with. 

every year since i was born, my mom has given each of her children an ornament.  so i have an amazing collection.  they are in a box in north carolina.  last year i really missed them.  i missed the opening of that box and unfolding the paper around each one wrapped up the year before.  i missed remembering.

i had asked mike to bring them back for me.
but. he didn't. there wasn't enough room.  he said wait until summer.
thank. God.
because they would have all been stolen.  and that would have been like losing pictures. like losing years.
so thankful.

this year again, we will be here with our bougainvillea filled cypress tree and our corn husk and bead ornaments and our little white lights.  we will be here with our same songs that will bring us back.  but we will be sitting under the same dark sky with some of the same stars and that moon.  we will be wondering over the same marvelous mystery- as God enters in.