December 21
They Three kings of Orient Are!
I was over at my Grandparent's house earlier this evening, because last week, after picking out the tree with Angelo, it was revealed that my Grandmother didn't approve of the way my cousins and aunt had decorated the tree last year. "It was too plain! I like it with more stuff!" I told her I'd happily go over and hang tons of stuff on the tree, after work one night this week, and this was the night.
I got over there and they'd already brought it up from the basement, which surprised me, because my grandfather had complained to me that he was having some aches and pains in his legs and hips. I forget, sometimes that he's 81.
My grandmother and I worked at taking out the boxes of decorations that I've been taking out of the same box since I was a baby, the same one she's been taking out since she was a newlywed in the 40s. Tonight, she handed me a fragile, matte glass bell practically worn translucent. "I bought this the year your mother was born. You should take it, it's like a part of your mother!" She set it aside for me. I took out every box of ornaments she has, going through them and choosing the the ones I've always liked best. We chat sort of about nothing, about everything, about things we never imagined we'd be talking about, ever, standing around a Christmas tree: Jihad, 9/11, anthrax. It has all given this Christmas a very bittersweet feeling. Not bad, just different. Something to get used to, as bittersweet things usually are.
I'm reminded of all of the years we sit down as a family around the table, and how lucky I feel every year. Most of the people I know do not know their grandparents, have not had the good fortune to live close and be close in the same way I have. I remember being a little girl, sitting for Christmas dinner and holding hands for grace before a meal, always the same simple prayer: "Bless us oh lord, for these gifts we are about to receive in your name. And thank you for giving us another year together. Amen". Always more important to me than the actual prayer (my relationship with religion has always been tentative, at best, and I think that's all I'll say, because that isn't really what I'm writing about) is the ritual.
That is what holidays are, isn't it? Ritual. Being with family and friends? Giving and receiving love and gifts and time together that often only comes once a year? I am enormously, tremendously, earthshakingly grateful that I have been given the gift of another night decorating the tree with my Grandmother, sharing the secret of our superior decorating skills, the strength of our bond, the still easily shed tears for our former city.
I always feel as though I've done something right in this world, to have been given so much time with them both, and no end in sight. Tonight, after my grandmother hung tinsel and there were no branches left bare, we shut the room lights. It was perfect. My grandfather sitting in his chair, she and I standing side by side. We let out a collective "oooh, pretty!" and for one more year, I live a charmed life.
Merry Christmas, everyone. Thanks for reading.