Tag: holidays

A Gift We Are All Able To Give

A Gift We Are All Able To Give

“You weren’t home so she left it in the mailbox.”

The message was from a neighbor. His eight year old daughter Kenzie had stopped by but no one answered the door. Kenzie was going door to door dropping off the hand-painted Christmas ornaments she had made to all the houses in our small neighborhood. When we got home, I looked in the mailbox and there it was. A blue snowflake with a white string looped through the top. 

It was beautiful. 

On many levels.

Kenzie and her family had moved into the neighborhood a few years ago. For the most part we’d exchanged pleasantries when we’d encounter each other walking past or driving by each others homes. We’d been neighborly, but not to the point of exchanging holiday gifts.

Apparently Kenzie didn’t let that concern her, never getting caught up in the nature of neighborhood dynamics. She just wanted to create something and share it with each of her neighbors. 

So, she did.

Honestly, her kind gesture felt as if I was living in some idilic Hallmark movie in the perfect Continue reading “A Gift We Are All Able To Give” →

Turkeys, Trees, and The Tradition Of Pain

Turkeys, Trees, and The Tradition Of Pain

There’s nothing like the smell of chicken hearts and gizzards boiling in a sauce pan on the stove.

Deb is a holiday traditionalist. And one of her most important Thanksgiving traditions is making her Mom’s stuffing. It’s become a more significant tradition now that her Mom is no longer able to celebrate the holiday with her. For years they’d gather the day before Thanksgiving to combine the bread and the meat and the spices and, yes, the boiled chicken hearts and gizzards, and create a staple of their holiday meal.

It was more than just making stuffing. It was a bond between mother and daughter forged in the ritual of perpetuating a very important tradition.

Beautiful.

Yet, now bittersweet.

Sometimes the holidays can be quite painful. T’is not always the season to be jolly. Loss and emptiness can be excruciatingly magnified at a time of expected joy and glee. We’ve all experienced our own form of hurt, longing for what once was, longing for what never was, now seasonally contrasted against the backdrop of all things shiny and bright.

I think back to some of the more traumatic events in my life, wounds annually reopening as I balance my own levels of bitter and sweet this time of year. I think of friends and their childhood traumas and how their inner pain silently crushes their holiday spirit, no matter how much they may be smiling on the Continue reading “Turkeys, Trees, and The Tradition Of Pain” →