Glimmer, Sparkle...CRUNCH!

 Last Christmas Eve, Horse Brass Pub, with our dear friend, Lissa

T'is the season, so they say... but for what, I just don't know any more. 

We've been fortunate--my daily mantra--enough to have weathered this year relatively unscathed by comparison. Dealing with a low-level depression is nothing new to me, and even the most grateful of us get in a slump, especially if you live in the rain-laden parts of the Pacific Northwest. The newly rising cases of Covid-19 have curtailed my desire for social contact, as well as the inability to gather outside and stay dry while doing so. Last week was hard: some family members tested positive and were very sick from this virus, and while they are on the mend now, it was a worrisome stretch of days. Then we took Sally in for some dental extractions... poor kitty came out with just a few teeth left in her mouth and some sort of weird kitty limp possibly due to an injection hitting a nerve. 

It was a week of vet visits (4 trips in 5 days), sleeping on the living room futon because Sally couldn't even jump up to the couch for a few days and couldn't use the stairs safely. By Sunday, we were seeing a slowly recovering kitty, and after my usual early morning grocery trip, I was ready to decorate for Christmas. 

First, though, we needed to tidy up the living room. I'd pressed Kiddo into service, asking him to help with putting various items away. 15 minutes into the work, I bent over to grab a bag full of paper bags off the floor, stood up, and felt my lower back and hips seize up. Oh, shit. Really? This?! RIGHT WHEN I'M TRYING TO MAKE CHRISTMAS?! After many deep, centering breaths, I told J he could go play and slowly continued to work. There comes a point in life where your brain establishes a flow chart that runs something along the lines of "This hurts. Will laying down right now make this better or worse?" I've dealt with much worse, so I decided to keep going, albeit gently and slowly. Sometimes stopping and laying down only freezes that muscle strain into place, making it less mobile, and teaches the body to be more fearful (limited) in using it. Telling the brain that it's actually going to be okay, "thanks for trying to protect me, and I can manage this", some Advil and a liberal annointing of arnica gel helped me to keep it from getting too stiffened up. (In a couple days, this would diminish to a faint ache, not outright pain. Walking helps immensely, too.)

Christmas this year is, thankfully, somewhat minimalistic. We decided to use the tiny artificial tree that Joe's had since he was a child. This eliminated the need to move a lot of furniture around-- a blessing considering the shape I was in. We jokingly call getting the live tree and setting it up 'two of the twelve horrors of Christmas'. This year, no swearing was heard as the tree was placed on top of a chest of drawers and strung with lights. We hung colored lights around the nook in the kitchen as well. The glimmer and sparkle as I began to add ornaments to the lights themselves made me smile. It's cozy and warm, festive and cheerful.  

There's something about distilling an experience, and having limited tree space pushed me to select the classics from our collection of ornaments. Joe's grandparents traveled extensively and brought home a variety of ornaments of all kinds: a paper mache pig; a little gnome-looking fisherman with a yellow hooded jacket and pipe; a fancy Chinese lantern. Kiddo has ornaments special from his grandparents as well, including ceramic 'locket' ornaments with special compartments; my folks gave him a polymer gingerbread man that he tried to taste, because he thought it looked too real, and he mentions that memory each Christmas. I have some special ornaments that I've been gifted over the years, and to remember who gave us those treasures is another reason to be thankful.   

It's been a year beyond description. Somehow, we are lucky enough to keep going forward, with what's been dubbed 'vaccine purgatory' as the main feature for 2021. Knowing that we are very likely in for another year of social distancing and masking while we wait for enough of the population to achieve that magical concept of 'herd immunity' only steels my resolve to take this pandemic day by day. While I have lived through worse, for a longer period of time, I have empathy for those who are struggling and wondering when the light at the end of the tunnel is going to be visible. Although we may find ourselves disagreeing with those we know--both in regard to the pandemic and politics, it's good to remember that most everyone is needing support, in some way or another. We don't have to adopt someone else's perspective in order to understand that they may have the same feelings of anxiety, worry and apprehension regarding the future. We don't have to condone carelessness, but we can try to nurture our own sense of humanity during this confusing time. If that can be our lodestar, our guiding light, to at least do no harm to others, (even if they are hurt about our decisions in how we keep our own families safe), we'll have done something good in a very dark time. I'm going to follow that light... even when the clouds roll in and the starry sky is obscured, we do have a moral compass to rely on. If that can be the glimmer and sparkle of this season and next year, I'll deal with the crunches that come along, each in their turn.