Christmas Eve at the End of the World

 It is Christmas Eve, the Solstice come and gone, our tree up, the house quiet and child-less. Teen-less. My phone has pinged twice this week to let me know I was exposed to COVID while in the Denver airport; aside from the times I vomited (migraine, I hope) in the bathroom and in the plane's barf bag, I wore a K95 mask. I am vaxxed and boosted.  My son is in Michigan in a quarantined house, his stepsister with COVID but so far, everyone else okay. Her mother is a nurse, her mother loves her daughters fiercely and from all accounts is kind to J. I must believe things will be all right.

Today I crocheted a hat (it isn't great, but it sort of fits my pumpkin sized head), I ran, I walked the old dog through drizzle, unlit Christmas lights. R. and I drove out to Kelley Point park, down Portland Highway past encampment after encampment near container yards, in low-lying wet places, near the road. At the park, a school bus with the side torn off, a light on, a stove; a minivan with paranoid conspiracy theories written all over the body. Cars covered by tarps. High in the bare moss-covered trees, an eagle's nest. We did not get out of the car, did not walk down to the beach where the Columbia meets the Willamette. Next time, we said. It was getting dark, rain again, steady and grey. We drove home in the half-light of just-past-Solstice Pacific Northwest dusk, a grey light, clouds heavy and low. Tomorrow, the National Weather Service says, we'll get snow.

Two of the three chickens are molting. The neighbors behind us put up a tent over two chairs in their yard late last night, but no one has been outside since. So many people are cold tonight, so many people we refuse to see. We drove past. But we kept on driving.

Tomorrow morning, I'll get up before dawn with the old dog. I'll make coffee, turn on the tree lights, sit in the quiet house until R. wakes up. He'll drive to his ex wife's house to have Christmas with their son, I'll try a Christmas 10K of my own making, if it's safe to run outside. I'll count the birds that I see: crow, chickadee, junco, Anna's hummingbird, scrub jay, sparrow. I will listen to a podcast--perhaps one about the Gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel, or about dismantling patriarchal structures, or Mormon Stories. I will pretend this is my ritual, my welcoming in of the light, my small way of marking the cycle of the year, of death and rebirth, of earth and spirit. 

For 15 years, I spent Christmas Eve alone, but in ceremony: singing carols at the church where I was employed, and later joined. I am unsure I am a Christian, but I am not an atheist. I miss the cyclical nature of church liturgy, miss the dark sanctuary lit only by candles, miss the soft singing of "Silent Night." Tomorrow I will likely listen to Lessons and Carols from Westminster. I will cry. I will be lonely and sad and afraid. Maybe it will snow. Maybe the chickens will lay tomorrow, maybe I will look in a mirror and not be afraid that I am growing old, for I am still vain and also afraid that the only currency I have is my body. Tomorrow I will call my boy and tell him I love him.

Sometimes--often--I think why do I write here? Who cares about an ordinary life? Except for so long, I believed my life to be a secret and to some extent, I still must be circumspect until J. is 18; except for so long, my entire life, I never saw literature or culture or the world around me take the life of an ordinary woman seriously the way we take the lives of men seriously, the way we take the stories of beautiful people seriously. It feels deeply selfish, and self-absorbed, to say I am here and broken and fucked up and I still matter but it is what I want for you. I want you to know this about you. 

If you are alone tonight, know that I am with you and I love you. I don't know how any of us are supposed to do this. I am also afraid that those I have lost I will never see again. Here is my hand. Let's watch the light come in, together.