Another year has passed, and as usual, so quickly! I don’t know why I’m always surprised at year’s end, when Jeff and I sit down to think together about the past year – the high points and the low points and all points in between – once again.
“And on a day we meet to walk the line…” Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
And on a day we meet to remember, to reflect, and to think about the year ahead – which always brings surprises we had not anticipated, for as much as we plan.
And so we sit in front of the Christmas Tree – lights shining for the last days of the season which was so anticipated just a month ago – and write our memories and our hopes, before we tell one another.
Always, Jeff will be touched by something that doesn’t ring clear in my memory. Or I will think fondly of a moment that is not on his list. Usually, the times we remember are the times we traveled, the times we met new friends, or the times we shared together an unusual, unexpected moment. I like to think of them as moments – those unforeseen happenings that spread across the years of our lives. And then our lives are simply a series of moments.
As we meet today – New Year’s Eve – we’ll each spend time writing our list of year’s past and some hopes or dreams for the year ahead. It’s a good way to spend the last hours in front of the colorfully-lit tree, to mark another year past, and to consider that we might be privileged to live another year on this constantly-changing earth. And tomorrow, on New Year’s Day, we’ll read aloud our list, to one another. Another year gone by…
Happy New Year!
Saturn at the solstice, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 12/21/2023
Something magic comes to life during the holidays, although not in the old ways. I remember one Christmas Eve, when I was a little girl. Before I went to sleep in my bed pushed up against the cold wall on the window side of the flat, I heard, in the snowy night outside that window, sleigh bells.
Or maybe it was Mom and Dad, preparing the scene for Christmas morning, when my little sister and my big brother Ronn and I would wake to the decorated tree in the front room, the colored bulbs lit, presents scattered underneath the tree. We waited for Dad to sit, cross-legged, in front of the tree, and one by one, he brought out the gifts and called our names. Dad enjoyed Christmas morning as much as we did, relishing his role as gift-giver.
There’d been magic the night before, also, when I recited my verse in the Christmas Eve pageant at the Evangelical Lutheran Church where I attended Sunday School . Magic, as all the little children recited their verses to a darkened sanctuary lit only by candles – real candles! – across the altar and hanging high on the walls at the side aisles. Magic! After Christmas Eve worship, each child received a box of chocolate-covered cherries, and we’d drive home, me sitting smugly in the back seat of my Dad’s ‘54 Chevy.
I wait for the magic now. Each Christmas, the magic seems to grow dimmer, but I still love the lights on the tree, and I listen to classical Christmas music, hearing the same songs again and again, without tiring of them. I have a few solemn rituals I follow; each season I watch “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” a beautiful depiction of Dylan Thomas’ remembrance of his Christmases past.
The magic lessens, with each year, it seems. Life in the Bay Area of California does not afford the cozy nights in a warm, warm house, the wind blowing cold off of Lake Michigan against the windows. Still, it is comforting to sit beside the Christmas tree – a presence of its own in the house – in the early dark evenings, the room lit only by the old-fashioned, multi-colored lights.
And the season passes quickly, each day shorter than the next, each year flying by – where did the time go? I ask the question of myself as the generations before me must have asked the question, and those generations all gone now, a long time ago.
The cat and the Christmas tree, 12/2023 Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert
loneliness comes down - a shroud over the holy days at year’s end. unbidden, she comes, her dance mixed with tears, memories - as lights brighten the darkness, the early night.
In the fall of 2015, Jeff received a note from a District Superintendent he had met while working on his books in Alaska. The message was that a little church in Unalaska, on the Bering Sea, was without a Pastor and wanted someone to be with them to celebrate Christmas. I think of myself as a “city person,” one who feels comfortable in cities, wherever they are, but I had traveled to Alaska on several occasions with Jeff, most notably to Nome, where we had had an intimate gathering with the Elders. And so, as soon as I heard the word that a church on the Bering Sea wanted a Pastor, I said: “Yes! Here I am! – Send me!”
And in the middle of December I traveled from San Francisco International Airport to Seattle, on to Anchorage, where I spent the night in a hotel before boarding a small plane with a direct flight to Unalaska. The flight that day was uneventful. I heard stories of flights that needed to be cancelled because of the winds that rise in that place. “Unalaska” is the Inuit word for “birthplace of the winds.” I listened with some anxiety to a story of a flight that had to emergency land along the slopes to the south of the flight’s path until the wind passed and the fog and snow allowed safe passage. And I watched with anxiety and awe as we landed, the cliffs close to the left side of the plane that gave way to the landing strip at Unalaska, with a cliff overshadowing the runway to the right of the plane. I disembarked and was met by the Chair of the Pastor Parish Relations Committee, who took me on a short tour of the Island, introducing me to the one large supermarket, one or two restaurants – always full – and to the church, and the parsonage, a large house whose front windows looked out over the Bering Sea.
As we drove up to the house, several eagles fluttered down from the roof as if to greet us. The church folks had set up a small, artificial tree, complete with lights, in the living room. I kept those lights on 24 hours a day during my stay. The kitchen was well equipped, the bed made, and we turned the heat up when we entered the house. All was well.
The Birthplace of the Winds, indeed. One night I was awakened by a wind, wind so wild that it sounded as if it would pick up the big, cozy house in which I slept and carry it out over the water. The wind surrounded the house, wailing and whipping, louder and louder, until at last – it passed. I was a witness to the winds, then.
I preached for two Sundays before Christmas and met with the musician – a professional piano teacher who had married a native man and lived on the Island, where she raised her family – a worship leader, and one or two other folks who were active in the church community, to plan Christmas Eve worship. We filled our plans with music, the Christmas Story, and lights. Each Sunday of my time with the people in worship, I celebrated Holy Communion, because they did not have a regular pastor to be with them.
During the week, I spent part of my days in the library on the Island, where I became friends with the native man who worked behind the desk. I checked out books and movies to watch in the evenings in the big house, alone. I woke each morning to darkness, and at ten AM, as if by some magic, the sky was light, daylight again. When I could, I called Jeff; we never allow a day to pass without our speaking, even when we are separated.
On Christmas Eve, the sanctuary was full of lights – and people, who arrived from all over the Island to hear the Christmas music, to hear the Christmas story, once again. The music was wonderful – a concert of beautiful Christmas music, led by an artist. At the close of worship, we lit one another’s candles, and sang “Silent Night” to the darkened sanctuary, reverent before we went out again into the cold and the wind.
Jeff arrived on New Year’s Eve, and we watched the fireworks fly across the sky on the Bering Sea from the front window, at midnight. On New Year’s Day, I worshipped with the small band of people in the little church, and after lunch, Jeff and I drove the car I’d been loaned – Alaskans share cars freely with one another – to the little airport, where we were able to make the flight back to Anchorage that day. Jeff’s flight to San Francisco left earlier than mine, and I had a few more hours there, taking time to let go of my sacred days in the Birthplace of the Winds.
Over the Bering Sea, December, 2015, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert
In the days and weeks before Christmas, when I’m alone and at home, often sitting in front of the Christmas tree, I remember more vividly each person who, once a part of my life, is gone now. And small moments with each one of them seem to be replayed, over and over, in my mind.
Dad liked to have fun. He loved to laugh, and he loved to hear us laugh.
Every year, in the few days right before Christmas, Dad would head out to the Capitol Court Shopping Center – in those days, an outdoor shopping center, not the Malls of later years. He had thought ahead to what he would buy Mom for Christmas, and he headed straight for the place to shop.
By December, the evenings are already dark, and undoubtedly, were cold, in Wisconsin. And the houses – cozy. I can hear now my Dad’s footsteps coming up the back stairs, bringing the cold of the evening with him, and as he turned to the second floor landing, I hear his voice: “don’t be so nosy!” His arrival and his greeting meant that he carried under his arm that important package, the package that held his gift to Mom for Christmas. I can see his eyes, also, sparkling, as he came into the kitchen, saying again: “don’t be so nosy!”
Jeff likes to repeat those words now, every year. A few days ago, I sat in his large and interesting studio in the yard behind our house, and I noticed two holiday-wrapped boxes on the shelf next to the deer’s head. I looked at Jeff. Jeff looked at me: “don’t be so nosy!” he said. And we laughed, remembering.
Nature decorated: photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 11/2023
