what I've learned from life, by Mary Elyn Bahlert
through the giant trees,
dapples the sidewalk where I pass
to the narrow streets, autumn,
darting from one dark place to another
to make my way to kindergarten.
There, the globe the teacher holds
beckons, “follow" -
to another world, waiting for me.
---Mary Elyn Bahlert, January, 2024
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!
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.
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.
poem and photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 12/2023
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.
