Growing up, everyone I knew and loved lived in such close proximity. I knew that Baba and Dido’s families were in Ukraine, but my people were never far away. Now it’s so very different. The world is smaller in many ways, and our circles are larger to include beloved friends and family across the country and over the ocean.
I wish I could see them more often, but I am grateful for online glimpses and treasured times when we do reconnect. Ultimately my world is richer for those connections.
My friend Alison and I met in Germany 13 years ago when we were each pregnant with our first child, and she was family from the start. We’ve stayed in touch through ups and downs and moves back and forth across oceans. Our kids have grown up together, sharing the occasional holiday. Some of my favorite Thanksgivings have been spent with them.
Alison came for a too-short visit that was mostly coffee and chats squeezed in around kid schedules and teaching, but we did have one night where I was able to give her a taste of Chicago’s stand-up and burlesque, Gypsy jazz at the Green Mill, and some of the best Ethiopian food (mmmmm). And just like that, she’s back across the ocean and life goes one. The wheel turns.
Am thinking of you, so many people I love who are too far away and those who are gone from us too soon. I suppose it’s one of the gifts of October and Autumn and Halloween/Samhain–missing loved ones, sitting with nostalgia and longing as we prepare for the season to change.
Louise Glück is my favorite living poet. Snippets of her poetry appear throughout this blog and on my tumblr. I love the music of her language, her mythic sensibility, the beauty and raw emotion contained in each collection of words.
I woke up thinking about this one, her poem “Twilight.” It seemed perfect for the end of the year:
“I open my fingers— I let everything go.
Visual world, language,
rustling of leaves in the night,
smell of high grass, of woodsmoke.
I let it go, then I light the candle.”
As someone who is nostalgic by nature, I reflect on the past quite a lot, from the ancient history to ancestral stories, from childhood memories to pivotal moments in adulthood.
Something that they all have in common is their fleeting nature. Time passes, and we are left with stones and echoes. Children grow up, relationships change, celebrations end, mentors die, buildings are constructed and torn down, books are written, read, and shelved, the seasons change, the wheel of life turns.
We have these shining, glorious moments in our lives. Big ones like anniversaries and life-changing introductions; and small ones like sunrises with friends and wine enjoyed in the Spanish sun. Then the moments pass, and we are left with memories and sometimes a relic or two.
But what treasures are those memories! I think about the ones shared by my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my friends. We learn about a past we did not know, we recall share experiences, we remember those who are no longer with us. Memories are some of the most magical stories, because they bring the past back to life.
We live in such a time of technological abundance, and I wonder about the future of memories. It seems a contradiction, because if so much is recorded, surely the memories will be too.
When I was a child, my grandparents had just a few photographs, a family album, with delicate photos of great-grandparents or relatives, yellowing photographs of a distant ancestral home. They were treasures, but they told us little. The gaps were filled in with their stories. The stories were even more precious to me than the photos. The stories are what I take with me no matter where I am.
Earlier this year, I was sitting with friends in the hotel bar at the 2013 World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention (LoneStarCon 3) in San Antonio. Gary Wolfe was sharing a story about a writing workshop in Chicago that he visited a few times whose members included Gene Wolfe and George R.R. Martin.
As if on cue, George R.R. Martin walked over, and we asked him if there were any photos from those workshop days in his Chicago apartment. In typical dry, Martin-style, he said something like this (this isn’t a quote exactly; I’m piecing it together from memory):
You know, back in my day, we had these machines that were large and boxy and took some effort to carry around. They were called cameras. They were carried by these people called photographers, who would use them to take photographs of notable events and people. The rest of us, we did other things, like writing.
Today we have so many lenses by which we view the world: photos on phones, videos, texts and tweets. Will technology leave us with enough gaps to be filled in with stories? What will we remember looking back on those photographs and relics 25 years from now? Were we taking pictures and videos? Or were we doing other things, like writing?
Were we paying attention–to the smell of the air, the touch against our skin, the taste of the cheese and the wine? Or were we so preoccupied with the documentation, that all we have are the photographs?
I’m an optimist, so I’d like to believe that there are ways to use the gifts technology offers, while still being present. I like to believe that the real memories will endure, but I still worry.
So on the last day of 2013, I think about the year that is ending, so many moments that gave the year shape. I think about the relics that will remain, the photographs of our journey, the stories I hope I’ll remember.
We stand on the edge of 2014, and we can’t take everything with us as we make the leap into the new year. We need room for the new things to come in. So what do we hold onto? What do we let go of as we move into the next unknown?
In 2014, I hope that you find yourself in circles sharing memories and making new ones. I hope that you meet someone whom you admire, and I hope you find someone who believes in you. I hope that you have moments of glorious laughter and reverence. I hope that you sleep well and dream big. And when we circle round again to the end of 2014, I hope that you feel a part of something and have had a year filled with the best stories.
It’s 2am, and I’m putting lights and garland on the tree.
Earlier this evening, it was a mostly joyful and noisy team effort of uncovering boxes and assembling, and tomorrow, after breakfast, we’ll put on the bulk of the ornaments.
But right now, it’s blissfully quiet.
Everyone else is in bed. Loreena McKennitt is softly playing, I’m drinking eggnog, and I’m reminded of decorating the tree in my first Chicago apartment on Janssen Street in 1995.
That was the year I started my tradition of putting up the tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. I usually did it alone, with a glass of wine and Loreena’s To Drive the Cold Winter Away. My parents had given me their old Christmas tree, and I bought white lights and a few ornaments (most of which I still have and will put on the tree tonight). I decorated with red apples and cherries, pine cones, and faux crystal snowflakes and icicles.
I loved that tree.
I loved the moment of sitting on the couch in the dark when it was done, the room transformed. I dreamed big by the light of that tree.
It’s hard to believe that was almost 20 years ago.
I still love the ritual of decorating the house for the holidays, of creating a space for celebration. Including the kids has its own delight, and I especially enjoy having the house full of family and friends on the holidays.
But I cherish moments like this one–quiet, solitary times that allow me to reflect and remember. It’s good to be reminded of the young woman I was back then, to be reconnected with that romantic dreamer.
In the morning, I’ll put on my other hats; but for now, it’s just me and Loreena and the tree, a meditation on nostalgia and dreams.
I wish I could see them more often, but I am grateful for online glimpses and treasured times when we do reconnect. Ultimately my world is richer for those connections.
