On all the tears

I have one child seeing in the solstice in the Faroe Islands, and one child asleep in his bed next to my study. I’m up to watch the dawn creep over the eastern hills, lighting the river, making the roses glow, the whole view bright and fresh after a rain shower overnight. I check my phone for updates from the travellers and there they are, A and her two friends, in the moody dramatic half dark, their faces lit by the swiftly sinking sun, all the way from Coonamble to the Arctic Circle.

I mean, how beautiful!

That’s one journey. Here’s another.

Yesterday I loaded Frank on the float and drove down the road for a ride up into the hills with a friend. Frank and I are off on a very big adventure next year, which means we need to ‘get fit’.¹ This was our first long ride and because he needed shoes and because I’ve been on retreat, he has had only the gentlest of work. I was prepared for a very sprightly Frank on the way out, and a very ploddy Frank on the way back. But though he shied and walked on springs, and though he thought he needed to move every stray sheep or beast he spotted, he was open to a conversation in which I said, no no, we just keep walking. Still, it was a relief to get to the bottom of the first hill where my friend turned to me and said, Shall we have a little beetle?²

Let’s I said.

And reading our intent the horses were moving, as eager as us to feel the world slide by in a rush of wind and sound. Up the hill we raced and the tears streaming out my eyes were of delight. We pulled in at the top, looked back over the rich valley, and then went on talking, walking and beetling when the going was good. Black cockies, a sea eagle, currawongs, too many wallabies to count, deer (Frank was onto all of those). Three hours later, we were back to the sheds, my soul cleaned from the retail bustle, and Frank, fitter than I thought, hardly sweating.

a not sweaty Frank at the end of our wonderful ride

On the way home, with thoughts pushing in of all the lists with unchecked items and the slowly rising overwhelm I suffer from every Christmas, I listened to a conversation between poets, Padraig O’Tuama and Marie Howe. Marie recounted how in the days between Christmas and New Year she would stay in a Benedictine monastery on the Hudson River north of New York. Once, after a snowstorm, she walked down to the creek. She followed deer tracks, her boots breaking through the snow. When she got to the creek she turned to see the great house on the hill. As she walked back she noticed the imprint of a bird’s claw, so light as to have only taken an impression on the snow she’d broken. She stopped, bent and put her hand in the deer print, placed her fingers in the shape of the cloven hoof, then her fingers against the light brush of the bird and then she placed her hand to her side to staunch the bleeding of her doubt.

I’m driving up the highway, my fingernails rimmed with dust, the rhythm of Frank’s stride still in my body and the poem collapses on me, the weight of the deer breaking through the snow, the birds so light on its surface and the poet there to be our witness to the brokenness of the world. I keep driving, though my eyes fill with tears.

This has been happening a lot. Last week in the bookshop a toddler was having an absolute throw down tantrum and his mother needed one more present, but this kid was at the very end of all reason. Various means of distraction were employed, but he was having none of it. I was behind the counter, wrapping a book, engaged with another customer. She might have said something under her breath (not meanly, just a murmur), she might have said, oh let’s all let him be sad. That’s what I think I heard, and I turned from her as the tears welled suddenly. Because yes, let’s all be allowed to be sad.

The moment passed and I went on wrapping and smiling and saying Merry Christmas. I told my brother about it, the ridiculous swiftness with which I’m undone. The tears sitting there, as if they’re the only response I have. There’s no words or reason. Perhaps, this is the most honest way of going forth into the world.

I, like many of you, am about to be drenched in family, and when this happens I have such an ache for all who are not here. This year I’m going to let myself feel the sadness and, maybe in this freedom, I’ll also feel the richness of what I have.

Dear Sitters, in all your gatherings, I can only say, I see you. Merry Christmas, on we go. x

*

Here’s Marie Howe’s poem should you need to read:

The Snow Storm
I walked down towards the river, and the deer had left tracks 
deep as half my arm, that ended in a perfect hoof
and the shump shump sound my boots made walking made the silence loud. 

And when I turned back towards the great house 
I walked beside the deer tracks again. 
And when I came near the feeder: little tracks of the birds on the surface 
          of the snow I'd broken through. 

Put your finger here, and see my hands, then bring your hand and put it in my side. 

I put my hand down into the deer track 
and touched the bottom of an invisible hoof. 
Then my finger in the little mark of the jay. 

A few other things:

Terry Tempest Williams, writing about connection and seasons of change, A Hollow Bone.

Adam and Joe will have their annual Christmas podcast waiting for me on Boxing Day, and I’ll get up early and go for a walk before the busyness of the day and listen.

Brandi Carlile is wonderful on Tiny Desk.

Nadia Bolz Weber, The Corners, on the power of tears.

I’m keeping a list of things that delight me. Here’s a few:

• The word fripperies.

• My avocado seeds germinating.

• The colours and wild abandon of my butterfly and bees flower patch in the garden. Remembering how bare it was in winter and how I watched for any sign of a germinating seed and now it’s a mass of flowers and a reminder that if we keep planting and watering and watching, abundance can appear.

• Playing online scrabble with my brother.

• Not being on social media.

• The pink grapefruit and strawberry marmalade a friend gave me.

Have a wonderful Christmas dear Sitters, may you wear your joy and sadness lightly and find moments of delight. Thank you so sincerely for your support. Here’s a link for a gift subscription if you have a person in your life who ‘doesn’t want a thing’ but might enjoy these little essayettes.

I’ll see you all in here at some stage in the New Year, by which time hopefully summer will have arrived down here. mmx

1. More on this in the new year, but I’m excited to bring you all along!

2. Is there a better description for a gallop? My son tells me they say blatting in New Zealand, I like that too.