Between the Dark and Light

I call it “the day”. It occurs without warning every year, sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sadness gut-punches me. It’s usually brought on by a sound, a smell, or a memory of my father who died thirty-eight years ago at the beginning of the holidays. The sorrow starts in my chest and rises into my throat. Soon I’m brushing away tears.

It could be hearing “O Tannenbaum” on the radio, which his church choir sang at his funeral. Or I’ll see an evergreen wreath on someone’s door and remember the piney smell of my childhood home in December. It’s always a holiday thing that triggers me. My father was the son of German immigrants who settled in Madison, Connecticut. He was a good man, but tough and volatile. Having spent his boyhood on a farm, he knew everything about growing vegetables, but nothing about raising daughters.  

While we were never close, we connected at Christmas, a season that softened him. 

“Hi… It’s the day,” I tell my husband, Mark, on the phone, as the tears fall. Rain is beating at the picture window in our living room. In fact, it’s probably the rain that brought this on. We don’t have our tree yet, but we’ve dragged the Christmas box up from the basement. The house looks cluttered rather than festive. 

“I still miss him,” I tell my husband.

“I know,” Mark says and listens as I sniffle. 

Thanksgiving of my junior year in college was the last time I saw my dad alive. A few weeks later, just before dawn on December 13th, a day as dreary as this one, my uncle called to say he had passed. 

When Mark and I hang up, I sit on the floor and slowly crumple pieces of newspaper to build a fire. Our garage in Connecticut was stocked with wood that my sister and I had the job of bringing into the house. I can still smell the cold damp scent of cedar from when I would gather armfuls of logs for the fires we made in winter.. 

Early December is a strange time of year, dark and dreary, before winter turns snowy and fun. Although I sometimes find the bleakness to be beautiful, my mood can sink with the sun at 4:30 in the afternoon. The maple out my window is either stark and pale against the blue sky, or gray and bony in the mist. Right now, the afternoon light is barely there. In this moment, everything feels like loss. 

I think of Christina Rosetti’s poem, “A Christmas Carol.” 

 In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan

Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone

I watch the fire catch and listen to the background sounds of my daughter—home for the holidays—laughing with her friends over a Christmas movie. I still have gifts to buy and meals to plan. And there are writing deadlines. But I’m tired from the fall teaching semester and struggling to motivate. 

I put on Joni Mitchell’s “River” and let the melancholy song wash through me. Listening to Joni on a dark December afternoon feels soothing, like the many small moments of grace this time of year. Exchanging cookies with a neighbor. The impromptu, off-key singing of “Sleigh Bells” as my husband and I make dinner. Trimming the tree with our children. These moments make me ache with gratitude, and sometimes longing for all the holidays I didn’t have with my dad. 

Each December when we were young, my father would take my sister and me to the forest to gather bags of princess pine. For the first half hour or so, I loved the chance to tromp through the woods on that rare outing. But soon enough I’d become bored, and my hands would get cold. I was too afraid to irritate my father by asking how much longer, so I’d quietly keep filling giant garbage bags, waiting to be told we we were done.

When we got home, my father would go into the basement and turn the delicate greens into ropey garlands and a wreath for our front door. He’d also make them for neighbors and for the church. At midnight Mass, I’d feel this small sense of pride as I gazed at the altar, decorated with my father’s evergreen creations And I’d be pleased with myself for having filled so many bags. 

I wish I could take just one more woods walk with my dad as an adult. I would ask him what he loved about Christmas.

When I think about those beautiful wreaths, I often think about making my own, but this time of year, I get overwhelmed, The sense that there is so much to do, to buy, to bake, all before midnight on the 25th. 

What if that pressure wasn’t there? What if we could all be gentle on ourselves in this season of love and forgiveness. What would that feel like?

I look out the window at the rain and darkness and remember that we are creeping toward the solstice, when the North Pole reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun.

The solstice isn’t a day, as people sometimes believe. It’s a moment. A pause really. 

A stillpoint in which all is quiet. 

Then the sun changes directions.

I close my eyes. The fire is warm on my face, but I can still feel the coolness of the picture window behind me. It’s the in-between of dark and light. Missing my father is a gift he gives me every Christmas: a chance to feel deeply, to be in this season. I draw a breath and hold it inside. Then I exhale slowly.