Last year, much of the Midwest and the West was blanketed in snow for Christmas. Western South Dakota apparently didn’t get the memo about snow, so my daughter spent the afternoon of Christmas Eve sunbathing on the porch in shorts and a t-shirt. (It wasn’t actually warm enough for summer attire, but the novelty of saying she was sunbathing on Christmas was too delightful an opportunity to ignore.)
Meanwhile, in the pasture beside the house, the sheep grazed blissfully, the chickens roamed freely, and a pair of downy woodpeckers squealed and pecked their way around the circle of cottonwoods in the front yard.
It felt like spring except for the sun, pitched low against the horizon, which sent long shadows crawling across the gray, dead grass.
We had the same weather on Christmas Eve day the year before; however, the warm snap quickly shifted to rain, then sleet, and the dipping temperatures left the prairie covered in sleek ice.
The kids spent Christmas Day ice skating in their boots while I attempted to cross the yard to get to the barn and do my chores without breaking a bone.
Christmas this year is predicted to be both warm and dry, so it sounds like my bones will be safe. Outside, the only visible snow is the sad, slumped figure of a mostly melted snowman leftover from last week’s storms, and the glimmering of the ice that turns to puddles every morning and refreezes every night.
The long hours of summer and the hard labor of our ranch work have shifted, but not slowed, and are made even harder when we brace our bodies for the cold every time we leave the house, or battle icy roads and walkways.
So, I’ll take these non-white Christmases even if they are a little odd.
Meanwhile, I’ve spent a lifetime trying to live like a tree — wondering how to rise rooted — and now it is happening.
The weeks leading up to Christmas were a whirlwind. If you read last week’s column, you know I took an ill-advised trip to Minnesota to play some shows alongside the release of a new mini-album of music.
I returned to last-minute Christmas program rehearsals, a holiday food festival I’d helped organize, not to mention the usual presents to wrap, cookies to bake, a sick lamb, and all the other work of ordinary life that doesn’t disappear just because it is the holidays. And it has felt as chaotic as it sounds.
But, somehow, beneath the chaos, there is peace, and I am even more thankful for that than I am for the unseasonably warm weather we are receiving.
Looking back at all that has happened over the last few years, it is hard to really comprehend, even in retrospect, all the upheaval — all the joy and sorrow, and unexpected twists life inevitably took.
The recording and release of this new music is just one small example: I decided a few months ago I was going to try a new way of tracking my instrumentals, and that I was also going to try composing on piano, even though I barely know the basic chord shapes. In other words, I laid a plan that was WAY out of my comfort zone and skill set!
I am so proud of how it turned out, and what better way to end these last few years that have required me to grow past what I thought was possible?
I am writing this on the solstice — the darkest night of the year — a good time for deep thoughts and reckonings.
So I will leave you with this: We all contain multitudes. We are beginnings and endings. We all can be broken and healed, lost and found, born and reborn into belonging. We are our own unique beings, and we are also part of a collective that inhales and exhales across millennia.
The work of sharing these stories with you is a blessing, start to finish, and I am grateful for the opportunity. Much love to you all, and may your hearth be merry and bright this season!
