I am sitting in the dining room, looking out toward the living room, stockings still hung by the chimney…toys and books and papers scattered everywhere you look. It is two days past Christmas, and here we are in that lovely, exhausted afterglow of so much time together. Light pours in from the windows, reflecting off the snow.
About a week before Christmas, I made this small postcard to express my only wish for holidays: a little more time with you. The “you” is broadly defined… it includes all the different loved ones from dear Kirsten (who brings so much depth and color to my life) to the youngest addition, sweet Tate (his first Christmas, our first time around these rituals together) and everyone in between.
Time is the great luxury for me – the ultimate gift. I have everything else I need, I suppose, and much of what I want. What I don’t have, I can make a plan for, scheme to get, reach for, find…or not. And I can watch the desires and the interests shift and change. But time…that is the hard one. I suppose it should come as no surprise. Isn’t it in the very nature of things that I would find myself, past the middle point of my life, longing, hoping, praying for more time? Time to listen. Time to sit. Time to draw and paint and read and write. Time to sew quilts like Rothko paintings and dresses for Tess. Time to try new recipes and time to sit at the dinner table, lingering over the last bit of wine from the bottle of red received as a gift for the holidays.
Time is the one thing I long for, the last great desire.
So as I enter the new year, make my resolutions and my intentions, I think I will try to find that time – slow down a bit more and watch more closely for the ways that I sabotage my own heart’s desire. I fully participate in filling up the schedule, in piling things to do on my plate, in staying busy and busier. Maybe this year I will focus a little more closely on what I think (or at least what I say) really matters to me. And, that list is fairly short.
- Time with friends and family for uninterrupted conversations, silence, and good games (I do love a good game!)
- Time to read the many books I hope to read this year – from The Swan Thief to My Name is Red (I am way behind the NYTimes book list); from a little book on making little books to a cookbook called Where Flavor was Born
- Speaking of cookbooks: Time cooking. In the last two years, I decided to teach myself to cook again (likely the result of such a small day-to-day dinner table now that we are empty-nesters and Kirsten has so little interest in food most of the time).
- Time to walk the neighborhood.
- Time to listen to silence, to listen to time pass.
Of course, I will have to work every weekday and I will continue to paint and write everyday – like brushing my teeth, these things come naturally now. But, that feeling, that focusing on time and its treasures…that’s what I want.
Suddenly, as I write this, I hope I am not offending you, or others who are older than me, who are closer to the last day than I am. Is it the folly of middle age to become so preoccupied with finitude? Or am I burdened by Kirsten’s health in some unique way? Has it made me more mindful of the end, of the horizon line moving into view?
I do not know.
I know only that the grace of these days is also the birthplace of what Frederick Buechner calls faith. He says, “Faith is homesickness…a longing for home.” I think he is right. The longer I live, the more this faith rises up from the chaos as longing for time – time at home.
Merry Christmas, Miss Kelly
All love,
Amanda
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