A Christmas Wish

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks

Dressed in holiday style
In the air there's a feeling
Of Christmas
Children laughing, people passing
Meeting smile after smile...

(...and the song continues)

It's Christmas time in the city

Strings of streetlights, even stoplights
Blink a bright red and green
As the shoppers rush home with their treasures
Hear the snow crunch...

This was my Christmas wish, a dream-come-true. Let's visit our kids in Brooklyn in early December and experience the magic of NYC at Christmas. Traffic. Standing in line. Jockeying for a seat on the train. Adrenaline rush. The hype of the Big Apple is definitely on steroids during the holiday season. Shop windows and billboards display extravagant imaginings of designers and marketing gurus. Hotels, restuarants, and harbor lights twinkle in a particularly festive way. The proverbial "hustle and bustle" is palpable as subways screech through the annals of the city delivering us to museums, Times Square, SOHO, The 9/11 Memorial, Radio City Music Hall, and glorious vantage points from where we watch the nightlights waking up on the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. 

Just like in the movies, ice skaters spin figure-eights near the tree at Rockefeller Center. We pose  together at the spot where Nathan and Celina were photographed six years ago when they made a daytrip to the city and he proposed atop the Empire State building overlooking this city they have grown to love. 

The renowned Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall is nothing short of...well, spectacular!! The production, everything one would expect featuring those precision-trained Rockettes, is spell-binding. Of particular amazement is the fact that, in this day and age of political correctness, the performance remains totally Christmas-oriented. While snowflakes and nutcracker and Santa vignettes are feted, the event culminates with a glorious nativity scene in which scripture is quoted and the birth of Christ is portrayed. Show times happen six times per day on Saturdays, five on Sundays, four on weekdays between mid-November and mid-January each year since the 1930's.  Think of the number of people that are seeing the  message of the Savior's birth...witnessing the testimony of Emmanuel, God with us, that truth that remains constant through the ages.

Amidst the towering skyscrapers and the ancient awe of St. Patricks Cathedral, in the juxtaposition between historic and innovative architecture, among broken fragments and shimmering structures, we witnessed anew that there, remains, indeed, a foundation that is unshakeable, unchangeable, unalterable.

Thou time crumbles stone 

And the story grows old

The Savior we love still watches His fold.

And his star still shines over city and mart

And His voice still speaks to the listening heart.

PS The only thing we "ordered" for our gala weekend that we didn't get was a Thomas Kinkaid snowfall setting aglow street lights and dusting the Brooklyn brownstones. But all is righted with the news that our Brooklyn family is relocating to Atlanta in 2016!

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Returning to one's roots can be a little unsettling.

Things that once seemed to be huge have shrunk. The local swimming hole. The high school football field. The backyard where we played as children. The hills of the golf course where we sledded in snow. Some things, however, appear comfortably and predictably, to have stayed the same. The whistle and clatter of the freight train making it's way through the night. The strength of the iron fence bordering the cemetery on Southern Avenue. The face of that small child....until I realize that, of course, the face I am remembering (although exactly the same) is that of this child's grandparent from decades ago. And then there are the things that have made a shift almost beyond recognition. A totally new road diverts pass-through traffic from the business route that goes through town. The corner ice cream shop where we used to purchase a nickel cone that dripped double-dips down our arms on hot summer nights has now been transformed into a tattoo parlor. An abandoned lot now yawns in place of the movie theatre where we watched Maw and Paw Kettle for a quarter while munching popcorn that cost a dime. And the church where I was baptized, confirmed, and married is now gone. Totally obliterated. Evaporated without a trace, like it was never there.  Sometimes, the emotions are too hard to absorb all at once. 

Admittedly, fall brings out the melancholy in me. So, on a recent pilgrimage to my hometown, I collected leaves along with memories and reveled in the beauty of the present moment. I could not help contemplating how our God who is immutable ministers change in our lives that He might transform and conform us to His image. All the while,  He remains constant, steadfast, true. With leaves tucked between pages of books, I returned home thinking of those who have gone before. I ache with desire to preserve the inevitable fleeting of this season. Yet, I am thankful for new bloom and flower and leaf that will come as the next generation flourishes. 

1. Immortal, invisible, God only wise, 
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes, 
most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days, 
almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise. 

2. Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light, 
nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might; 
thy justice like mountains high soaring above 
thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love. 

3. To all, life thou givest, to both great and small; 
in all life thou livest, the true life of all; 
we blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree, 
and wither and perish, but naught changeth thee. 
 

These are my people. Photo albums and digital files track the journey of our lives together. My gathered-leaves are stashed between pages of books, under potted plants and strewn on the dining room table. Does God color the Autumn spectacularly that we might more highly prize all that is precious and fragile and fleeting?

Teach us to number our days that we may present to Thee a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Memory Lane & Lucas Street

I like fall:
it always smells smoky,
chimneys wake early,
the sun is poky;

Folks go past
in a hustle and bustle,
and when I scuff
in the leaves, they rustle.

I like fall:
all the hills are hazy,
and after a frost
the puddles look glazy;

And nuts rattle down
where nobody's living,
and pretty soon . . .
it will be THANKSGIVING.

by Aileen Fisher

And there's nothing like returning to Hometown USA where the landscapes are vibrant this time of year and every gust of wind produces a kaleidoscope of color swirling through the sky. Here's Lucas Street where I grew up, the sidewalk where I roller-skated and rode my bike, and the hill down which we raked the leaves into the street. Mother would wrap our hair in scarves so it wouldn't smell smoky and  the raking party ended with a bonfire in the street. We roasted marshmallows on sticks and the smoke curled into ribbons at days end. 

Here's the building where my daddy went to first grade, where I did as well, and where I graduated from high school. The old bell tower, rung only once a year by graduating seniors, is gone now. Along with that tradition, I recall the one that forbade underclassmen from entering from by any door other than the ones on either side, reserving the center doors for juniors and seniors. 

We gathered buckeyes from beneath the trees near where our parents and grandparents lay.

Aunt Christine recently turned ninety-eight. She's says that number doesn't bother her but the thought of ninety-nine sounds scary. Her treasured hand-written letters have become sparse in recent years, but I have a stack that I have saved, that I can read and re-read. She always began with "I am sitting at the southeast corner of the kitchen table"...or the "north end"...or the "west side". And so, today we sat around all sides and reminisced. 

There was always much work to do on the farm, but Aunt Cnristine took time to ease us "city girls" into the routine. She patiently let us bottle-feed the lambs, scoop grain for the calves, and pour milk into bowls for the ever-growing family of kittens. She took us to the woods and introduced us to wildflowers and mushrooms. To this day, I coax my husband into letting me spray in our own little woods so that I can save the trillium and the Jack-in-the-Pulpit that she taught me to recognize. 

Long before I was a mother, this lady was teaching me. She once remarked that it was hard to know which way to turn to get one's work done sometimes. Her theory was that first thing in the morning you take care of what yells or smells and the rest kind of falls into place. When I became a mother, I realized there were some days you really didn't get further than that. 

 I remember her saying she often would leave her work at the children's bedtime to read to them and lie down with them until they fell asleep when she would get up and finish her day. While other aunties might have been scurrying around in the kitchen, Aunt Christine always took time to have a project for us kids. She taught us to make doll dishes out of acorn hats or walnut shells and how to fashion ballerinas from hollyhock blossoms that danced in a bowl of water. Her eyes sparkled today as I reminded her of our fun memories. She mused thoughtfully, "Well, children are only young once, you know." How well we both understand that fact, now. 

How glad I am to have grown up in this sleepy little one-horse town. Today it was full of sunshine and leaves and blue sky and people who colored my childhood like the autumn's splendor.