Christmas Eve

Those soft, colored lights that make such a comfortable compromise –almost a real peace– with the darkness. The shiny glass bulbs and talismans that have the power to both cradle light and build tiny fires from memories that are almost lost.

The warmth from those fires is powerful out of all proportion: a window, a door, a looking glass through which you can catch glimpses of the child you once were, rising each morning of this season, alive with wonder and anticipation.

The smell of that tree is another gift from and to your memory, one more reminder of how keenly you could once hope (and can still hope) and how much you were once willing (and are still willing) to invest in that hope. A happy smell that’s hard-wired and tangled up in your skull with all the damage and darkness and bands of still startling light.

There’s an empty corner now where that tree should be, yet it stands there glimmering all the same when you turn out the lights, and in the morning you could almost swear you can smell it. After forty-four years your head can still manufacture that smell, can still produce an almost comforting composite of all the predecessors of your invisible tree.

The stockings that are not hung from the mantle are still hanging from the mantle. The dog that is not curled up near the bottom of the tree is still paddling in his sleep near the bottom of the tree, under which there are still presents waiting to be opened. There is still a carton of eggnog in the empty refrigerator. There are Christmas cards in the mailbox that has received no Christmas cards.

All those church bells that no longer exist and no longer ring, tonight you will hear them ringing in the darkness, ringing out all over town. In your dreams, at least, the animals will still kneel, will still speak. A promise will be made and a gift acknowledged. In the darkness outside of town, along gravel roads beside snow-covered fields, you will still see stars tumbling down the sky.

And if there is no cake at midnight, so be it. You will still have your frosting, and still recognize it with gratitude.

You will eat your frosting out of a can, with a plastic spoon if need be, or with your fingers, and through some miracle that is as much a miracle as any other your heart will still feel full to the point of bursting.