Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas and Happy Hannukah, Bad Blood and the Ballet, Wishes and Hopes for a New Year

Solstice double rainbow

Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, and Happy Hannukah!

It’s 12:01 on the 22nd as I draft this post, the moon is rising on the horizon, and today was drizzly, with a beautiful double rainbow in the middle of the afternoon. Glenn and I spent are spending a quiet holiday—we went for dinner at the Fireside Lounge at Willows Lodge, where we saw two friends from our neighborhood pumpkin farm—one who was the performer of the live music. We also visited Chateau Ste Michelle, which was decorated for the holidays, and playing holiday music. We had the last book club of the year at J. Bookwalter’s winery, where we had mulled wine and a terrific discussion. We’re also delivering cookies to our neighbors and still working on holiday cards.

Woodinville lights with bunnies

It’s a quiet holiday here, which is good. I still have an MRI and more blood work to do before the end of the year. Last week I had some blood work with 40-some results, with about seven troubling “abnormal” results. Sobering, sure, but it’s not the first time immunologists and oncologists have given me bad news before a holiday, and it probably won’t be the last. On a happier note, I’ll be going to the ballet before the end of the year to see the Grand Kyiv Ballet—my little brother last saw them in the Ukraine before the war, dancing Swan Lake—perform The Snow Queen, one of my favorite fairy stories that Disney tried to ruin with Frozen. I have been to the ballet maybe a handful of times—I’ve seen The Nutcracker more than once, Peter and the Wolf, Swan Lake, and maybe one or two others. The last time I went I was writing cultural pieces for (laugh if you want) America Online. So that’s been some years. It’s good to make time for these kinds of experiences, especially if you’re in the winter, in need of beauty, of feeling something new, awe, etc., that sometimes only art can bring.

You, like me, may be struggling to feel hopeful about the new year, with the next presidency of possibly our worst president ever (not discounting terrible presidents of the past Woodrow Wilson, James Buchanan, and Andrew Jackson) and the vague rumblings of another pandemic—the bird flu—on the horizon. Sometimes it’s hard to see the moonrise when the glow of fire blots it out, an experience too frequent recently here on the West Coast. But the moon is there, all the same.

I’ve got a residency planned in January, and looking at more travel – residencies, classes in Europe, maybe. I’ve got a new book manuscript that I’m sending out to new publishers. Even if my health situation wobbles—as it has for years—there will still be joy and beauty ahead. Hospitals and medical tests and terrible politics can’t blot all that out. Read writers who lived through plagues and world wars; they all have something to say to us, now. Hope and joy can seem unreasonable in certain circumstances, but I will say sometimes hard time can push us to try new things, to take leaps we might not have taken in happier times, to find courage. Or maybe I will take hibernation to new heights. Either way, see you on the other side of the light, with days stretching longer before us. Here’s wishing you all a happy holiday season and happy-as-possible new year.