What Are You Wishing For? A Quiet Holiday Weekend, and Welcome to December!

Glenn and I on Thanksgiving, enjoying the local color

A Quiet Holiday Weekend

It’s almost the end of the holiday weekend, and it was the quietest Thanksgiving holiday weekend we’ve had in years. We had a small, normal-portioned dinner on Thanksgiving itself (delicious though! All our favorite dishes from Thanksgiving, no turkey, and duck legs!), didn’t really go shopping on Black Friday, choosing instead to visit various festively decorated venues around Woodinville, including listening to live music from the gigantic fireplace at Willows Lodge, and picking up two bottles of wine at Chateau Ste Michelle for when our friends and my family come over during the holiday. (We only really keep wine in the house when we have company! Even though we live in a neighborhood that holds a record for the most wine tasting rooms per square foot or something!)

Glenn and I with our big Christmas tree

So, we watched all the holiday favorite movies and specials, decorated two trees (my new tradition of having a winter Snow Queen tree, and the regular one which is full of foxes and hedgehogs and peacocks) and tried not to eat at all the day after Thanksgiving—except Glenn did do a wine tasting! I even wrote a couple of poems.

I appreciate that I live in a beautiful place, with apples hanging off the leafless trees in November, where we can stop at three different places less than a mile away that offer parties and live music and wine tastings and gorgeous landscaping. I actually appreciated a quiet, no-stress holiday. I missed the hustle and bustle and company, but on the other hand, there are benefits, especially with MS, to taking it easy when you can, and trying to enjoy the little things.

Snow Queen Tree

What Are You Wishing For?

I am getting to the age where I think of the holidays with not as much anticipation as nostalgia. Do you remember when you used to make lists for Christmas, when you looked forward to that one toy or a pony or you wished to become a cat? (That last one was me.)

As adults, we wish for different kinds of things. Good health, good friends, world peace. The car and house not breaking down at important moments. It’s all quotidian. One of the good things about being a poet is the idea that we can still have our dreams come true – we might win that one book prize, the MacArthur Genius Grant, whatever. One of my  dream journals sent me an acceptance and it was from one of my dream poetry people. I applied for one of those big things I always felt too insignificant to apply for and I am really trying not to get my hopes up (but if you want to send some good energy my way, you are welcome)! I just found out I had a poem from my newest manuscript – “Self-Portrait as Pretty Monster” – nominated for a Pushcart – thanks to Vince Gotera and Star*Line! I’ve been nominated for the Pushcart before, but again, I try not to be cynical – hey, it could be my year?

I try not to stress out about my health which is so up and down but I want to get these two poetry books out while I can still walk with a cane and think reasonably. MS is so unpredictable. I’m pretty proactive about trying to do the best for my health, but not everything’s under my control (a fact that makes me somewhat anxious as a person who likes to be in control of things). Poetry and Health – both are out of my control, actually. The health of myself or my husband or my loved ones – we don’t really get to control the timing of when bad things happen. We don’t control when good things happen, either. It’s enough to wish, I guess.

Apples on leafless trees

Welcome to December!

Winter seems to have arrived early here, frost on the porch early in the morning, frozen hummingbird feeders, and legitimately cold temperatures that require an honest-to-goodness sweater-and-coat combo. It seems like this year went too fast, didn’t it? I made up a collage of pictures of this year – AWP in Portland in March, my 25th Anniversary trip to Snoqualmie Falls and then the Oregon Coast, get-togethers with friends and family. Not as many adventures as I would have liked, but also slightly fewer hospital trips than the previous two years, too, thank goodness. We have one last month to make good memories in 2019.

Anna’s hummingbird

And what is on tap for next year, 2020? A new decade? New wishes, new dreams? Hummingbirds always seem like good luck, don’t they? I like the do some positive meditations this time of year – different than my more achievement-oriented New Year’s resolutions – about the things I’m hoping will happen in the year to come. I’m wishing you a happy December, wishing you light, peace, love, and as many books by the fireplace as you want.

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