About six and a half years ago, I was walking through Birmingham’s botanical gardens on a late spring evening before the sun had descended.  When I emerged from the wooded section–a place where I spent a lot of time on my favorite bench, praying to and yelling at God–I was startled to find a crowd of a couple hundred spread out across the lawn.  As I continued walking toward the exit, head down and willing myself not to have to talk to anyone, I heard the strains of an orchestra warming up, and then…the theme music of Star Wars began to play.  Looking back at all the happy families and couples on their blankets, I shed a tear of self-pity at the night ahead of me: takeout and a movie on the couch, party of one.  And then, in the stillness of my aching heart, the voice I’ve come to know as both shout and whisper, sudden and constant, mysterious and crystal-clear…in short, holy, telling me: The love in your heart will be met.

I wanted to believe it.  But now I know that I didn’t, because if I had really believed that good things were possible, that a life I could never earn waited ahead for me, that the current despair in which I was living was only temporary, then I wouldn’t have spent so much time fighting.  I wouldn’t have felt so angry and hopeless, so tired from waging war against the way things were.  I thought then that I was miserable because I was single and my life didn’t contain everything I wanted, settled into perfect little rows.  Now I know that my misery came from my grasping at a life, at circumstances and relationships, that didn’t have my name on them.

Cut to me, The Husband, The Sis, and The Bro-in-Law sitting in the nosebleeds last night at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s New Year’s Eve concert.  Red wine in one hand, TH in the other, and everything from Italian opera to music from Jersey Boys filling our ears.  Even better than Star Wars.  This is what it feels like to be sitting in the seat with my name on it.

The night before, TH and I walked across the street for a cocktail party at our neighbors’, a getting-to-know-the-new-people (us) holiday event.  Glasses were filled, questions were asked, welcomes were given.  This is not really our scene, being that it involves other people’s couches rather than our own and…well, other people. But we’ve reached that place in our lives where hiding behind the blinds upon the ringing of the doorbell doesn’t go over as well as it did in New York.  Here, now, we are meant to know and be known, to give out a spare key to someone we’ve come to trust, to wave as we’re pulling out of the driveway, to pick up people’s mail because they picked up ours last time, to bring covered dishes over and accept them when they are brought.  My New York sensibility has been a little shaken by all this friendliness–what’s their angle?!–but those big-city walls don’t stand up in the suburbs, so it looks like we’re about to learn some names.

And then there are the people who should already know you, those wacky sharers of genetic material and marital bonds I like to call family, and doesn’t this time of year just bring out all the dysfunction in yours and mine?  Christmas Day we ate dinner with one grandmother’s ashes resting peacefully in the next room, and a week later I’m on the phone with the other grandmother, discussing poor memories and unfair accusations.  Lately there has been a mad dash to her jewelry drawer coupled with claims on watches and rings in a, to me, misguided focus on what happens after she’s gone at the expense of what’s happening while she’s alive.  Apparently, the end result of this circus is gemological compensation to those who have best proved their love over the years.  Which is funny (and by funny I mean not ha-ha but EFFING RIDICULOUS), because I seem to remember being taught that love is not earned.  Then again, I grew up in the Bible Belt, where the same people who tell you that Jesus is love are later spotted holding signs that say you’re going to hell if you disagree with them, so maybe this is the sort of “Bless your heart” mentality that lets people get away with saying one thing and meaning another.  Anyway, the upshot of that call was me being told I never call by someone who admitted she can’t remember when I do call.  We then proceeded to have the same conversation about the new house that we had two days ago.

And all the while, I looked down at the rings on my hand, rings not earned but given in love, rings waited for in faith, rings meant not as a reward but as a promise, and I knew that I have all the jewelry–and love–that I need.  So I put the phone down and laced up my shoes, and TH and I went on our first run together.  He insisted on keeping pace with me, which resulted in my running faster and his running slower.  That makes me feel guilty until I realize that I’m the one who got (forced) him out there in the first place, so I guess I don’t mind after all if it’s a metaphor for our relationship.  Especially when, at the end of the run, we give each other a high-five and walk home, hand-in-ring-filled-hand.

Friday morning, Christmas Eve.  I wake up in my brand-new master suite, beside my loving husband–the one I waited for my whole life–and pad into our just-finished master bathroom, complete with gorgeous tiling, glass-encased shower, pristine soaking tub, and enormous walk-in closet (built by the hands of The Husband and his dad).  Then I pick up the toothpaste and want to scream.

I follow this up by heading toward our now-empty king-sized bed and, ignoring the cozy new comforter and higher-than-we-should-have-sprung-for-thread-count sheets, release a wall-shaking sigh, the sigh of martyrs heard ’round the world, as I jerk said sheets around in a resentful solo bed-making session.

Is there anyone out there who has held her dreams in the palm of her hand, stared them in the face, and managed to find something to complain about…anyone?  Why am I the only one raising my hand?

And now, as I type these words while nestled in our new furniture with TH reading beside me, the glare of sunlight bounces off the whitest of snows and through our window, lighting up my computer screen and blinding my eyes and interrupting my thoughts.  Again, I sigh deeply.

Is there anything my imperfect heart, given its way, won’t try to spoil?

All the great love stories and fairy tales and even romantic comedies conclude at the climactic kiss, and we as the audience are left to wonder what “happily ever after” actually looks like.  Surely Cinderella, having just escaped the daily drudgery of chimney-sweeping and floor-mopping, didn’t have to pick up a broom again, ever?  Surely the Prince squeezed the toothpaste from the bottom, like she did?  Surely he made the bed every day?

This part–the part after the wandering and searching, the part after the blind dates and hopelessness, the part after the white dress and I-dos–this is the part where a new life begins and we are left to figure out just what the hell that means and how we are supposed to survive it.  Flaubert believed that “anticipation is the purest form of pleasure”–and if that’s true (and how depressing if it is!)–then all of life prior to the day we get what we want is Christmas Eve, and the moment the plane touches down from the honeymoon is the sunrise of Boxing Day.

Last night, TH and I drove to pick up takeout and as he walked inside Taco Mac to retrieve it–gallantly sparing me from the cold–the song that we danced to at our wedding floated from my iPod and out of the car radio to meet me, sitting in the passenger seat.  Once upon a time I wore a flowing train and a veil, TH a tux, and we glided around a room filled with our nearest and dearest as YD played and sang this tune; present-day I wore pajama pants, greasy hair, and no makeup as I waited for cheese dip to appear.

I have never been good with The Day After.  All of the excitement leading up to The Big Event–birthdays, vacations, Christmas–becomes a black hole the moment the clock strikes midnight and I wake up the next morning to the remains of the party, wrapping paper and half-empty glasses and plates of crumbs, and a gnawing sadness.  And as I read emails and Facebook status updates full of the exclamation points and smiley faces of people who never ever seem to be down about anything— !!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 –I wonder if the brokenness that resides in various corners of our fallen world has touched my heart in some irretrievable way and I am destined to be a selfish, petulant, pessimistic whiner No Matter What.

This is what December 26 looks like for me.

But life is full of Boxing Days, not to mention the three-day-period from Good Friday to Easter, and as one who is self-aware enough to know that my natural state is closer to snark than emoticons, I have to cling to the truth.  I have to preach it to myself over and over, have to tell the story to myself until the scales fall from my eyes and the wax clears from my ears and the traffic on 400 starts moving.  I have to remember that the only No Matter What that exists for me began on December 25…and never went away.  I have to believe that Flaubert was wrong, that toothpaste is not a life-or-death issue, that–as TH reminded me the other day–we can laugh about these things.  When the decorations have been stowed away and the lights have been dimmed and the empty boxes and wrapping paper populate the curb–then is the time when, finally knowing what was inside the gift I had waited to open, I can actually hold it in my hand…or, more often, be held by it.  And I can watch as Life, not anticipation but the Real Thing, unfolds in its own way and time, with its own laughter and tears, in so many forms but always the kind that loves even my greasy hair and pajama pants and makes my heart anything but irretrievable.

The Niece, like most babies, is mesmerized by anything shiny.  One look at the lamp in the corner can silence her tears and render her hypnotized.  For two minutes, at least–an eternity in infant time.  When I walked her over to her first Christmas tree the other night, her awe was palpable.  Her eyes widened and her hands stilled, resting on her butterball chest.  The hint of a smile danced on her lips, and suddenly, as I held her at my total mercy, I was overwhelmed by what happened at the first Christmas.

Ricky Bobby’s favorite Jesus may have been the baby one, all eight pounds and six ounces of him in his golden fleece diapers , but the infant Jesus is the one I’ve probably considered the least.  I personally and unsurprisingly adore the Wedding at Cana, Water-to-Wine Jesus.  The Walking-on-Water Jesus is impressive.  The Angry Temple Jesus makes me want to throw out some fist-pumps.  And Jesus on the cross–well, there is no comparison.

But what am I supposed to do with a baby?  Sometimes I think I have no more concept of it than I did as a kindergartener singing “Away in a Manger” on a local television program (call my agent for footage).  God as a baby, to be honest, always seemed a little creepy to me.  A means to an end.  A one-time-of-year part of the story to be mentioned in song and then fast forwarded through to get to the good part.

Then I saw The Niece look at that tree.  No, that’s not even it.  Just–then I saw The Niece.

Never is love more vulnerable than on the face of an innocent baby.  Never is it more prone to danger, more dependent on goodwill.  Never is it more perfectly pure.  And never has it stayed that way.  Well, except for that one time.

People talk a lot about what Christmas means, everything from the hands-off “Happy Holidays” to the in-your-face “Jesus is the Reason for the Season”.  Grace, mercy, love, charity, peace…all good things.  But you can’t just give them away as a gift certificate or receive them in a wrapped box.  You can’t just will them into existence and maintain them for a lifetime.  Or a four-week period.  (And if you think you can, then I invite you to take a ride with me down Peachtree Road in Buckhead right now, or walk with me through the food court at Perimeter Mall during lunch today.)  These perfectly warm and fuzzy ideals have to come from somewhere and must have a lifespan upheld by something other than my unreliable intentions.

Responding to his nephew’s good cheer, Scrooge said, “You keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”  This is not the language of tolerance–it is the language of isolation.  God became a baby, however unreal or creepy it may seem, so that in the midst of the world’s madness, our minds and hearts could settle on One thing and rest there.  No hope could be less exclusive, no joy more all-encompassing.  Grace, mercy, love, charity, and peace have a home, and it is on the face of an infant whose beginnings could not have been more ignoble and whose death could not have looked more like defeat.  Only in one story is a trough a throne.

Most days (who am I kidding?  Every day) I’m more like Scrooge than the Wise Men.  How thankful I am for tales with a twist, for stories of redemption.  For the best one of them ever being true.

Born that man no more may die.

Well, the sequined skirt and shiny heels will have to wait.

Saturday began with an early-morning knock on the door.  Naturally, the cable man is only punctual when his call time is dawn (our no-kids dawn, anyway, a time I won’t provide here for fear of retributive actual-dawn phone calls).  Shortly behind him came the furniture deliverymen and the tub-faucet-hole-driller (apparently, this is a job).  In the space of ten minutes, our house went from perfect stillness to total chaos.  And more dust.

I escaped to McDonald’s to pick up breakfast.

Once I was back home devouring my bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, I got a phone call from The Sis.  “Bad news,” she said, and followed that greeting with details of The Brother-in-Law’s sudden decimation at the hands of a violent stomach bug.  Our dinner-and-symphony plans hung in the balance as his puking shook the walls of their house. (“It’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard,” The Sis, mother of a newborn baby and incessantly barking dog, told me.)

I had already decided it was going to be a lazy day of sporadic unpacking and consistent movie-watching from my new favorite oversized chair.  In between Definitely, Maybe and Sex and the City 2 (don’t hate me because I fall victim to shameless rom-com marketing ploys), as I hovered over a box full of dishes and considered a new form of shabby chic living called Dishes at Foot Level, my phone rang.  And then, news that my ninety-nine year-0ld grandmother had just passed away, even as The Dad was in transit to say his goodbyes.

Well isn’t this day just a bitch from hell, I thought.  Then I returned to the oversized chair and planted myself in tearful defiance until The Husband got home from Home Depot.

My grandmother would have loved the sequined skirt.  Louise Strickland was not your mother’s grandmother.  For reasons about which I’m still unclear, The Mom and Sis and all the other female members of our family called her Mom.  The Dad and his two brothers opted for the more formal Mother.  She raised all three of them on a teacher’s salary after my grandfather died when they were young.  There are so many Mom stories it’s ridiculous–like her legendary shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus, or how many times she sent The Dad and his brothers off to find the perfect switch with which to spank them–but what I remember most about her is her never-waning sense of style.  She would show up for a Christmas visit in her black leather skirt and heels, and while the warmest thing about her was her red cashmere turtleneck sweater, I never doubted her love.  She just didn’t express it with chocolate chip cookies and bedtime stories.  One Christmas, The Mom’s jaw dropped in shock when The Sis and I opened our gifts from Mom and each pulled out wildly-patterned silk panties.

I was ten.  Since then, I’ve learned to appreciate atypical expressions of love.

Even when she moved into the nursing home, she demanded that her hair be styled weekly (and colored its once-natural red).  She was driving well into her eighties and mowing her lawn regularly until she fell and broke her hip.  She survived cancer, world wars, and our family.  She was one hell of a woman.

Though she’s been gone from us, mentally, for quite awhile, her leaving this earth hit me like a ton of bricks.  The swinging kind that keeps returning to land in my gut.

So after all that, The Brother-in-Law did not recover in time for us to keep our plans.  The Husband and I got some takeout from the gourmet grocery store and, at my request and through some tears, a bottle of champagne to celebrate our successful move.

“Are you okay celebrating today?” he asked me as I blew snot into my sleeve.

And I was.  Not because I’ll use any excuse to drink a bottle of champagne (okay, maybe partly because of that), but because there will be other symphony nights, much to TH’s chagrin.  And because, rather than discrete unconnected moments, life is formed by all the things that mean something to us, tied together in a pattern beyond our understanding that somehow ends up being more beautiful than anything we could create ourselves.  Because I will wear that skirt and those heels, and when I do I’ll think of my grandmother and how much she would approve of my outfit.  Then I’ll cry a little.   And then I’ll look at The Niece, who has Mom’s eyes and her red hair, and be thankful for the many ways in which our loved ones never leave.

Question: What are two former New Yorkers supposed to do with all this space?

Answer: Anything we want.*

*(within financial reason)

In the words of one of my besties, RC:  Welcome home.

OK, so here’s the deal: I took a week off to go down to the Gulf Coast and vacation with the fam/prepare for the wedding (neither of which turns out to be relaxing).  Then I got hitched.  Then I took another week off for my honeymoon.  And in none of the beautiful seaside locales I visited did I have access to reliable interwebs.  So for two weeks, words were scurrying around inside me, undocumented, unorganized, and sometimes not even completely formed.  I made occasional notes in my journal and stuck my nose in books and sucked down daiquiris just to keep the word storm under control, i.e. prevent a violent verbal explosive reaction to all the emotional and life-changing events I experienced in fourteen days.  I did manage to grab an hour by myself during the first week and type up a Word document that is my next entry, dated appropriately.  Now that I’m back to the real world and the laundry and thank-you notes are done (go me!!!) and no one is bringing me drinks (boo!), it is my goal to give all those words a place to land.  So stay tuned…

Having arrived back in New York from California at 1 am this morning, and considering that this time yesterday I was just waking up to seventy degrees and sun, I am struggling a little.  But there is lots to write and I’ll get to it shortly…

I have plenty of problems with the current administration, but today was just shocking.  The first family’s official photo was taken.  Notice anything missing?  Maybe it’s me, but I find it hard to trust anyone who doesn’t deem their dog worthy of being a part of the family photo.

One of the first things the BF and I will do after we leave NYC is buy a puppy.  Actually, two.  He wants a big one and I want a small-to-medium one.  Until then, here are two members of MY family.