Falling faintly through the universe

This might seem an odd choice for Christmas Eve, but as fate would have it this year has become the time for a rather different sort of Christmas.  I'm happy to be home, once again surrounded by the simple things that heal and soothe me, but am all too constantly aware that this wound that has been wrenched across our family will take more than a glass of mulled wine in front of a wood fire to cure.  This Christmas, death and loss have laid down their burdensome cargo just a little too close to the door.  I listen to Christmas carols, light candles, cook food, and pour an extra slug of rum into eggnog on the sly.  I laugh at Ralphie, I change the station when "Santa Baby" comes on, I finish the last of my wrapping, and I look into the eyes of the people I love and see the happiness tinged with hollowness that I feel reflected back at me.  I am happy to be home, happy to be in my favorite place surrounded by two of my favorite people on one of my favorite days of the year.  But even as I laugh, stick tape, sing along, or stir vanilla into eggs and cream, a touch of sadness is just over my left shoulder.  I see it all the time, just out of the corner of my eye, coloring my vision of everything.

This morning, my Mom, Dad, and I skyped with Eve and Bradley in Okinawa and we read "A Christmas Memory."  All three of us stateside took turns passing the book around when a particular sentence or passage made us choke up.  It must seem so weird to outsiders that one of our most precious Christmas traditions is one where we all end up in tears.  I guess it's cathartic in a way.  "A Christmas Memory" is not supposed to be read in the morning, but we made allowances for the 14-hour time difference all the way over in Japan.  And after that, the folks and I made breakfast, cleaned up, took naps, made dinner, cleaned up, opened our stocking gifts (another Christmas Eve tradition), and then had neighbors over for drinks.  It went pretty well; we all had a good time and lots of laughs.

I just finished making our Baked French Toast for tomorrow morning, the fire is burning, a glass of malbec is at my elbow, and I'm about to look through our "Christmas in America" coffee table book, which happens to be one of my own private little Christmas Eve traditions once everyone else has settled down for their winter's nap.

As always, I am happy to be here.  Not everything is how I would wish it, but then again life never is.

Wherever you are, whatever your situation, I say truly that I hope this holiday is a happy one for you.  Filled with family, friends, devotion, gaiety, vodka crans, whatever it takes.  Merry Christmas.

For my last (or maybe next-to-last) Christmas Post, I give you a piece that remains very close to my heart.  One that has very happy memories for me despite its sad subject matter.  It's a Christmas story, although maybe not of the type you're used to.  I'd like to take this moment to say Thank You to Dr. Coilin Owens, my grad school James Joyce professor, whose enthusiasm and boundless knowledge of Joyce was completely infectious.

Because it really needs no preamble, here is a link to the complete text of The Dead, by James Joyce.

And because it's long and I know most of you won't read it, or at least won't read all the way to the end, here are the last two paragraphs which are my favorite passages from the whole piece.  Read it aloud.  It doesn't matter if you don't know the context.  Just listen to how the words roll against each other, how the images spill out over themselves.  Pay attention to what happens inside your chest when you do.  This is how language is shaped and honed to create the most perfect beauty.

(And yes, this passage is one half of my inspiration for the title of this blog.)
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"Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

-- James Joyce, "The Dead"