December 29, 2013
Sunday

“It is December in the garden,
. . .

When did December become
mere loneliness?

the constricted light,
the year closing down on itself with all
the vacancies of January ahead, leave me
unreconciled even to beauty.
When will you be coming back?”
— Linda Pastan, b. 1931
American poet
from “The Letter”

It rained all day. I didn’t get to church, neither my own nor the Catholic parish of my childhood, now in a new building but still using the creche that is as old as I am. I’m coming down with something, either another cold or a seasonal depression. I’ll fall short of posting 31 times for Holidailies, but not nearly as short as last year nor the year before, so that’s something. I’m sighing a lot, over things I have done and things I have left undone.

Linda Pastan’s poem is enclosed in quotations marks. It is presented as a letter, addressed to someone unnamed from whom the speaker is separated. One of the things I’ve left undone this season is the writing of my end-of-year letter, traditionally dated on the Feast of Stephen and mailed on New Year’s Eve. It’s in lieu of a Christmas card, and I haven’t done it since 2006, so there are a lot of people who haven’t heard from me in a long time. I wonder if they remember me. So many of them I want to write more personal notes to. Remember our conversation in Staples in 2008? or I’ve never forgotten the get-well gift you brought after my thyroid surgery in 1988, or I haven’t seen you since August. When are you coming back?