we had a list of possibilities. it was a list of things to do, places to go before or during christmas. since our adult children and their partners would not be here, we knew we needed to keep busy, to create more hustle and bustle. missing your grown-up kids is ever-present, even when you are happy for them.

so we started a list: the botanic garden lightscape display, the garden domes, splitting a burger at a favorite bistro in a little town square across from the gazebo lit with christmas tree and menorah, a park festive with big illuminated balls of color. we included luminaria, a bonfire on christmas eve, singing carols around the piano in my studio.

as it turned out, we lit three luminaria and, on a rainy christmas eve, placed them inside, in front of our fireplace.

and we hiked on christmas day. bundled up, we took to our loop – this place where – for years now – we have sorted through life.

yesterday (which isn’t really yesterday now but is last week) we had a hard day. i wonder how many of us had a hard day. it was the day after christmas, the day when you realize all the hoopla is over, all the preparations done, the anticipation breathing a sigh. it is the day that sort of places you back into the calendar, a place that had – temporarily – been suspended in celebration, big or little.

it was on that day i realized we had not stood at the piano and sang carols.

this is the fifth year we – or even i – have not stood at the piano – any piano, any where – and sang carols.

i thought i was ready.

because five years is a long time for someone who spent most of her adult life – at christmas – creating experiences through music – for christmas.

i thought that carols would be the way back in, the easiest path back.

but somehow it got lost in whatever else we did on those two days of christmasing.

and, when it dawned on me we hadn’t, it didn’t fall gently.

in some self-indulgent raw disclosure to you, i can say this fiveyears has taken a toll. i can see now that being fired broke my spirit, that being fired triggered unmentionable earlier pain that further entrenched the breaking.

and i wonder now if it wasn’t so much about stopping my music. i wonder if breaking my spirit was actually their intention.

wow.

healing takes a long time.

and now this is the last day left to this year and we will cross into the year when i will turn 67. and i shake my head – vehemently, to unstick the clinging tarry goo – and throw a rope to my spirit that is trying to tread the water of eh-it’s-ok.

it’s done. it’s enough.

i have decided to decide.

i’m not positive that is possible; i’m not even sure that is possible.

but this piano-less existence is hard and i wonder if it is harder than what it will actually feel like AT the piano.

it won’t be carols.

but it will be something. something gut-worthy of answering the tug, something that makes me show up, that makes the walls of my studio vibrate with fortissimo and neck-crane to hear breath in the rests.

in the new year, little by little. kintsugi-ing.

and – even now – even in the middle of deciding to decide – part of me wants to add: maybe.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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