Solstice

 

Our small solstice fire.  On the solstice we eat dinner by candle light and (starting this year) have a small fire in which we burn our hopes and wishes for the upcoming year.  Liam wished for "fish." (I have no idea where this came from.)  And then he didn't want to burn his wish. 

"Mommy, if it goes into the fire and up in the air, will it come back?"
"Well, not exactly.  We believe that if you burn your wish on the winter solstice it puts it out into the world in a very special way, so everything, everywhere will know your wish and be able to help you with it."
"I don't want to."

Okay.  So, maybe not quite the thing for a three and a half year old, especially one with his second cold in three weeks.  We taped his wish to the refrigerator.  Fish.

My sister is here.  We are trying to enjoy Christmas.  Trying to be very gentle with ourselves.  I am not sending Christmas cards.  Not yet ready to sort through the last photos and movies on the camera, or any of the other things that eventually must be done.  Not writing the thank you notes I should write, yet. Still ambushed by sadness daily -- an ad for a movie I know Will would like to see, he loved movies, a scrap of paper with a doctor's phone number, the sky in early morning, a long drive, something I know he would think was funny, something I want to ask him..

Someone wrote me and said: "we'll be thinking of you and your son as you make your lives together in this new way."  That's really what it is, it's a process of finding ourselves, our new selves, together and separately.

Will made the bowl we're using as a fire pit.  Years ago, before I knew him, he did a lot of metal work and sculpture and we're very glad to have a lot of the results -- the fire bowl included.   And we really miss Will.

(Auntie Chris lit the fire by flashlight.  A thoroughly modern solstice.)