Day after Christmas
It came and went like a flash. I baked and gave away 30 some coffee can brown breads—my usual Christmas gifting. In return I was showered in gifts, real things like a bottle of Ouzo, a Pyrex bowl, a mystery spice that smells of Middle East, and 30 pounds of grass-fed beef; and gifts of spirit—kind words about my work and my own words in these short blurbs anchored by the Pandemic.
The gift that warmed my heart was the grandson who came home from his new mill job in La Grande, with the woman—girlfriend—I knew only from afar. He’s had a tough few years: an enthusiastic try at college broken by personal problems and the pandemic; a try at Portland with his mom in early covid days that brought him home without a job and with the disease. This was before the vaccine, and he weathered it as I quarantined it, and started writing these blog posts.
He healed, had some lingering after-effects, but they stopped when he got his first shot of the vaccine. He went to work at Safeway, minimum wage, the night shift. Did not like the shift or the working conditions, but plowed on. The Covid rescue $1400 and his first paychecks let him buy his grandma’s old Subaru, and he kept saving money while he looked for other work. He landed the mill job a few weeks ago, and had enough money for first and last and deposits and all you need to set up house in an overpriced apartment. (They are all overpriced now. In my day they said housing should be no more than a quarter of your income; now it’s closer to half for young folks starting out.)
They came home and we had ribs on Christmas Eve, and opened presents on Christmas morning. It was a Christmas of what Dylan Thomas called “useful presents”: gloves and thermal socks, coats and cooking gear, the kind of gifts that would have been shoved aside with a shrug a few years ago, but were warmly welcomed this year.
The new woman in his life was a pleasure. She’s had her own troubled life, and has a job lined up working with troubled teens. And she has local family ties. I liked her, liked them together.
As we careen towards New Years, I think of these things and the granddaughter coming home for the New Years polar plunge. Last night, belly full of a fine Christmas meal with friends, I thought of Dylan Thomas’s Christmas poem, and “I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.”
Most of us will weather this Covid; some will grow stronger from it. We’ll do it by family ties and leaning on friends.
The best of New Years to you and yours!
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