Assembling

 Yesterday morning my eldest daughter woke in our home for only the second time since the pandemic began. We knew having her here was a risk, but I couldn't bear the idea of being separated at Christmas. (We did everything we could to mitigate the risk, including testing and quarantine leading up to her visit).

In this season I usually sneak downstairs before anyone else is awake to meditate, read, or write in front of the Christmas tree instead of at my desk, then go downstairs to work out on the treadmill, with Christmas music in my earbuds. I need this alone time to stay present during the day. But yesterday I heard my eldest waking and letting the dogs out in the midst of a blizzard. It occurred to me that it was perhaps the first time someone else had let them out in the pre-dawn darkness before an inevitable accident, and I felt grateful and considered sleeping in. 

Instead I went downstairs. She was by then seated in front of the lit tree, having lit the Advent candles. We sat together. I read a meditation. She told me how lucky she was to still have me after some recent difficult days in our relationship. The last time she came home, in July, it was for a different kind of ritual. We built a bonfire in our backyard, and she burned the letters from a man who had been abusive to all of us, who continues to harass us, whom she once loved--dozens of them. 

I looked over at the four candles burning bright and remembered that other fire. I said I was here forever and always, something I've been saying since she came to live with me more than 12 years ago, when I was a single mom and much younger. After some time in silence, out of the blue, she began to sing Silent Night, then Star of Wonder, then Away in a Manger, and we sat there, singing off key together, until dawn began to edge over the horizon and I knew I had to go give our son his meds. 

Later that day, my wife, a nurse who has been on the front lines of the COVID crisis at a small town hospital a half hour from our home, drove through a harrowing blizzard to get her COVID vaccine. We waited eagerly for her return, and when she arrived, the children surrounded her, asking if it hurt, how the roads were, how far in front of her she'd been able to see, and, in the midst of the string of questions, if she could help assemble, right that minute, a kitchen set we had bought for the 1 1/2 year old while he was napping.

I made tea and tried to get her to sit first, but instead the rest of the day was a scramble of wrapping and assembling goodie boxes to give away and, yes, assembling the kitchen set.

I didn't even try to help with that. My wife and our 18-year-old, the baby's mama, worked on it while our 15-year-old ate snacks and played games on her phone at the kitchen table, I played raucously with the littlest one, my eldest took a long bath, and our son worked on a Christmas craft. But the assembly did not take the 2-3 hours promised on the box. We ended up getting a take out supper and devouring treats before my spouse and 18-year-old continued their work. 

We gathered at the kitchen table to tease my spouse and 18-year-old mercilessly. For more than an hour, we were all there, laughing hysterically together, snapping and posting photos and comments about the process, until it was finally done (six hours total).

Then, when everyone had gone to sleep or at least to their rooms, my wife and I made banana bread for tomorrow morning and sat on the couch in front of the Christmas tree. It had been ages since we'd had a quiet moment like this when we were both awake. We talked about the promise the vaccine offers, the amazingly kind and joyful way all of the kids had interacted tonight (also rare), and how much things had changed over the last year.

Here we are, assembling our lives again after so much intense trauma this year, I thought, the Advent candles burning bright even through the lingering grief and fear. The promise of new life is so close. The days of winter vacation (well, at least for me and the kids) stretch out before us. A new president (from whom we are probably expecting too much) will be taking office in less than a month. The vaccine is finally here, available to nurses like my spouse who have seen things the rest of us can't even imagine this year.  

As I write this I am sitting in my usual place, the fattest of our cats a heavy weight on my chest, my daughter sleeping in the next room with the dogs. It's time now to go give our son his meds and past time to let the dogs out. I've long since passed the time I usually transition from my spiritual time to working out, but I am forgiving myself--sitting still seems especially important, and poignant, right now. In a minute I will get up to blow out the candles, but first. I will sit for the few moments I have left and just take it in, this deep, abiding joy.