In Samuel Beckett’s existential masterpiece “Waiting for Godot,” two tramps, clowns, vagabonds, whatever you choose to call them, are waiting for Godot. Alas! Poor Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), little do they know: Godot is never going to come.

Well, call me Didi or Gogo, but I, too, am waiting for Godot. Except my Godot isn’t someone, it’s something. It’s spring.

We seem to be mired in a long daisy chain of chilly, damp, gray days, one after another, an endless string of false hope. Now if these interminable dank days were a string of glowing gray pearls, I’d buy them in a heartbeat, have them gift wrapped in one of Tiffany’s little blue bags, and give them to my wife as a present. But these days aren’t pearls; they’re twenty-four hours of cold, gray misery, and with each passing one, I sink deeper and deeper into despair, waiting for the answer to my seasonal prayer, you know the one I mean—the prayer of vernal redemption.

In the first act of Beckett’s play, Didi and Gogo are eventually joined by a boy who explains that he is a messenger from Godot, and that Godot will not be arriving today, but will surely arrive by tomorrow. Unsure of what Godot looks like, Didi asks the boy for a description of the mystery man, but the boy offers only the vaguest of answers and leaves. With that, the Didi and Gogo announce that they aren’t going to wait for Godot a moment longer, and that they, too, will leave. But guess what: they don’t budge. They remain on stage, preferring to live a bit longer in the hope that Godot will show up. He doesn’t. Fade to black.

As for me, I know what spring looks like, and I haven’t yet seen any sign of its imminent arrival. Well, OK; maybe one: it is lighter longer, but that only extends the length of another gray day. So like Beckett’s oddball characters, I’ll wait. Who knows? Tomorrow’s another day. Maybe by then…

But in the second act of Beckett’s play, things really fall apart. Didi and Gogo are still on stage waiting for Godot. The boy reappears, but he claims he is not the same boy who talked to the two the previous day. That throws Didi into a rage; he insists the boy remember so they won’t have to repeat this inane encounter again. When the boy reports that Godot will not be coming, Didi and Gogo consider suicide, but they don’t have a rope with which to hang themselves. They decide to leave and return the following day with a rope so they can finish the job, but once again, they remain motionless as the set fades to black.

The critic Vivian Mercer described “Waiting for Godot” as a ‘theoretical impossibility,’ a play in which ‘absolutely nothing happens, yet the audience remains glued to their seats, not just once but twice.’ I get that because here I sit, day after gray day, waiting for the Godot of my spring which simply will not come. Sigh.

Maybe—just maybe—we’re all a bit like Didi and Gogo, waiting for someone or something that never comes. So, if you should happen to see me sitting on my front porch, wrapped in blankets, scanning the sky for a that first flight of north-bound geese, take pity on me. I’m just waiting for Godot.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His debut novel, “This Salted Soil,” a delightful children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

When I was a child, I had a kaleidoscope. I think Santa put it in my Christmas stocking, or maybe it was a basket gift from the Easter Bunny. Whatever the provenance of my little kaleidoscope, I was enthralled by all the colors and shapes and patterns that danced before my eyes when I peered into its mysteries and twisted it toward the light. I saw a different universe through my little kaleidoscope: it was a lighthearted, benevolent place, lovely and safe, nary a monster under my bed.

Years later, I learned that a kaleidoscope was more than a just a toy. It’s a semi-scientific instrument containing loose bits of colored material (bits of glass or plastic beads) suspended between two flat plates and two plane mirrors so placed that by changing the position of the bits of material relative to the mirrors, the field of view reflects an endless variety of patterns, colors, and light.

I suppose one could say that the current generation of kids experiences a similarly distorted or contrived view of the universe while they’re glued to their iPads or computers. Maybe. But the complexity of today’s version of electronic kaleidoscopes presents a virtual reality (is that an oxymoron?) vastly different from what I found in my little cardboard tube. Not better, not worse, just different.

But now, fast forward with me a few decades—OK; more than a few—to a trip to Barcelona last year. My wife and I were there to celebrate the marriage of a daughter of dear friends, so of course, we took advantage of all the city had to offer: we sampled the waterfront restaurants and bars; we rode a bus and a funicular to the pinnacle of Tibidabo, the high hill that overlooks the city; we wandered through the winding alleys and basked in the charm and energy of the Old City. But it was the Sagrada Familia that was at the top of my personal sightseeing list, and to say it didn’t disappoint would be a woeful understatement. The gothic basilica is Antonio Gaudi’s innovative architectural dream, a divine poem rendered in stone and stained glass, an ethereal world of light and color, suspended in time and space. A miracle.

And then this happened: I was feeling a bit dizzy and overwhelmed, so I sat down to rest in one of the pews in the nave of the sanctuary. I tilted my head and looked up into the vaulted ceiling. Suddenly, I was a child again, and my mind was transported back to all those mesmerizing shapes and colors and distortions of my little toy kaleidoscope. It had been a long day, and the soft murmur of voices surrounding me and the play of filtered sunlight and color, all these elements combined to carry me up, up, and away into smoother space. For a few moments, I lost my tenuous hold in this world and floated high above it, drifting peacefully into the airy recesses of the delicate spider web of stone that towered above me.

I lost track of time. When my wife found me, she gently nudged me back to earth. I tried to put my experience into words, mumbling some nonsense about having just peaked into God’s kaleidoscope. Fortunately, she is used to this kind of rambling from me, so she just sat quietly beside me until I was fully present again.

The photograph that accompanies this Musing is an image of what I saw that day. But what I felt in that sacred space is something no mere image can ever capture. The only way I can try to explain it is to liken that moment to the awe-struck wonder of a child looking into a kaleidoscope for the first time and becoming lost in a reverential realm of light, color, and form.

Strip everything else away, and only feeling remains.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His debut novel, “This Salted Soil,” a delightful children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

It’s that time of year when the waiting begins. Waiting for warmer weather. Waiting for more daylight. Waiting for the geese to leave and the ospreys to return. Waiting for the first bulbs to poke their little green heads through the refreshed soil, telling us not to lose hope. Waiting. Waiting…

My friend Eggman delights in telling me when he first espies a red-wing blackbird, his personal harbinger of spring. That’s already happened. Another friend tells me he’s beginning to feel the sap flowing in his veins again and that, like Rip Van Winkle, he’s waking up after a months-long nap. How I envy them! I’m still waiting for my own personal vernal epiphany; I know it will happen, but with each passing day, my anticipation grows and grows, only to be frustrated by another chilly, grey February morning. C’mon, Flora, Roman goddess of spring. Show me your lovely face, and let the world be born anew.

Or maybe it’s Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, I should summon. In Greek mythology, it is she who, following her abduction to the underworld by Hades, returns annually to the surface world, bringing with her the seeds of the crops and vegetation we need to nourish our bodies and feed our souls. Should any of you happen to see her standing beside the road with her thumb extended, please pick her up and bring her home. It’s time.

Spring is the most frustrating of seasons. We wait and wait; we look for the signs; we will it to arrive. One warm day and we are tempted to believe that winter is on its way out, only to be disappointed by its cranky u-turn. Fool’s gold.

Every year, my wife and I think about heading south for a few weeks to wait out this time of seasonal transition. Florida, an island in the Caribbean, anywhere we can bask in the sun and feel some sand between our toes. Alas, for the last couple of years, circumstances have conspired against us, so here we sit, making ourselves content with a fire in the grate or a wee dram in the glass. I walk out onto the porch—heart of our home!—and sit for a spell, but it’s just too cold and damp. Muttering, I retreat inside, turn on the TV, and watch golfers strolling down impossibly green fairways under sunny skies in far-off places like Hawaii or California or Arizona. Spring is already there, so why can’t it be here?

I try to make spring’s latent arrival a lesson in patience. Won’t one more day of dreich (recently voted the most iconic of Scottish words!) weather make spring’s inevitable appearance all the sweeter? Probably true, but that’s a hard sell at this interminable time of year. Let’s move along, people, nothing to see here. Just another dull grey day, dressed in glowering clouds and gusting winds, overstaying its welcome like some drunken uncle on New Year’s Eve.

I know: before we realize, we’ll be sweltering in the heat, drowning in the humidity, waiting for the first leaves to fall. Fine. But between now and then, there are plenty of mornings and evenings when I will be able to assume my rightful place on the porch rocker while smelling the roses and watching the fireflies flicker.

Bring it on! My patience is wearing thin. I’m waiting!

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

His debut novel, “This Salted Soil,” a delightful children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

In case you missed it, last week’s Musing was about how I (we) found our home in Chestertown. I told you there was more. So, here we go: this week, I want to explore why I (we) have a home here. Stay with me…

Many years ago, I was introduced the concept of synchronicity. At the time, I had no word(s) to describe that mysterious concept, but now, thanks to the Swiss philosopher Carl Jung, I do. Synchronicity presupposes that remarkable coincides occur not by accident, but as a result of what Jung defined as “causal connecting principles.” In other words, there are no coincidences, no accidents; everything happens for a reason. Boiling that down to my (our) arrival in Chestertown, it just might be that I am (we are) here for a reason. That reason becomes the “why” of our time here.

Now let me introduce you to another concept and another word: bashert. Bashert is a Yiddish word that basically means destiny. Something that is bashert is preordained, inevitable. If our arrival and our life here is bashert, then there is a reason for my (our) years here. And that, my friends, is the great mystery I’m living in.

I once thought I (we) came here accidentally, but now I believe there was a reason this town and our little house found me (us). So, what is that reason? I have no clue. Yet.

Is it the friends I (we) have made here? That certainly could be, but that seems more of a by-product of my (our) good fortune. Does somehow the world change because we are here? That’s possible, but it’s also possible that I (we) may never know what that change was or will be. If that little butterfly flapping its wings down in the Amazon rain forest produces an effect on what happens along the banks of the Chester, then maybe, we will never know the bashert of why we are here. That thought both blows my mind and comforts me at the same time, but If I (we) are where I am (we are) supposed to be, then I’ll (we’ll) stay the course. All will be well.

Fatalistic, you say? No; not the same thing at all. Synchronicity, bashert, whatever you want to call that sublime force, is the antidote to the disease of fatalism. It’s the positive spin on the old idea that nothing matters. In fact, or so I (we) believe, everything matters! Life isn’t random; whether we know it or not, we are all here for a purpose.

Chestertown and the Eastern Shore have changed me. When I lived “over there,” I didn’t have much time to contemplate the “why” question. Like a driver on that infernal beltway, I went along with the constant steam of traffic. I was alert, but defensively so. Here, life isn’t quite so reactive. I have both the time and the means to muse about what it’s all about, Alfie. And that’s how I bumped into Jung’s concept of synchronicity and the Yiddish notion of bashert.

It’s possible that I’m here simply to write these Musings. I’ve been at this for almost eight years now. That’s 416 consecutive weeks of creating these little stories, and I’d like to think that somewhere during that time, there was, perhaps, that bashert moment when your life changed, if only for a heartbeat.

What do you think?

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

The other day, a friend who came to visit asked me how I found Chestertown. “I didn’t,” I replied, “Chestertown found me.” And therein hangs a tale…

Actually, two tales, complementary, not contradictory. In my version, I woke up one morning in our Bethesda home with one thought on my mind: I wanted to see Chestertown again. I had visited the town only one previous time when I brought my daughter here to look at Washington College. On that day, we pulled up in front of the admissions office, and she, still in her seat belt, asked if we could leave now. I looked at her and knew she wasn’t kidding. You see, my daughter is an artist and she knew she needed a bigger canvas to complete her college painting. I think I insisted we stay to listen to the admissions spiel, but when that was over, we simply got back in the car and drove back home in silence. I don’t remember ever thinking about the town again until I woke up on a Tuesday morning,16 years later.

My wife tells a different story. According to her version, she was the one who suggested we visit Chestertown. You see, two of her sisters and their spouses owned an investment property in town, and she, good realtor that she is, thought we might just drive over the Bay Bridge and check up on the property—make it part of a family visit. I started to tell her about my own reason for wanting to visit, but ended up keeping my mouth shut. Why stir the pot?

On the morning of our visit—it was an unseasonably warm day near the end of December in 2011—we arrived in town and went to visit the old Victorian on Washington Avenue. It was an enormous, drafty old house with at least seven bedrooms and an industrial kitchen, but my realtor sidekick said it had “good bones.” Be that as it may, it was much too much house for the two of us, but the town continued to intrigue me.

We wandered around a bit, saw a couple of “For Sale” signs, but nothing jumped out at me. But my wife had her computer with her, and she saw one more listing—a small house on Cannon Street that had been on the market for several months. We walked by and I felt the hook tickle my jaw. I knew I had found my place to stand.

It was an old house, but it had a gracious, welcoming front porch. The listing suggested I could afford it. The sign outside said “View by Appointment,” but time was getting short, so we decided to settle for a quick peek at the backyard. We were just leaving when the back door opened and a lovely woman came out and asked if she could help us. Caught red-handed, we stammered an apology and an explanation, but she was gracious. “Come in and look around.”

There wasn’t much to see in the way of furniture. The husband of the woman who invited us in had restored the house the previous year, and she was using the space as a temporary office. I felt the hook go deeper into my jaw. The house was utterly charming and I noted that one wall in the living room was large enough to accommodate one of my daughter’s bold, colorful paintings. And oh yes: there was one other promising sign: on the sole small table in the living room, there was a Pittsburgh Steelers Kleenex box. I grew up in Pittsburgh and the Steelers were my team. I began to wiggle like a trout on a fly line. My wife saw the look on my face and whispered, “But there’s only one bathroom!” Think I cared?

As they say, the rest is history. In a couple of weeks, my wife and I will celebrate our twelfth anniversary in ‘Standing Room Only’ (the name is self-explanatory). Whatever the reason(s) that brought us to Chestertown, I still believe it was the town and this house that found us. Maybe just me at first, but now definitely us.

Maybe some of you already know parts of this story, but there’s another chapter. I’ll save that for next week.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

Dear Charles,

I find myself thinking about your theory of evolution and your notions on natural selection a lot these days. To tell the truth, I’m more perplexed than ever. I just can’t fathom how we all derived from a common ancestor, someone or something who crawled out of the primordial muck millions of years ago. A hippo and a hummingbird? An octopus and an orangutan? Krill and kangaroos? Republicans and Democrats? Really? There is so much that is unique about life on this planet that I can’t figure out how there could possibly be a common ancestor. How did we ever get here?

When your theories stump me, my mental pendulum swings to the other side of the great debate. To the Genesis story; you know the one I mean: how God made all this happen in six days, and then was so spent that He needed to rest on the seventh. Simple as that story seems, it’s equally implausible to me, so I lie awake at night, tossing and turning, trying to figure it all out.

And I can’t.

I wish I could have been with you aboard ‘The Beagle’ on your voyage to the Galapagos back in 1835. It took you four years to get there, and maybe during that time you would have helped me understand this conundrum. I’m not saying I would have been able to wrap my mind around all the great mysteries you were unraveling, but it would been worthwhile listening to you as you moved closer and closer to your truth. Maybe if I had been there with you, I could have asked you the questions that bang around in my mind today, and you would have been able to calm the storm. You seemed quite capable of swimming against the tide in your time, so my simple questions would have posed no threat to your genius. I imagine you might have given me and my questions a moment’s thought, and then would have made it all so simple that even a monkey up in a tree could understand.

I realize that after all these years, this letter arrives on your doorstep out of the blue. Sorry about that. I can’t even explain to you why I’m writing this to you now. Maybe because it’s a new year and there’s a lot going on in the world these days that’s hard to comprehend. Maybe if I had a firmer grip on evolution, I’d have a clearer image of where we’re heading. But the truth is, the future is as murky to me as the past. So I’m hoping you can help me make better sense of where we came from because if you could, then maybe I’d feel better about where we’re headed.

Did you see all this coming? When you were first observing those swimming iguanas and those blue-footed boobies and beginning to formulate your ideas on changing genetic traits that would lead to new speciation, did you have any inkling that maybe we were on the road to extinction? That just as there was a cataclysmic beginning to life on this planet, so would there someday be an inevitable end? Or is there another conclusion, one that offers a happier resolution to the unfolding drama of life on our planet?

If there is, please get back to me before the Iowa caucuses. I don’t understand that mess either.

With thanks,

Jamie

PS: I’ll be right back

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

Eons ago, when I was young and still a believer, I liked Santa Claus. No; more: I loved Santa Claus. He was the source of everything good at Christmas. He put the abracadabra in the magic of the season. His story gripped me: his house up at the North Pole, his elves making toys, his sleigh pulled by those eight flying reindeer, his rooftop landings, and his chimney descents. Somehow, he managed to distribute all those toys and gifts to the proper houses and skedaddle home to Goodwife Clause before anyone ever saw him. Wow!

It took years for me to realize it was all a lie, a cruel hoax perpetrated on innocent children by jaded grownups who had lost their sense of wonder somewhere along the line. Once I came to that realization, I might have followed a dark and twisted path, but thankfully, that didn’t happen. Instead, I decided to become Santa Claus; to make his story, my story.

I don’t mean that my dear wife and I pulled up stakes and moved to the North Pole to manage a toy shop, or that I learned to drive a reindeer-driven sleigh, or that I took chimney-diving lessons. I didn’t go to the gym to put on the little extra muscle I would surely need to haul that heavy pack of Christmas plunder to every house in town. All that seemed a bridge too far. Instead, I went out and bought a Santa suit and practiced a jolly belly laugh, biding my time until I would make my first appearance as Santa at Grandma Dar’s Christmas party.

It wasn’t an easy gig. I had to show up as me, one of the many multi-generational guests at this annual family affair. In-laws and outlaws, nieces and nephews, cousins galore. Then, after things got going, I had to slip away unnoticed and descend into the bowels of the nursing home to don my gay apparel and retrieve the bag of goodies I had stowed away down there. (The goodies, by the way, were dozens and dozens of individually monogrammed towels which the elves had been manufacturing for the past several months. Don’t ask me why towels were the gift of choice; that was Dar’s idea, and she’s been up in heaven for the past four years.)

Anyway, now suited in red, buffeted with pillows (I needed fewer and fewer as the years went by), bearded, and capped, I would make my way back upstairs in the elevator. It was always a wonderful moment when the doors opened and a senior citizen saw me standing there in all my Santa splendor. In that moment, a neglected inner child would reawaken, the years melted away, and Christmas was not just another day in winter’s dreary string.

As I made my way down the long corridor that led to Dar’s door, I began my jolly Ho-Ho-Hos a few doors away. When I finally got there (it was a long corridor!), I would knock, someone would open the door, and merry chaos would ensue. The kids’ eyes would pop, and all the adults would play dumb which gave me plenty of time to lay a few spontaneous one-liners on the crowd before I was enthroned next to Dar. I would call the littlest ones first, passing out all those towels, family-by-family. The kids bought the act; I don’t remember even one lap-wailer, but maybe that’s selective recall.

Once the towels and gifts were finally distributed, I made sure I got a little lap time with my favorite elf and some of her lovely sisters, and of course, Dar. (Dar especially loved Santa’s lap!) Then it was time to make my exit before the teens began to look at Santa suspiciously, or one of the wee ones yanked on my beard too hard. I’d like to think I got away clean, but as the years went by and the little ones grew up, I think maybe some of them wised up.

I gave up that gig after Dar died. It just wasn’t the same, and the little ones were growing up way too fast. We all still celebrate Christmas, but now it’s by making gingerbread houses. None of the next generation stepped up, so my Santa suit went to the local consignment shop where it sold in the blink of an eye. Some jolly old man with a hearty laugh bought it on the spot. Sigh.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

The holidays are finally over. They were hectic, fun, bibulous, festive, busy, merry, chaotic—take your pick. Nary a silent night, let alone a holy one. Stockings were hung, presents wrapped, trees decorated, carols sung, cards mailed, cakes and cookies baked, beef roasted, potatoes peeled, spinach souffléd, wine poured, champagne corks popped, pounds gained. There have been parades and football games galore; we watched an endless marathon of schmaltzy Christmas movies. 

But now the holidays are over and done. It’s time to put everything away.

It may be that there are indeed twelve days of Christmas, but for me, there’s always a bit of a letdown that rides in on the coattails of the new year. All the waiting and the anticipation and the merriment have come and gone; it’s time to face the facts: there’s still a long, cold, lonely winter ahead. And that sad truth is underlined when the home that was so lovingly decorated, that smelled so good, that twinkled with lights and candles, that rang with the laughter and chatter of friends becomes just another drafty old house that comes with a long list of chores and repairs.

Putting everything away is the sad last chapter of the Christmas story. Empty boxes come up out of the basement, then go back down, carefully packed and weighted down with memories of this year’s merriment. They will be stowed away in dark corners where they will wait patiently until they’re called back to duty eleven months hence. Giant nutcrackers, shiny ornaments, bagpiping Santas, reindeers, strings of lights, the silver star atop the tree, my Navajo creche—they’re all suddenly gone. Disappeared. Did Christmas and the New Year really happen? Maybe it was all a dream…

But I know it wasn’t. I’m just feeling a little blue today because I do so enjoy the holidays. Sure it can get a little busy, and the dishwasher is always full and needs unloading, and one of the grandkids is crying, and why are my pants so tight, and the tree fell over yesterday, and so-and-so just came down with COVID, and the credit card bill is exploding, but so what? The holidays are in our blood, and we’re primed to celebrate our respective holidays like pagans at the winter solstice. Even Scrooge came ‘round in the end and made everything right with the world.

I do think that with all the hustle and bustle of the season, the profound messages of our various holidays get drowned out from time to time. I always try to carve out a moment of silence each day to feel gratitude for friends and relative good health; to remember the stories from years past; to delight in the excitement of the grandkids; to be, even if just for a heartbeat, one of those wee creatures who are not stirring, or one of those children all snug in their beds.

It’s too bad we can’t make the holidays last. My wife and I tried one year: we left our Christmas tree standing on the porch well past Valentine’s Day. People thought it was a little strange when we hung little red hearts on the tree, but we didn’t care. We finally took it down when spring was in the air.

It’s just hard to put Christmas away. I don’t mean trudging up and down the stairs loaded with boxes; I mean dealing with all the metaphorical gifts lying under the tree: the friendships, the memories, the laughter, the glow. Come to think of it, there’s comfort in that: maybe I can’t put Christmas’ glow in one of those boxes I just carried down to the basement, but I can safely store it in my heart.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.

 

A couple of days from now we’ll sneak up to, then creep past, that great celestial moment we call the winter solstice. The shift will be so subtle we won’t even notice it for a week or two, but nevertheless, it will happen: the earth’s axis will tilt again just as it has for billions and billions of years, and we’ll begin our annual ascent out of the dark, cold depths of winter and start our climb toward the light. This year, it seems to me that these winter days have been a bit colder and darker than usual. There’s the great political divide here at home and gruesome wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re all longing for a little more light.

But that kind of celestial musing is way above my pay grade. I’m down here trying to come to terms with more immediate events—Christmas, in particular. For several weeks now, its little drummer-boy drum beat has been growing louder and louder, and now it’s so close that I can’t ignore it any longer. I guess it’s time to start believing in that mysterious story again. You know the one I mean: the one about a pregnant mother and a bemused father and their trek to a tiny town called Bethlehem; about a baby born in a stable who is sleeping sweetly in a manger surrounded by gentle animals; thunderstruck shepherds and choirs of angels and three wise men who have emerged out of the East, following, believe it or not, a wandering star. That story. That wonderful story.

At least, that’s one version of the Christmas story. There is, of course, another version of the Christmas story, a much more secular one that begins on Black Friday and involves several weeks of commercial mayhem, spins through endless days overeating and drinking way too much eggnog, and only ends when a giant of a man who wears a red suit and lives at the North Pole with minions of toy-making elves drives a flying sleigh pulled by eight reindeer that comes screeching to a halt on your rooftop just so he can slip inside your cozy house via the chimney with a bulging bag of presents which he deposits under a fake tree in your living room just a day or two before your year-end credit card bill arrives in the mail. That story.

But in our family, there’s a third version of the Christmas story, and it involves—drum roll, please—gingerbread. Lots of gingerbread, in fact, an entire subdivision of gingerbread houses with candied roofs and icing eaves and pretzel fire pits, all designed and built by a boisterous horde of cousins who gather together at this time of year to renew their loving familial bonds while the adults in the room, the grandparents and aunts and uncles, do their own festive gathering while marveling at the newest baby in the bunch, or coming to grips with how grown up the older cousins are, or remembering the ones no longer with us. All those stories.

And in this year’s edition of the gingerbread version of story, there was even a bonus tale, one from our own relatively small branch of the family Christmas tree: an engagement to celebrate and another family to blend into the mix, a seamless addition to what one of my nephews referred to as “the annual chaos of Christmas.” Hallelujah!

So from our family to yours, on whatever winter holiday you choose to observe, or in the words of whichever Christmas story you like to tell, greetings of the season. May the year to come be merry and bright.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His new novel “This Salted Soil,” a new children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” and two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”), are available on Amazon. Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.