This sadness, it's all right,

That first year when we put up our tree we were as innocent as sugar plum fairies as we danced from the living room to the bedroom, when lust and salaciousness then slathered our bodies and we contorted long into the hot night.

That first year we made snow angels one morning and then had a snow ball fight; we made hot bothered love all afternoon and drank mulled cider and hot buttered Rum by the fire; I curled in your lap as flames licked at the poker, and we sucked face till the sun’s first blush wiped morning dew from our eyes.

That first year we put golden glass ornaments on our Norwegian fir as we watched Dickens’s  A Christmas Carol,  thinking how far away that kind of pain was from our lives as we waltzed into future romantic oblivion.

That first year with me in a lace teddy and you panting at my heels, we tiptoed through our first Christmas morning, not understanding how far away lace teddies would soon become.

The next year two became three and we stayed up half the night playing with toys we’d just assembled.  A cup of Rum eggnog, a long kiss and a loving embrace soon replaced moans long into the musky night.

The next year three became four and girls’ toys and boy’s trucks became our toys, and preschool friends became our group.

One Christmas morning we looked outside to fresh ski tracks on the front lawn (that you’d made the night before) and which the kids swore were Reindeer tracks and had said they had heard Santa’s sleigh on the roof. 

Remember when I directed the Nativity Pageant and the kids couldn’t find enough bathrobes and we borrowed from neighbors. Our daughter made a sweet Virgin Mary, all of 7 years old, too shy to speak, holding the Baby Jesus doll in her lap.

Even then when we thought the world was too young for tragedy, my Grandma and Grandpa were injured in a car crash and didn’t make it to Christmas dinner that year.

The next year, your mother died and never saw her first grandchild.

Now I’m listen to a saxophone wail “I wonder as I wander” as I sort through ornaments, some old and broken, but well-loved and worn, sorting past from present, useful from spent.

I wonder at the miracle of how we’ve made it this long, wandering through joy and misery.

The homemade pinecones you made in first grade I tossed last winter.  They were too broken, had outlived their usefulness.

The handprint ornaments our kids gave us I placed next to the crystal balls, the crystal ornaments that reflect the past in our present.

I’ve set a fine table with a linen cloth and our best bone china, hung the oranges with cloves and put a wreath at the door, set cinnamon potpourri on the mantle, as a harp and flute play in the background.

Oh yes, I’m ready for this year, whatever it brings. It will bring happiness for the children, sadness for you and I.

But as the earth lays quiet, hunkered down on a starless night, I wait for tomorrow’s first blush, as dawn peeks above the horizon and I hold a crystal ornament to the light.

Through that crystal I see a rainbow prism, light once invisible now splintered into brilliant rays.

And I remember how we’ve made it this long, looking through that prism, seeing what I choose to see.