By: Jack Rodgers
LEANING against his small trolley in the large supermarket while waiting for Ana to finish her part of the weekly shopping he wrote a book. A novel. It became an overnight international success. It was awesome – the sense of personal achievement, the artistic satisfaction, the social recognition. He loved it entirely. The previous week he had written a critically acclaimed play. Some time earlier it had been a major film script. He loved the story best of all.
The opening words were magnificent. They charmed him with the force of their simplicity, the diversity of possibility in their inclusiveness. They echoed for him the slogan of a popular sensational newspaper of years ago (perhaps still) that all human life was there. The story began, In the evening of that same day…and immediately evoked a sensitiveness to all that happens in the course of a day from the rising of the sun to its setting, in the course of a lifetime from the moment of birthing to its final now; the story of being made flesh.
There now, she mused to herself, Christmas would soon be upon them. The year had passed quickly enough, strange though it had been. She tired more easily and more frequently. There was much to do by way of preparation; all of it lovingly intended to make Christmas a happy time in the winter darkness. Her body was talking to he in a natural way about change. Although there had been six births, six blessings, the twins short-lived; waiting for her in heaven she never doubted.
It was the increasingly strange language her body spoke to her that shaped concern, that tired to distract her away into a different world, that was sometimes harsh to the point of pain obliging her to sit down. Two stays in hospital earlier in the year, the second more protracted than the first, had invaded the lovely ordinariness of her everyday and left a mark.
From the beginning Christmas had been for the children and she herself was as much child as any of the four. The eldest boy was just gone eighteen. Her firstborn, she treasured with infectious delight the gift of motherhood he had brought her. Sourced somewhere deep in her love spring she now found and loosed for him great big tears of lonely grief. She knew he had already begun the journey outward and beyond her way of telling the story. Before too long he would be gone, some unfamiliar horizon claiming him from her.
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She sat down. She remembered a playful wind catching her veil on her wedding morning twenty years ago last August. They were both tall as they came down the steps of the little chapel and walked the length of the avenue between the manicured yew trees to the shiny, awkward motor waiting to take them home. She loved him then in the way a girl makes a delicate daisy chain with barely suppressed laughter for her handsome beau. She loved him now as the years had taught her, to hold him close in heart and limb, in light and shade. She knew he would be lost without her.
The girls were only children yet, though she already sensed something of the strength of woman hood in them and from that took comfort. That God was good and his blessed mother reliable she never questioned. In the meantime there were things to do: she would stretch the budget this time to include some nice shop decorations for the Christmas tree and maybe something extra for the stockings.
She smiled at her own ability to mix together the magic and mystery, the faith and fun of the story which told how a young couple and a new born infant, sheep and goats, geese and doves, kings and shepherds together made up a new song for Gods angels to sing to their hearts content one holy splendid morning. Christmas is about living, she said aloud.
When Ana offered him a penny for his thoughts he told her he had been recalling the last Christmas before his mother died. She died in Springtime at Easter, all worn out and emaciated, beyond any meaningful kind of goodbye. He was, he told Ana, drawing heavily on his imagination, as his memory of the time was not reliable. He said it was a bit like writing a novel; some of it had to be made up. But the heart of it was there and was near enough to still occasionally catch him by surprise.
Although it was fifty years ago it seemed it had all happened only that morning. He said to Ana he felt there was a measured sadness at the edge of every love, part of the human condition, of being made flesh.
Christmas was everybodys feast he said.