Counting Days

I can’t remember a year when I didn’t have an advent calendar.

For most of my life, these tangible countdowns to Christmas were simple affairs: a pretty, seasonal picture (sometimes religious, sometimes not) with perforated doors, one for each day. You wuld fold open the flap, and inside would be another picture, an inset of the greater image, perhaps, or an enhancement. One of my favorite calendars had an image of a Christmas tree in a Victorian bay window, and every door added an ornament.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned about advent calendars with ‘stuff’ in them. Now, usually this ‘stuff’ consists of cheap, waxy milk chocolate, but apparently there are some that come with toys, as well. When I learned about them, I spent five minutes feeling gypped, and then I realized I liked the old-school version where the only treasure hidden behind the open door was my own imagination, sparked by the ever-dwindling number of days until the Big Event.

Of course, we count days throughout the year, not just during advent, not just in December.

We make red Sharpie x’s across the calendar squares that march us toward the next deadline, the next paycheck, the next special occasion, the next vacation.
We open our own doors and windows, and we find whatever life offers, and some days it’s as precious as a baby in a bed of straw, and other days it’s the manure from the ox in the corner, but we keep on counting.

Counting up: I’m five, ten, sixteen, twenty-one, thirty, forty-five.
Counting down: Christmas, the new year, Valentine’s Day, tax day, another birthday.

I read about my friends who have advent calendars with pockets that hold treats for their children, and I’m wistful for the days when I was innocent enough to believe marking a day on a calendar, picking a toy out of a pocket, burning the candle down to the next mark, held some kind of special magic.

And maybe, just maybe, they did.

And maybe, just maybe, recent years have led me toward virtual Advent calendars like #musicadvent, or Holidailies, or even the collection of poetry my friend Jancis is doing on his tumblr account because that’s the grown-up way of opening a door and finding a prize to help you count the days.

Holidailies 2015

Getting Ready

Writey and Typey and Reclaimy

It’s Friday night, twelve days into December, and my tree is barely decorated (well, it’s about half decorated). Fuzzy has been away most of the week, and without his quiet presence in the house, I just don’t feel motivated to decorate, which is ironic, really, because he doesn’t particularly care if the house is dressed appropriately for the season or not. I mean, he likes the finished product, but he hates the process.

I think I’m finally over the stupid cold/sinus thing that’s been sapping my energy and destroying my mood, but the weather’s due to change again in a day or so, so who knows? In any case, I’ve had a decently productive day, even though I still haven’t finished the chapter I meant to write this week.

On the other hand, I read three books and reviewed three books, and am now reading a lovely book of essays that my friend Becca wrote. I’ve been reading her blog practically since she started it, of course, but reading it all on bound, printed pages is a vastly different experience. It’s self-published, but that doesn’t matter a whit, because she DID IT. She completed it. And you should all read it, because it’s funny and gentle and kind and self-deprecating and insightful and incredibly articulate, just as Becca is herself.

(I was not paid to write all that. I even BOUGHT my copy of her book, and then got all misty when I read the way she inscribed it.)

I am a bit over five years younger, now, than she was when she began this collection of essays on her blog, and I feel like I haven’t accomplished enough, and I’m pretty certain that’s ALSO sapping my Christmas Spirit.

But something wonderful has been happening as I’ve been reading my friend’s published words. I’ve been feeling, to use my own word, really writey. In fact, instead of reading her book straight through, the way I typically read EVERYTHING, I’m having to stop, and walk away and dash out notes or phrases or write a paragraph…

And that’s kind of cool.

I still feel like the Christmas feeling is hovering just outside my perception, waiting for me to be ready, but at least now I have faith that I will actually be ready fairly soon.

Ditto my own writing…two separate projects that have eluded completion.

And I guess, that’s appropriate for the season. After all, advent is a time of preparation, whether you mean it religiously or not. It’s waiting. It’s watching. It’s planning and yearning and getting ready.

Soon.

I’ll be ready, soon.

Smells Like Anticipation

SeaSide Santa

Well, Hello, December!

It’s the first day of Holidailies and here I am typing as fast as I can so I can get this posted before midnight, and thus not fail on the first day, which would be really inauspicious.

It’s warm here today. Warm and muggy, and not Christmassy (Or Hanukkahy) at all, though the sky teased us with storm clouds that didn’t deliver. I don’t mind the warmth – it’s cool enough to not need a/c but warm enough to also not need heat – rare for Texas at any time of year.

But I miss that smell, that magical SMELL that comes when the night is crisp and cool, and the stars are particularly sparkly.

It’s the combined scent of chimney smoke and fallen leaves, damp earth and leftover turkey. It’s the fragrance of nutmeg and peppermint and crinkly tissue paper.

And when it’s this warm, this balmy, you just can’t smell it.

So I go through the motions. I take the plastic, pre-lit tree out, and let it rest in the house (because even plastic trees need to rest before you bedeck them with ornaments), and I open today’s door on the Advent calendar, which reveals, ironically, the image a star shimmering in the night sky, and I wait.

Because I know that soon enough the temperature will drop, and the skies will deepen, and that wonderful seasonal aroma, the one that smells like love and innocence and magic and anticipation, will ooze its way back into my perception.

And all will be right with the world.

Today’s Santa: I gave this to my mother four years ago. Purchased in Ocean Grove, NJ, October 2009.