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| A 1972 Christmas gift from Mel's sister Mary |
We met halfway in Grand Traverse Pie Company on Thursday,
Cherie’s day off from the Orion Township Library. We’d skipped our annual
reunion here at the farm the past two summers and determined to reconnect
before 2017 blew in. One of my former poetry tribe, I had asked Cherie to bring
one of her poems to read. I missed her voice.
She was her
same beautiful self—more gray strands in her long, wavy hair. We swapped
whereabouts of my two girls and grandson and her two boys and three grandkids.
“The
little ones keep me busy. I’m glad they live close by,” she said.
We talked about our
Christmas plans. Since my California family flew in for my husband’s 70th
and baby’s 40th birthday in November, my daughter and son-in-law need
some serious R&R during Christmas vacation. There will be no orbit of departure
for family gatherings and return to California after Christmas Day.
And for the Underwood
patriarch and matriarch, it’s farm sweet farm December 25— unless our youngest
and her husband decide to host. Their new house would be a cozy change in this
cold snap. They’ve a fine fireplace. We don’t.
Cherie, on the
other hand, is hosting a multitude for Christmas dinner. “I love it,” she said.
True. She mirrors
my mother’s hospitality—the more the merrier, particularly Christmas dinner. In
her Kentucky home one Christmas Eve, Mom bed and breakfasted her twenty-one
offspring, five sons-in-law, and a granddaughter’s fiancé. I imagine Cherie’s lovely
house much like that, all lit up and bursting at the seams.
After we had our
fill of food and friendship, we pulled on our coats. I almost forgot to ask. “Cher,
did you bring a poem to read?”
She smiled because
she knows I adore her poetry. “No, there’s just too much going on with the kids
and work to think about writing. I’m not complaining, for we’re all in a good
place right now. Everyone’s healthy and content.”
We hugged and
promised to meet again come summer. Her words settled into my mind while I
drove to the grocery store. They hovered over me like a halo through the aisles
and checkout and drive home.
“We’re in a good
place right now” echoed like a prayer while I put away groceries, practiced my
dulcimer, and watched a video of my grandson acting in his first school play. His
laugh was like good medicine.
He’s in a good
place right now and too young to know it, I mused. This is consolation between
the vast gap in space and time between us.
This place where my
husband and I stand is also good, for it is our home, a shelter from storms and
misunderstandings. As Cherie and her husband, this is what we have worked for
and have maintained with our entire mind and might.
Dear Reader,
wherever you find yourself Christmas Day, I pray you are in a good place, your
home sweet home, or another’s. Preferably, before a blazing fire.
