’Tis A Season

The Holidays Are a Nostalgic Time to Look Back on the Way We Were

A Carbone family photo taken in December of 1962. That’s the author in the center, with her beloved cat. | Credit: Courtesy

I will never cease to be astonished by the implausible spectacle of December here. The Channel Islands seem to float upon a shimmer of sea, etched indigo against the sky, and we hike for miles in hazy sunlight. Pomegranates are bursting with red rubies that bleed magenta on my hands, persimmons and oranges fall to the ground like unclaimed gold, and the toyon is adorned with bright-red berries. There are low tides and painted skies, and in the afternoon, our neighbor delivers fresh tamales, still warm, made by a lady at the local school, and we reconnect with friends outdoors, seated at picnic tables or astride rocky perches, or in motion, walking, and revelations abound.

There is not a Christmas tree in sight, but the coyotes are caroling, and now and then I find surprises in the mailbox: a jar of jam, a tin of cookies, a hand-delivered card. ’Tis a season of sufficiency and gratitude, a season of wonder.

I have lived here for 30 years, and sometimes it seems to have been a kind of training, an extensive, in-depth course in bearing witness. Whether it leads to enlightenment, I cannot say, but I have been a student at the ultimate university, and the learning is still pouring in. I recognize the cycles and the patterns now, and I marvel at the extraordinary procession of life and story, comforted by its continuity, but more aware than ever of its changing.

Change is always the nature of things, but lately I know it is imminent, and in a fundamental way. And yet I find myself looking back, reminiscing in conversation and my own private musing, as if — despite the vast and dazzling curriculum in front of me — a few answers may have been left in my past. As secular or free-wheelingly spiritual as I have become, maybe there is just something about Christmas that prompts nostalgia.

This photograph was taken in December of 1962, and my only clue that it was the Christmas season is the decorated tree behind us, a scrawny thing, but it represents an effort. The seated older man in tie and sweater is my paternal grandfather Raffaele, with Rose, his second wife, at his side. On the floor is my father, the emperor of my heart, he who has been gone for 45 years –– his death tearing away with unhealed edges — and with whom I still have current and ongoing discourse. He is holding my youngest sister Libbie, then there’s me in the middle with a beloved cat, and my other sister, Marlene.

It’s a picture that tells many tales, both in what is seen and what … or who … is missing. Where were my brothers? And my mother, unless it is she who took the picture, but there was never a reshuffling for a shot that would include her, and there is a lingering sense of exile attached to her. This fractional band is about as close as we ever got to a family gathering. There was always someone gone or something wrong, some disaster in progress or pending.

My grandfather’s visit would have made it an occasion. I can see that my father, always in charge and overworked, is trying to orchestrate things, his hands in the midst of some instructional gesture, probably telling Libbie to look up at the camera, the fatigue in his eyes barely concealed. Of course, my dear Marlene chose to wear her patent leather shoes and to hold her palms together as though in prayer. There’s nothing accidental in that –– she had a sense of ceremony, and undoubtedly felt that a religious pose would be appropriate for a picture commemorating this holy time of year. (Marlene died in January of the year 2000, at the age of 45.) As for me, I still possessed the sweet and earnest face of an 11-year-old idealist. I was eager and kind and held my heart forward for all the world to see, just as I held my cat. I have been so many Cynthias since then, innocent and foolish, selfish and unkind, clever and striving and bewildered and grateful.

But when I choose to move beyond the loss and sadness, which though very conspicuous are not the only outcomes, I find an unexpected message within this old Christmas photo. If my father was sustained by dreams that failed to materialize, the days warmed by those dreams are not retracted, the disappointment does not diminish the comfort they brought while their promise and truth seemed viable. If my sister sang songs and held her palms in prayer, that happened, and nothing can extinguish the wonder of it. If my heart was kind and hopeful then, who is to say it no longer is?

Bursting up from the tunnel of the past, I reorient myself to this ranch that is my home and my church. We are almost at the Solstice, with a flat gray sky that is promising rain, and a great stillness reigns. The grief of the world weighs heavily upon us, but there is a sense of peace here, where the natural world is trying to continue, where the sacredness is evident, where we begin to know something beyond words.

I picture us casting away the burdens of sorrow and regret until nothing remains but gratitude and forgiveness, which are pure and clear and utterly weightless, and our souls are so light we can fly. The saga is unbound by linear terms, and it’s happening still, and it breathes within me, as real as my own pulse. For lack of a better term, I shall title it love. And it endures.