Waiting for Visions of Sugar Plums

Ah, Christmas Eve.
Anticipation. I remember living the waiting feelings long before I knew what the word anticipation meant.

On the night before Christmas, we would wait until darkness. At darkness, we would wait until we ate dinner. Then it was, wait until we cleaned up the kitchen and the dishes were all clean and put away.

No longer waiting for worldly things, we waited then for Dad to come home from work. Gosh, he was unpredictable to a child who wasn't talented at waiting.

hmmmm. I'm still not talented at waiting yet.

I seem to remember my younger, older brother making up games that set me walking around and around the dining room table. I sort of remember tasks that my mother devised for me that involved preparing and organizing for my dad's arrival.

When my dad came, finally!!, we would gather around the Christmas tree. The tradition would be that we opened one present from our parents and the presents from us, the children, to each other. The one from our parents was carefully chosen, especially mine. The criteria for choosing was what would keep me busy for the rest of the night.

hmmm. I wonder whether my mother actually bought something with that in mind. Knowing my mom, she did just that.

The rest of the night would be blurry . . . midnight Mass at the church, breakfast after at my cousins's house, home to bed at nearly 3 a.m. on Christmas morning. The dark house was romantic. Ah, what a memory! On tiptoe through the silence, as my mom started the turkey, I would get myself into bed.

Then the waiting began again. I would wait for the time when I could get up again. I would wait for sleep to come, wondering why it always took so long on Christmas Eve. I would wait for visions of sugar plums to dance on my head . . . but only see boring ornaments hanging from a boring tree.

I would fall asleep still waiting for sugar plums to dance on my head, still wondering what I would do if they did.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Hidden in the Sky

Hidden in the sky, I see an answer. It's not written in the stars that twinkle nearby. Good thing, too, because few stars are out tonight.

It's written in the shades of blue, in the lights that play on the atmospheric canvas. It's echoing in chambers of my heart when I think of where I might do, what I might go.

In the curve of subtle color, I see the path of my life, all of the ups and downs, graphically smoothed. I see the way that time turns small misfortunes and unimportant frustrations into memories filled with laughter. I see the value that distance and perspective add to the view.

In the dark places, the stark places, I see negative spaces. So I put my fears and monsters there , watching them dissolve into so much black, black air. I imagine them as happy to be free of me as I am to be rid of them. I smile to think it's so easy to let them go.

There, over there, in the night sky is the hope of a new morning. It's the crocus that invites me into each day. I stop to savor it. I drink in it slowly like a luxurious dark chocolate cold, cold milk shake. My cells can feel the shades of blue change.

Hidden in the sky, I can see the future.
I can see the future because I can hear my soul.

--me liz strauss, letting me be

Out the Winter Window

In the winter, when a tired soul looks out the window, the lack of color can wear like a shroud.

When I was a child trees were for climbing. They were big, black, and huggable. Trees were as mighty and majestic God and as gentle as the creator who holds the world in his hands.

Sitting in the branches of a trees, I could be part of the scenery. Without thinking, I could look out knowing that life had a plan and a beauty. I reflect on that as a talent that comes naturally to a child.

Now I'm older, looking out a winter window at a gray day, a faraway day wishing for the sun and green leaves of summer. But I'm blessed and gifted with a childhood memory I can recall. It brings me back to the branches of trees that I hugged that hugged me.

Out the winter window, I see the colors of life and they fill my heart full.

On that last freezing wind, I sent every huggable memory to you.

--me liz strauss, lettingmebe

Waiting for the Words

I was lost in my head, confused about who I might be, what I might be thinking.

In time, I found my way into a suitcase and onto a plane. I was my way to anywhere and I'd be landing in a place I once said, "I think I want to live everywhere." He had agreed.

That memory so stayed with me. Lately it had been haunting me, following me in a good way. Somehow my heart, my head needed another conversation. I longed to hear what the "me of then" said when we talked again this "years later" time now.

So I went and I listened in as best I could.

I imagined. I practiced. I put forth chapter and verse. I did all with a steady to what I might hear myself reveal in the spaces between the words. And the quiet came, when we sat, as friends do, in each others silent company, waiting without wondering. Thoughts coming when they came.

Then he said something that I remember this way, "It's the words. You. So much of you is about the words. What you do is the words. Wordsmith. It would be a loss to see you separate from the words."

And in a gray car on a gray rainy day, inside what he said I heard yellows and blues.

The words.

I've been waiting for the words. The words are every sunset, every cell of my fingers. The words are every hair on a baby's head. They are a summer shower. The words are the love of my father, the smile of my son. The words are this moment. They're the past and future. They touch. They triumph. They tremble. They tread and take my breath away. They are the petals on a most special sunflower. They are the rainbow that overshadows the sun.

The words are the salty tear that gently finds its way to my cheek as I write this.

I've been waiting for the words. The words are about to come.

When they arrive, my soul will shout what I was born to say.

--me liz strauss, letting me be