A bitter wind is blowing off the ocean that bites right through the layers that I am wearing. Usually at the end of the first mile I’ve warmed and start to sweat. Not today. It is near freezing and the wind makes it worse. I hate it.
On the other hand Goddess is quite happy with it and is especially playful as we take our walk. Once home she sprints outside, collapses on her mat and falls asleep. Leaves have fallen on the beloved back deck giving it a whole new appearance, almost like a cabin on a farm in the mountains.
I sit at the kitchen table staring out the glass doors at the outside that I would be sitting in if it wasn’t so damn cold. The umbrella is down because of the wind but it dances along with Fran’s thousand shades of green in the trees behind it. The Palm tree in the back yard drops branches that wake Goddess and send her flying downstairs so she can inspect by sniffing her way around them.
The lights of the Christmas tree behind me reflect in the glass in front of me giving it all a holiday feel. I stare at the reflected lights, glad that I eventually decorated the entire tree rather than just half, and ponder my dear friend Stacy’s message to me “the real Christmas lives inside of you …”
I suppose. Isn’t that what Lianas said to Charlie Brown?
The music from the dance scene in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” starts playing in my head and I think of dancing in the Church aisles on Sunday mornings at the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel and it always brings a smile to my face.
My computer pings and I see that I have messages and the smile grows broader when I see who they are from. Carlos has written from St. Martin asking when I am arriving and when I’m leaving. Several years ago he and Verna and my black Chelsea, their daughter, made their first trip to the United States and spent a month here. We had a huge party where people came from all over to welcome them and we danced until late into a hot August night.
When I was in St. Martin several weeks ago Verna stopped by to see me. She also works the place that I stay and she loves to cook, knows that I love jerked chicken wings and cooked me several thousand.
“Oh Mike, on Christmas Mike,” she says in the Caribbean lilt of a voice, “you spend with us and not all of these other people. Mike you need to be with family on Christmas and we are dat to you.”
Carlos is following up.
There is another message from Nathalie who also works at the resort. Can I order them some shoes and bring them with me when I come? They can get anything from France or the Netherlands but not Reeboks. Shaking my head I write her back and assure her that I will.
It pleases me that relationships are so deep that friends are anticipating my arrival in a few weeks, planning it, and don’t mind asking for favors. I make myself a note to contact others to see if they need me to bring things from the States that they cannot get in St. Martin.
Looking outside again at the umbrella violently dancing with the blowing leaves I suddenly feel warmer. I think of something that is on my porch downstairs. I was in Mexico (thank you Jenny Orr!) and stumbled across a ceramic of the Mayan God descending from heaven to earth. I was struck that Christianity or Judaism were not the only faith’s proclaiming that the Messiah became one of us, leaving heaven to wander in the gutters with the rest of us.
Joan Osborn’s “What if God were one of us,” replaces the Charlie Brown dance music in my head.
Then I get Stacy and Lianas’ point.
