The First Week of Advent, Friday

Thoughts on Hope (and a warm winter salad and Christmas cocktail)

Happy Friday Friends. It has been such a quiet, little joy to begin each day with you and a poem. Thank you for letting me be a part of your Advent. As promised, this Friday, I have an essay on hope for you, and two recipes, one for a warm winter salad and another for a cocktail I invented on a cold winter night two years ago. There is also an audio version of this essay at the end of this newsletter, if you prefer to listen it it.

First, though, I wanted to remind you that today is the last day to order signed copies of my books directly from me. All orders placed before midnight tonight (December 6), though, will ship out Monday or Tuesday at the latest. Thanks, as always, for choosing to order directly from me.

On Hope

Years ago, when I was still single, my home was bursting with life on Thanksgiving weekend. Friends and their children would fill it from top to bottom, packed into bedrooms and basements from Tuesday til Sunday. Other friends, local ones, would make daily pilgrimages to my kitchen, bringing wine, beer, and pies as tribute. There, with candles lit and Christmas music playing, we would chop and stir and drink and laugh, making one great feast of the whole long weekend.

Those days were my favorite days, with a house that smelled like cinnamon and companionship that was as ready and comfortable as a pair of well-worn slippers.

At night, however, when the friends and their babies would bundle off together, either to beds in my house or to houses of their own, I would lay awake and long for someone to lie next to me. I wanted a snoring husband there to annoy me or a snuggling baby to keep me awake. But there was no one. And I felt their absence acutely. It hurt. I hurt. Despite all the good in those days, sadness still touched the edges of them.

This year, my house was quiet and still on Thanksgiving. It sat empty and dark, while I slept in a bed hundreds of miles away, next to that long longed for husband and three snuggling babes.

These days are the precious days. They are days filled with little boys telling knock knock jokes and endless cries of “Mama, look. Mama, watch.” There also is a little girl, with big blue eyes who strokes my face when she wakes next to me in the night, then nuzzles in even closer.

All that I longed for, all that I once dreamt of, is now mine. It’s beautiful. It’s a joy, a gift, and a wonder. But the sadness that hung around the edges of those otherwise joyful Thanksgiving days long ago, hung around the edges of this Thanksgiving, too. For what I had then, I don’t have now.