Lovely, memorable, family-filled, fun-filled Christmas in the Far East Jersey. I’m amazed and grateful that it wasn’t hard to be with family without Hubby. I had not expected this. I had always heard that the first holidays and birthdays and anniversaries would be the most difficult.
As always, it’s good to be home. Some nice welcome-home gifts. Stacks of mail and packages. And this beautiful white fluffy stuff.
Incredibly fabulous costumes and sets. Music superbly rendered with beautiful African strains, with magical dance and drumming. The Parents and I went in together on Christmas gifts for the munchkins – tickets to The Lion King on Broadway, fourth longest running show. Going strong for seventeen years.
This first Christmas without Hubby. And still unexplainable peace. Christmas Eve service with several hundred other people. Notes to Santa and carrots for the reindeer. Cooking and savoring of delicious food. Putting together of puzzles. Playing several games of Sequence, through which The Parents gloat, which wasn’t really gloat-worthy since it was against a feeble grandmother and two young children. (I’m thinking they need therapy.)
Wonderful family time together, this first Christmas without Hubby. So why hasn’t this been a more sorrowful time for me? Why another day of waking up to peace?
Sarah, my young cancer widow friend, stopped by with her six-year-old son, Oliver. She brought a gift that had been given to her last year from a fellow widow. With instructions to pass it along this year to another widow. Before Christmas.
Thin blue skies. Temperatures soaring into the low thirties. That’s all the invitation I needed to layer up and find my hiking boots in the too-clean garage. My favorite in-town trail follows the Deschutes from Farewell Bend Park upriver for a mile and a half before it crosses the footbridge and heads back down.
It’s beyond my comprehension how the color white—a sort of non-color—can be so beautiful. On boardwalk.
The rules are childlike. You simply list ten things for which you are grateful. But the catch is this: the Top Ten things must have something to do with the moment. So, last evening, for example, as I was driving home from Saturday evening service alone, in freezing temperatures and darkness, and my car started up and the heater kicked on and the roads were paved and Christmas lights were cheering along the way … well, there you go – four things on the list already.
Daughter Summer recommended a book a while back by Jon Acuff entitled Quitter: Closing the gap between your day job and your dream job. It’s a how-to-quit-your-day-job-the-right-way book. The first chapter is entitled, “Don’t Quit Your Day Job.”
Gifts of food continue to arrive. Because I’ve been eating popcorn regularly for dinner, this homemade soup was a nice change. It’s not that there isn’t food in the house; it’s simply that I can get away with popcorn for dinner because there’s no one here to say, “You should probably eat something a little more dinner-ish.”
It’s one of the benefits of living singly.
Our bathroom toilet clogged up the day Hubby went back into Hospice House. I sent a quick electronic plea. Tom and his lovely wife, Fran, showed up armed with all sorts of unclogging gadgets.
On his way out the door, Plumber Tom asked about our beautiful, old door propped on our front porch: “Hey, do you want me to fix this old screen door?”
Now that’s where I draw the line. The mesh may be torn, but don’t be messing with my beautiful repurposed-into-front-porch-art screen door.
I order a wreath from her every year, but I had decided against it this year. An unnecessary extravagance. And then, this. On my front porch today. I recognized immediately the handiwork of the Wreath Fairy before even reading her note. Julie. Owner of Desert Dream Gardens.
Copyright © 2026 Marlys Johnson
