Life goes on

It is the night before Christmas Eve. Ridge is making hard sauce now, because the girls and I will be taking the kitchen over tomorrow for our cookie making. As he points out, we have an eclectic variety of cookies to make. Every year we make the Williamsburg Cookbook's Bourbon Balls. That is sacrosanct! (Holy Bourbon Balls--can you use them for communion?!) Then I usually want to make Koulourakia, the little twisted, sesame-coated butter cookies my Greek family liked. Put a little ouzo in and...oops! Another candidate for communion! Alcohol and flour...close enough to bread and wine, isn't it?

I bought the cookie ingredients today, after talking on the phone with my Mom. She's in St. Thomas' Hospital in Akron, again, for depression. She says, "I want to be with you!". She says it to everyone who calls. How hard it must be for her. The nurse says that she won't stay in one place for more than a few minutes. She complains of pain in her back and knees, but won't take pain medication. They want her to sit or lie down. They don't want her to fall. But even at this stage of life, my mother is adamantly her own person. Even if they mean well, they are still "telling her what to do". She doesn't know it's Christmas.

My sister says that my Dad has been sleeping most of the time. The caregivers didn't know why. And Deb asks them to check his oxygen level. It is too low. With the nursing home understaffed for the holidays, no one thinks to check his oxygen until Deb comes and asks them to. She says when she speaks to him, he opens his eyes and smiles at her, and then goes back to sleep.

Talking to my sister about my parents makes my heart heavy with sadness, but I hear Deb's almost three-year-old grandaughter in the background and I ask to talk to her. Maddy comes on the line. When I tell her I am thinking of coming to visit, she says, "Come visit now". Maddy barely knows me. Her parents have lived in North Carolina until now. But when I tell her I love her, she assures me that she loves me, too. Now I know I can go home to visit. I can see my fragile parents, one so sweet, and one so heart-broken and confused. Because I can also introduce myself to Maddy and her new sister. I can be refreshed by their liveliness, their joy.

Tomorrow night we celebrate the night of the birth of an infant, full of life and joy in the midst of dislocation and uncertainty. Is that the message of Christmas for me this year?
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