Before I knew I would get a beautiful Christmas arrangement delivered from my dear and darling cousin, I bought lavender roses to keep my promise to make roses a Christmas tradition.  And their icy purple edges do fit the bill for a different Christmas from the one I didn’t want.  Because there were a few very sad days last week – and some mornings that I woke up crying, and cried in the car until I got to work, and then on the way home.

It’s the things I say to myself, even more than what happened.  Even if what happened is an unqualified failure – it doesn’t cause the same pain as price I was taught I had to pay.  And to be fair, the price my teachers both paid – and so on, counting backwards through generations of faces none of us ever knew.  Faces who loom behind the two absolutely human being who raised me, and who raised them, and who raised the ones before and before and before.  From the Pogrom to the Famine, someone whose long lost name we have never heard – paid.

In any case, it dawned on me that – as sad as I might feel – there was no reason I couldn’t enjoy some lavender roses, or Christmas Day.  And when the flowers got here from my cousin, that cinched it.

So you come on over here and be sad with me if you need to.  And let’s enjoy Christmas together.