If any picture ever spoke a thousand words, this one does – to me.

One very chilly December, right before Christmas, Katey Greyhound came to live with Bumper, Craig and me.  Her assertive behavior with some rambunctious, unsupervised children at Thanksgiving had gotten her kicked out of her first adoptive home.  When we met her at her foster home, she was quaking with nerves – a reaction we soon learned to recognize as part of her shy personality.  Craig spoke soothingly to her, but she never stopped shivering, despite having staked out a toasty sun-beam to lie in.  We were entirely in sympathy with Katey’s reaction to being annoyed by small children on Thanksgiving, so she came home with us for a fresh start.

You can’t really see the Christmas tree in the dark shadows behind Bumper (yellow dog, left hand side,  looking bored but happy), but it’s there.  It was Christmas day, and for some reason we had gone to the in-laws without the dogs.  Katey was settling in with us so well, and I think the grandkids were home for Christmas.  Anyway, we didn’t want to rock the boat, and figuring we had pretty well dog-proofed the house – which we HAD – we spent a long day away, eating Kay’s Christmas cookies until we were as round as snowmen, and unwrapping gifts at mercilessly slow pace.

A  little over-stretched from food and socializing, we let ourselves in to a dark, quiet house early in the evening, expecting to wake up sleeping dogs for a much needed walk.  At first, in the dim shadows of the foyer light, all we saw were a few little shreds of paper scattered between the couch and bookshelves.  Craig, the more experienced dog person, quickly recognized the signs of potentially more serious mischief.  Without even taking off his coat, he reached over to turn on the living room lamp.  “What’s going on here?  What’s going ON here?” he crooned to Bumper and Katey in a high, silly voice, as we followed a growing trail of scraps around the couch to where Bumper and Katey lolled amidst the savaged remnants of what seemed to be the entire Christmas edition of the Capital Times.

Instantly, we formed a vision of Katey merrily nibbling and chomping that paper into smithereens, with Bumper eschewing such activity as a waste of effort when a dog could so easily be, you know, sleeping. There was no question who the culprit was.  Katey’s sheepish, flirty expression of innocent wrong-doing has never been far from my heart ever since, and if I ever want to understand mudita (sympathetic joy) I have only to remember my delight as we discovered how Katey Greyhound spent her first Christmas on Charles Lane.   Of course, we couldn’t stop laughing and praising her.  Katey could hardly have given us a better present – besides herself – than that trail of chewed newsprint, leading us straight to the spirit of Christmas Ever-Present.

Show me one little piece of this Christmas tree that doesn’t draw back the curtain between her and you, at the very least.  Or more painful still, untether the imaginings you of longings ago held in your pretty mind.  The Glitter Bird, The Courting, A Ringed Hand, with Fans to flutter-blushes deep in Crinolines and Something Blue.  Let the Christmas air swift close around their lostness, tumbling them like glass in the current, until the tattered prettiness is worn away, and their beauty, impenitent, is all revealed.

Santa is in the window of Stadium Barbers, 24/7, if you need to talk to him.  As you can see, he is switched on full power, his huge heart ignited by children’s wishes, glowing to its radioactive limit.  (Don’t worry, grown-ups, Santa knows how to translate your complicated yearnings into pure, unadulterated hope.)

I wonder if Santa ever wishes he had given a little more?  Maybe…I bet that’s why he repeats the entire production again, next year, every year, until people run out of the desire to give love, and be happy.

So, I think Santa’s job is secure, don’t you?

Christmas sparkles off in all directions, wherever the twinkles are found….

I just thought they all looked pretty together.

All are present who have been missed
and what they made
of their time
and hands
returns from Christmas far away.

I might tell this story more sometime, but for tonight its enough to know
you read it fine without me.

Santa has made it as far as Lake Mills, Wisconsin!  As you can see from this unretouched fake-vintage stealth survelleilance photo I took from my car, contrary to popular myth, this dude is HUGE!  So yeah, you better watch out!  Of course he sees you when you’re sleeping…it’s a wonder his breath rattling your windows doesn’t bolt you straight upright out of your dreams of locally-sourced, humanely-raised sugarplums.

Clearly, Santa’s metabolic demands are, literally, gargantuan.  This explains his fondness for sugar far more plausibly than a previous theory I have seen put forward: that sugar helps Santa do sweet things.  Well, maybe it will keep him from stomping on your car in a low-glycemic rage.  So that’s sweet….I guess….

This year, don’t take chances with Santa.  For your own safety, keep some home-made bakery on hand.  But don’t offer him fruitcake. (You cheap bastard, he knows you are just re-gifting it!  Remember, he’s psychic!)  Instead, make him these Butterscotch Squares, formulated for optimal sugar density by the cooks at Farm Journal in 1966.  Sure, the caramelization will take you a week to scrape out of your pan, but isn’t it worth it?  You don’t want a 20 foot elf in a red suit chasing your car down Main Street because you pissed him off taking pictures and didn’t have a cookie in your pocket to throw at him.  Trust me.

Butterscotch Santa Rations
preheat oven to 350; baking time 25 minutes.

1 pound brown sugar
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped

Cook brown sugar and butter in top of double boiler over hot water until sugar dissolves.
(20th Century note:  Yes, you can do this step in a microwave – carefully!  But are you really in such a hurry?  Do you really not have 2 saucepans that fit on top of each other?  Here’s a thought – boil water in the microwave, pour it into the bottom pan, and whilst you stir the butter and brown sugar into perfect solution, have a drink.)
Cool. (That’s an instruction, not an adjective.)
Transfer to a bowl large enough to hold the flour.
Add eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.
Stir in other ingredients.
Spread in a 15 1/2 x 11 1/2 by 1/2 UNGREASED pan (or whatever pan you would use to make thin bar cookies or brownies).
CUT WHILE HOT into 40 squares.  Not more, not less.  Forty.
Give them all to Santa.  Remember, he can see you.

Held warmth in china earthen void
the roots need dark to find their way
and into flowers now displayed
she dreams she dreams
a dozen dancing shoes foray
and flutter songs breathe everywhere
in full.

The river crossed
and in her gleam
a notion of some further shore
where He drinks tea
and loves her more.

Oh Fancy, back and back again
who sends you where
you have not been
and lures your deepest fruits to find
where all are lost but heart in kind.

It’s 13 degrees outside, and by 4:30 there is barely a scrap of sunlight left at the horizon.  Winter’s dark, hidden wonders have replaced autumn’s show-offy performance, and I suppose this means Christmas can’t be far away.  I need a new place to hang my Christmas hat for the blog this year, so I am trying a new recipe – Christmas trees composed from things I love – or things that love me, as I am always sure they do.

Working on new series is definitely like making pancakes.  Even when you have mixed all delicious ingredients just lightly enough, and have waited for the skillet to get hot enough (but not too hot), the first two or three never look that good.  But that’s ok – the important thing is to keep making them.  The cook eats her imperfect creations while she works, giving her the wherewithal to go on, and pretty soon each hungry person in the house has a plateful of golden, round maple-syrup sponges – I mean, flapjacks.

Now, its time for me to drive off into the morning sunset.  I mean sunrise.  At this time of year, who can tell the difference?

A Christmas Rhyme by Brenna Hopkins
Santa loves me…This I know.
Francis Pharcellus Church tells me so!

I take no comfort in the idea that what goes around, comes around.  For starters, I am not so perfect, and who knows what sort of payback people think I deserve?  Secondly, no one else’s suffering can do anything to heal up our hurts – no matter how fervently we wish it could.  Whatever happens to heal us is entirely in our own hands.

So I don’t care whether the thankfulness I feel for everyone who has loved me, held me, kissed me, waited for me, thought of me with even a little bit of kindness generates karmic payback or not.  When I feel grateful, that healing is for myself, and I have to submit to the conditions of wholeness: where joy registers deeply, equivalent pain may also enter.  It can’t be otherwise.

I love you all so dearly.  I wish there were more I could do today than hold you in my hearts, a little teary and yet happy for all the risks we have taken together.  Risks of love, of seeing, of waiting.  You make me braver, because how else will I ever live up to the gratitude I feel?