What I lived
My season’s holly and jolly has been of my own making so far, and if the festivities ended here, I would declare myself satisfied. (I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the holidays, once even cancelling the whole shebang. But that’s grist for another post!)
This year I jump-started December with a trip to Stage Coach Barn Sale’s Christmas open house, and it was a barn full of shabby chic holiday. (I purchased two “doo-dad” mason jars for writing prompts and a birch log candle holder, but I could have done so much more damage. So much!) The next weekend it was off to the Christmas Lite Show’s holiday walk. Instead of driving this year, I walked with friends Mary and Elizabeth. And, yes, it was toe-numbing cold, but you can’t say no to a two-mile walk through this holiday extravaganza! I laughed and chit-chatted and had coffee and goodies … holiday cheer.
This week I met friend Denice for brunch at Sweet Seasons, a cafe and bakery in downtown Lowell, followed by a visit to the Victorian dollhouse recently donated to the Lowell Historical Museum. The nine-room dollhouse is an Eye-Spy wonder. No detail is spared, right down to the portraits on the walls which are actual family photos. The couple who created the house collected pieces from their travels over decades, and, as they say, viewing this exhibit is worth the price of admission. After the museum we got our steps in at the Grand River Riverfront park which features one of the longest timber-framed bridges in the country–it’s majestic to walk along, to say the least. (You can read about the afternoon from Denice’s point-of-view over at her blog Denice’s Day.)
Friends, you don’t know homemade candy until you’ve tasted one of Denice’s homemade peppermint patties. She only makes them at Christmas and I am the proud recipient of a gift bag of these goodies which I am hoarding for my own pleasure in a very Grinch-like manner.
And, really? What more do we need this Christmas season than a bracing walk in the cold, the conversation of sweet friends, and the hope of twinkle lights?
What I’ve read
It’s been a little bit of this and a little bit of that, I’m afraid. I find myself a bit impatient with any title that doesn’t catch me within the first few pages–I’ve even added a folder to my Kindle labeled “Slush”. Maybe it has something to do with getting older, but I keep thinking of all the luscious books I could be reading and think, “Ain’t nobody got time for this!”
I did read a provoking novel titled Southernmost by Silas House. It wasn’t a light read, but it spoke to me in a new way about the power that doubt has to transform our lives. Asher Sharp is a Pentecostal preacher with a wife and young son. His life has been lived on the solid rock of his beliefs–until a flood devastates the Tennessee countryside he calls home and at the same time shakes the foundation of his well-ordered life. A gay couple ask for shelter in the flood’s aftermath and Asher turns them away, just as his beliefs would have him do. But he is floundering to justify his actions–and the doubts emerge. Although it sounds bleak, and although Asher ends up losing nearly everything, Southernmost is a story of hope.
But now it’s a week until Christmas and my reading will be jingle all the way. I’ve got two winter titles–The Mistletoe Promise (“a love story for Christmas” states the blurb!) and A Week in Winter (Can you say, “Maeve Binchy”?) that are as fluffy as whipped cream on cocoa–and just what I want to wrap up the holidays.
This is my symphony 