Between Want and Waiting

I had a moment of inspiration a moment ago but I lost it to the Facebook. Not  Facebook exactly. To the restless grey not-my-holiday-anymore Christmas. Not restless exactly. Not unless I stop to think about it. Me on my orange couch in the back of someone else's house, no tree, no decorations, back to a lifetime of Christmas as it always was, Christlmasless, but not as it is for my kids. Daisy curled beside the couch and the holly outside my window swaying with the rain.

This is Yule.
Quiet in all ways.

Last night the annual Christmas-eve tree decorating party. Longest standing tradition my girls have known in a life where nothing stands for long, and the first real hours I've spent inside the old place since I jumped that ship four months back. All those rooms I put together. Shelves I painted and painted again. My furniture. My table. My spider plants hanging down over the mantle.

All this morning I read.  The rain comes down and down.. Granta, Marie Claire, the CareOregon provider directory. Pandora busts up the quiet with Schuman and Chopin and I peek in on your holiday while my neighbor vacuums upstairs.

The rabbit cage smells all the way into the living room.
I owe my dog a walk.

Caught between want and waiting. Folded up around myself in Roxie's bean bag at the dead end of my house.The phone gives me quick facebook hits of Christmas around the world, or at least around the constellation of my world. Soak up a little satisfaction (or something like it) from the joy pushing out of those stills. Picture of  the world just how we want to see it.

It's not there, what I'm looking for. And it's not here either. It's dripping down off the bamboo outside my window, inside my mirror. Sometime this morning, early, I lay myself down on the floor. Keep that knot tied up inside my throat when I'm talking to my girls. Let it slide apart in streams when the phone goes quiet. Alone is just a song we sing ourselves anyway. By myself is how I chose today.

Something's in this quiet.
Gently used gift  I'll force myself to find.
Sit here in it and in it and in it until I can unwrap.