A journey, this season.

“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.” ¹

After the cantor finished his hymn, after we had settled again in our seats, the cushioned wood creaking beneath us, a woman, in white robes, read to us T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi.”

Each word fell heavy, like the snow beyond the stained glass.  I clung to every image, as I have clung to so many moments this season.  My sister sighed beside me, her hand atop her stomach, atop her unborn baby.  The candles flickered. 

And I would do it again, but set down
This set down

I would do this again—this: bundling beneath wool, braving ice and chill, to sit in too-small, too-tight pews, beneath a painted sky of angels and outstretched hands and adoring eyes, and listen to a choir, to children, singing the songs of this season, in the candlelit cavity of someone else’s church. 

I set this memory down.

As I set you down.

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.

I wrote of our birth.  I chronicled it well, with certainty, without doubt.  How else do you letter the love of your days?  I have my evidence, raw, inked, the pages marked and now filed away.

I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

Hard and bitter—yes.  Happy, too, somehow.

And yet, we journey on, in candlelight or darkness, in daylight or in the black recesses of night.

We journey, through seasons.

We journey, in and out of each other’s lives. 

We journey, onto our yoga mats, on our mats—we map our bodies and then canvas them all over again the next day, and the day after that, and one day more, just for good measure.

I journeyed past you, back to you, a death birthed in each of us.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation

We journey to change—the scenary, the scope, our sanity, our selves.  We journey, weary or in wonderlust.

I journey home, tomorrow, to Pennsylvania.

And when I do—arrived at evening, not a moment too soon, Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory—I will set this down, this Christmas.  I will settle into the arms of my family.

I will set a ring of candles ’round the grave, to honor this death—rather, to light the way for the newly born.

1 T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi.”

I want this.

“I see you.”

That—that is what I want.

Even though genuine by nature, ridiculously enthusiastic and clumsy in my delight, my excitement—I want this:  you, to see me, plainly.

And when it happens, when that spark lights, when you watch yourself come alive in another person’s eyes, in the bright, white cheer of a smile, in the loud crack of a laugh, then you know the moments, like this, are well worth the wait.

Or, rather, not even the wait.  But, simply, the moment.

It is rare.

But, him—he sees me.

And you, you see me.

And that, sometimes, is enough.

Not always, of course.  Because nothing ever is that—always.

So we take what we can get.

We take it, drink of it, lay in its arms, and make love.

I cannot wait…

…to see my two nephews tumbling underfoot.

…to hug my mother and father, tightly, joyfully, because it is finally Christmas and we are all together.

…to drive down to Washington, DC and visit my dear, dear friend and go out boozin’ and schmoozin’ with several awesome, fabulous DC bloggers.  (!!!)

…to leave Boston behind me for a week.

…to get a break—from everything and everyone.

…to enjoy the silence and solitude of my car for six long hours.

…to sleep in.

…to eat my father’s homemade Christmas cookies.

…to attend Christmas Eve candlelight service, to sit squeezed between my sisters and my parents, to listen to carols and psalms, to forgive, to sing.

…to do laundry without having to walk outside carrying my laundry basket.

…to bundle up for long walks with my mother.

…to watch my family unwrap presents, to hear their laughter and thanks, to snuggle down into the warmth and glow of my childhood home.

Just one more week.  Just one more bloody week. 

I truly cannot wait.

The art of perspective.

One of my dearest friends was once a fierce competitor.

Okay, well, fierce from a 17-year-old’s perspective.

She and I played on opposing water polo teams in high school—her, defending the cage as the goalie for a private, boarding school’s team, and me, directing the offense as the hole set for a large, loud, rowdy public high school.  I stood at least 5′10″ as a teen-ager.  She hovered at 5′5″.  I scored goals on her, rising up out of the water and hurling a hard, fast ball past her arms.  And she yelled at her defense to pummel me in return.  We didn’t draw blood, but we certainly battled it out.

We ended up attending the same college and, thus, playing on the same collegiate varsity team together.  Within months, we were asking how we’d ever gone so long without the other in our lives. 

In November of next year, I will walk down the aisle as her maid of honor. 

And yet, for years, she was “intimidated” by me.  As were most of the water polo players I encountered in college who I’d faced in high school. 

My friend and my college teammates used to love to tease me about being intimidating because I simply couldn’t see it.  Me??!!  Intimidating??!!  Oh sure, I was tall, but I apologized every time I’d knock someone with my elbow.  I went out of my way not to play dirty, not to kick or bite or grab bathing suits.  I also made a point of talking to members of other teams, either during warm ups or in the locker rooms or on deck.  I smiled, a lot.  Yes, some might say I suffered from the “I just want everyone to like me!” syndrome, particularly in the pool.

I wanted to project myself as the nice, friendly girl who played fair and clean and congratulated you afterward for a good game, no matter what the scoreboard said.  Because to me, it was just a game.  Let’s enjoy ourselves. 

My friend—and, I found, many others—simply saw me as intimidating.  A wee bit scary.

Isn’t it funny—the reflection you see sometimes bears a totally different face than the reflection others see?

This past weekend, I attended a Christmas party of a woman with whom I practice yoga.  We became fast friends when we started seeing each other in all the same classes and then ran into each other in the South End.  We even attended Diane’s posture clinic together last week.  At her Christmas party on Saturday, I knew no one, other than a Bikram yoga teacher from our studio.  And so this teacher and I fell into conversation for at least an hour or so.

Eventually, another pair of women wandered over.  We started talking yoga.  I explained to them how this teacher was one of my absolute favorites, how I simply adored her classes, how even if I was sucking wind and dying, I still loved having her talk me through my practice.

One of the other women then asked me if I was “good” at yoga.  A pause, as I tried to decide how best to answer the question.

And then, my teacher said, “Hannah has a lovely practice.  Very quiet, methodical.  She gives her all no matter what—and it’s so obvious she’s always trying so hard.  It’s really remarkable to see such a tall woman reaching such depths in some of the poses, especially standing bow.  She’s just a few inches away from doing a standing split!  It’s incredible.”

I stood a little speechless, ridiculously flattered by her words.  My practice has felt anything but quiet or methodical these last few months, and I have had whole weeks when I felt I actually wasn’t trying hard at all, which is why my yoga was suffering.  I try not to “look” at my poses in the mirrors, either—if I do, I usually fall out.  I’ve never felt like I’m inches away from straigthening my kicking leg in standing bow, so to hear her say this was so surprising!

How funny, I thought.  She’s seen me one way these many classes, and I’ve seen myself an entirely different way.

Perhaps one of our greatest gifts is our ability to set, adjust, or wholly overhaul our perspective—of people, situations, and self.  Perspective is never set in stone.  Rather, we inform it with others’ opinions, with literature and education, with feedback and arguments, with love, with our own innate sense of right and wrong, and accordingly, it bends and warps and bounces until, finally, it settles, stabilizes.

Then we see our self, and the world, clearly, from our unique vantage point.

Until, of course, the prism of our perspective shifts once more.

You can’t always get what you want.

I fell out of bed this morning in a tangle of limbs and excitement.  Yes, I was excited to stand atop my mat at 6:15 a.m. and practice my yoga.  I’m crazy like that.

After 20 minutes on said mat, listening to the nervous drone of a newly anoited Bikram instructor and feeling the temperature and humidity rise and rise and rise, I felt the balloon of my enthusiastic expectations pop, loudly, quickly, and thoroughly. 

Oh, sure, I battled it out.  I forced myself to work through every single pose of the standing series, to not give up, to breathe, and to look straight ahead rather than to the heavens begging for escape or death.  Yes, I collapsed into a puddle during the floor series; yes, I kind of hated how the new teacher lacked confidence and stamina in her voice; yes, I wished I had stayed in bed that extra 30 minutes and just gone straight to work.

But, you can’t always get what you want. 

We know this.  In more ways than one. 

It’s like that Christmas morning oh so many years ago, when I really and truly thought my day had come and my parents were going to give me a horse for the holiday.  I’d been riding for nearly four years, had attended several shows, and even had several blue ribbons proudly displayed on my bedroom walls. 

My obsession with horses went beyond the usual, girlish glee of “Oooooh, ponies!!”  I spent whole days at the barn down the road from my house—in the summertime, I was up and out of the house even before my parents.  When I wasn’t in the saddle, I was sitting on the fence, watching other riders, or I was mucking stalls, or leaning against the gate of the pasture, staring out into the fields, memorizing every inch of the beautiful animals grazing and playing.  I unloaded bags of grain and organized tack boxes.  I swept the aisles, polished bridles and halters, rinsed down overworked steeds.  Then, at the end of the day, I’d sit on bales of hay with my trainer and the barn owner and talk and laugh and ask questions and listen to their stories, the knickering and shuffling and stamping of hooves like a quiet symphony in the background.

I certainly wasn’t poor growing up, but my parents weren’t awash in cash.  I worked for lessons because they were expensive.  I inherited saddles and bridles and show clothes that other, richer riders had cast aside.  I leased horses rather than owned them. 

But, after years of this, and years of begging and begging, I thought my Christmas had finally come.  This was it. 

Of course, I didn’t expect a horse curled up under the tree.  So, as my sisters and I tore through wrapping paper and bows that one Christmas morning, I kept thinking, “When all this is over, my father will take me outside, and there my horse will be, and we’ll walk him down to Jim and Betsy’s barn, and I will ride him the rest of the day!”

Oh, the rich fantasy life of a child.

But, then, when the present opening was over, my father actually did give me a sly little smile, and beckoned me toward him.  I could barely stand, I was shaking so with excitement.  My mother’s eyes even bore a sneaky gleam.  I stumbled over boxes and gifts, bounding toward my father’s arms.  He told me to close my eyes.

And then he took my hand.  And led me toward the front porch.  Then opened the large, thick front door.  The stoned tile burned my feet with cold.  I heard my sisters giggling behind me in excitement.  This was it indeed!

“Okay, honey, open your eyes!”  My father boomed.

And there, before me, stood a beautiful, antique cherry dresser with lovely glass knobs and a sleek, shiny finish.

My mouth opened, then closed.  Frantically, I looked past the dresser, through the porch windows out into the front yard.  Where was the horse?!  Maybe in the backyard?  My head spun around to look up at my parents.  My mother was still beaming, and my father was patting the top of the dresser proudly.

“Isn’t it lovely, honey?!” my mother said, happily.  “Merry Christmas!”

Now, granted, the dresser I did have at that time looked like someone had taken a pitchfork to it while wearing a blindfold.  It was missing an entire drawer and had only three knobs to open the other four drawers.  Its top was covered with scratches and stains.  That dresser was rickety, broken, ugly, and headed for the dump.  This dresser stood tall and wide, resolute, aged, refinished and glossed and glowing, like a 50-something woman just hitting her prime.

I should have been grateful and pleased.  I should have thanked my parents profusely. 

Instead? 

I cried.  Like any 11-year-old girl who was expecting a horse on Christmas day.  I really, really cried.

Through my blubbering, my parents finally devised why I was upset, and after enjoying a hearty round of laughter, they pulled me into their arms with hugs and kisses and quiet explanations that, someday, I’d have all the horses in the world.  Someday, I’d fall asleep to the cantering and baying of geldings and mares. 

After I’d sufficiently calmed down, my family helped carry my great Christmas present up to my bedroom, each of us girls carrying a drawer, while my parents lugged the dresser up the staircase.  My family’s excitement for this pretty and special present finally found it’s way to me, and soon enough, we resumed our Christmas gaiety, all in good spirits again. 

Later, my father went for a walk with me down to the barn to give the horses a special Christmas treat of freshly cut apples and carrots.  He watched me climb the fence and thrust my bare palm out underneath the expectant noses of the horses, as I called them by name and rubbed their their necks and whispered sweet, silly nothings.  He remarked on how brave and strong I was, on how I showed no fear of these massive and strong animals, who could crush me or bite me or kick me without a moment’s notice. 

Even in my child’s mind, I knew the the trick was this:  I held no expectation for my horses.  I simply loved them, in all their magnificence. I knew their power and heft but understood I’d only get hurt if I didn’t trust them implicitly.  If I didn’t trust myself implicitly.

Most of life is like that.  Yoga, too.

My parents eventually did buy me my own horse—a rambunctious, gangly, golden three-year-old, named Gemini, who I showered with affection, who I rode passionately and lovingly for years, until, finally, my daily trips down to the barn were no more.  

To this day, that cherry dresser, from all those Christmas’ ago, still stands proudly in my bedroom, here in Boston. 

And to this day, I still dream of owning a hundred horses, of trotting out to them in the early morning chill as they trot toward me, neighing, a fog of hot breath blowing out before them like a wave, a welcome, an invitation to love on them as they will surely love on me.

Someday, perhaps.  Someday.

Until then? 

We can’t always get what we want. 

But, we can appreciate what we have.