Gift-Wrapping The Year: What I Wish I Could Give

I sit among piles of wrapping paper, a sea of greens and slivers of silver darting through like minnows. There are reds and crisp whites, tissue paper and too much ribbon, snowmen cards to say, "Hello," and "Merry Christmas from" and I am awash in the chaos of Christmas.

What I want to wrap up this year though, stow away for safekeeping under trees and in stockings are moments. This uncontainable laughing fit, that early morning on the rooftop deck overlooking the Capitol Building, the walk from 8th St to 2nd St. I sit among cardboard skeletons of boxes, my clothes still carrying their faint whiff of District air, and I want to wrap them up again and give them away. 

So I imagine.

I imagine wrapping up the gift of Ebenezer's Coffeehouse small vanilla chai and giving it to Hannah - watching as she unwraps with glee the hours that unfolded in our chairs by the glass door, our legs curled up under us and our hearts in our hands on the table. I can see the grin seep into the corners of her face as she realizes that I've included spontaneous trips to Georgetown on the Circulator and just a taste of the Pumpkin Spice Baked & Wired cupcake we shared over west coast espresso and Anthropologie dreams. 

I imagine tying a ribbon neatly on the gift of the D6 bus at 7:55am, hands in pockets as the group of us huddled together, waiting to begin our commute. I offer it to Virginia - the prompt 8:10 question about friendship or love, the laughing "see you in class!" when I clamber out the bus back doors at 16th and K St. I can see her sign "Thank you" and the faint echoes of laughter as she looks at me and envelops me in a hug, the two of us together remembering tea at 1:30am and signing our way through the Rayburn House Office building one brisk November afternoon.

I imagine carrying the big box of Family Night Dinners to Lisa-Jo and sitting with her at the long table in the back as she pulls out conversation after conversation. Mixed in I have placed Himalaya, La Loma, her favorite frosted sugar cookies. She smiles because we give each other Zoe, the gift of Life, and Grace, the gift of Love. And in the box of conversations I imagine Lisa-Jo finds created, chosen, cherished and celebrated on a small silver necklace - the conversation that means so very much to both of us who blog and laugh and live such very different and full lives. 

I imagine cupping my hands around a poorly wrapped cup of early morning coffee for Sam, our sweatshirts and hats keeping our ears warm as we laugh and talk, our heads together. I imagine she undoes the ribbon and discovers that I have included that first walk to the Lincoln Memorial and the stories we told each other. 

I imagine unwrapping a sunny afternoon at Jacob's with Cynthia, white chocolate mocha and green tea sipped in the rays of light on the brick patio. I imagine her joy at the small bundles of laughs I tucked in the corner of the box - our mutual love of bright pink shoes, yellow berets, and puppy dog faces. I imagine giving her smaller box, with nothing but a hug inside it.

I imagine presenting my apartment with the special, treasured gift of nights at our kitchen table, grinning like fools, laughing so hard they could hear us on the roof, our Sunday community meals, and our laughter ringing out over the living room where we sat at desks and uncomfortable couches, late night runs to 7-Eleven and the stories, the stories that would burst out of the wrapping paper into the air - stories of Harris Teeter groceries, Busboys & Poets, trips to Chop't and Starbucks and the world of Eastern Market. 

I imagine giving these gifts this Christmas, to all of those wonderful people who gathered around me this fall and surrounded me with more love than I could have imagined. I imagine giving these gifts, wrapping them up carefully in the semi-darkness of my bedroom, and joyfully presenting them under the tree. 

For now, I imagine these gifts, and I give them to you, readers, who are my special gift this season. Christmas is gratefulness - and this year, I am so grateful for you.

Love,

Hilary

When The Grocery Store Becomes Overwhelming (Pause, and Drink Coffee)

Today I inaugurated being in my hometown with the all-important trip to the grocery store. This trip is significant because this is not a local fresh organic produce market, or an overly expensive limited options grocery store on Pennsylvania Ave, or even the Peapod virtual grocery store where you search for what you want and your purchases are delivered to your door. Nope, this grocery store is your typical , so many options we don't know what to do with them, high in saturated fats and non-organic options, with so many aisles you could be filming a movie in one and the nice lady sniffing apples in the next one over wouldn't even notice. I was prepared for culture shock (or so I thought).

Our local Market Basket is only a few minutes' down the road, but it was a trip I have been dreading. I haven't operated a motor vehicle in just about 10 weeks, and the prospect of guiding our little green Honda down a stretch of 50 mph (where people actually go 67) and into the chaotic parking lot of overcrowded Christmas shoppers intimidated me.

However, this afternoon I ventured out of my driveway and down said treacherous stretch of road, and into said overcrowded parking lot. I locked my car. I walked into the automatic doors and into a blast of artificial heat. I exhaled.

My eyes had a heart attack. Everywhere I looked were blaring orange advertisements: Peppermint Candies! 2 for $0.99! Chicken Stock! Only $1.99! Campbell's Soup in a Can! Now Reduced Price! There were feathery paper decorations in green, red and gold over every checkout aisle. The fluorescent lights blared, the radio crooned Bing Crosby Christmas tunes, and I stood there, red basket in hand.

I wanted to scream FREEZE! This is going by me too fast! The noises of carts, boxes being stacked on shelves, people clamoring for attention, the steady bleep bleep of checkout lines, the music... I couldn't concentrate. I wandered through the store with an empty basket on my arm and a dazed look on my face. It was a simple task: get a carton of juice. But for the life of me I couldn't think of where and how to get the juice. Aisle 7 - where the non-refrigerated juice is stored, or Aisle 2, where the butter and cream cheese is kept? Did I want frozen make it yourself juice, or did I want juice boxes?

It is a strange thing to be so inundated with choices. The grocery stores seem to wear their number of choices like a badge of honor. If you have 35 types of cheddar cheese options, then you must be searching high and low to provide your customers with the best possible array. But what if your customer has just returned from a different place, and isn't equipped to choose from your brilliant array of cheddar cheese? What if she just wants you to hand her cheddar cheese, and guide her to the checkout, and leave the chaos for somewhere quiet? What if, when presented with choices, she can't make one?

This experience, I'm sure, is compounded when you return from a different country, where the very act of grocery shopping is not a scavenger hunt but actually a fairly brief errand. But there is something about the experience of return, and its temporary paralysis, that we all share. I can't make a decision in a grocery store, and I wander through my day marveling at the familiarity and strangeness of these sights, sounds and people. I sit in my living room, by the fire, with my cup of coffee and my computer, typing away, and I want to laugh and cry and smile and scream.

So I'm drinking coffee, and pausing in the midst of this day, to remind myself that the paralysis is temporary, that soon I will have returned more fully, and my lungs will fill with the air of this place, these people. In sign language, the sign for "here" involves moving your hands, palms facing the sky, in circles parallel to the ground (I know, a poor description... here is the sign). I find myself signing over and over, "I am here," in an effort to tell my body to rest, to exhale, to be. I don't know quite if I will ever cease to breathe a bit of DC air, feel the Potomac fever in my blood, yearn to see the people who entered my life in August and transformed it. I do hope, however, that my lungs will fill with Massachusetts air, and I will continue with great joy the relationships here. I hope that my grocery store will become more familiar.

Love,
Hilary

(P.S. Remember the pink shoes post?)

Mighty, He Saves: Reflections on the Third Sunday in Advent

Disclaimer: I am not a theologian. I am not a candidate for a bachelor's degree in Biblical and Theological Studies. I am not, despite my high hopes, an intellectual prodigy in the realm of living faithfully. But this year, on this blog, and perhaps for years to come on this blog, I would like to offer you a few thoughts for each week of Advent, the time of preparation and waiting before the celebration of Christ's birth. 

This Sunday we light the pink candle in the Advent wreath, the candle of joy. We are joyful at the nearness of Christ's birth this Sunday, joyful at the vision of His arrival. This Sunday, joy confuses me. I feel it stirring in me, as the preparation continues and the celebration of Christ's birth draws nearer. Yet I also feel something else stirring in me: homesickness.

But Hilary, you say. How can you be homesick? You left the city only 27 hours ago! You are now safely curled up on your own couch, by the fire, with your black lab curled up beside you and a good cup of tea in your hands. How can homesick be stirring on this Sunday, with all of its joy, all of its anticipation?

If you were to ask me these questions, I would not have a full answer. But somehow joy is married to homesickness. I am joyful at my return but the very word "return" implies that I came from somewhere, and if that place is a place I love... then I can never be joyful at returning if I am not also homesick.

And so begins the unlikely marriage in the Third Sunday of Advent of joy and homesickness. We are often too apt to think of Christ's coming as His arrival, His coming home to us, His coming to the home of our hearts, and we forget that Christ came from the Father, from Home. In fact, Christ came to give us the gift of homesickness for the Home He was preparing for us. We joy in preparing for Christ to come home; He promises that we will someday come home. My DC mama Lisa-Jo writes of this in her beautiful blog post: "This is the gift I give my son for Christmas. To be connected to the Christ-child by a familiar feeling of being in one place but not altogether of it. Of harboring a longing for somewhere else. Of knowing there is more to the story of who we are and where we call home."

So joy, and homesickness together this Sunday. But I would be remiss if I did not also talk about the other thing stirring in me this morning: God's great might. The Collect this week says, "Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us..." We speak often of God's triumphant coming and forget the humility of His birth; but we also talk of God's humble birth without seeing the mightiness of it. God works best in shattering the dichotomies of our minds, in taking a word and impregnating it with paradox and meaning bigger than any we thought it could carry. God marries joy to homesickness and might to humility. God stirs up His power and comes among us as a baby. God enters history, enters life, enters our world to inaugurate the New Kingdom, the true History, the true Life.

This Sunday of Advent, we light the candle for joy. And I urge us to think of joy married to these other things, joy as a word pregnant with God's promises and His paradoxes. I am homesick for 327 8th St; yet I am joyful at being home, and joyful that I can be homesick for Washington, DC because it means home is a bigger word now. God is mighty; He is about to be born as a child. God stirs up His power... and with great might, He comes among us as a baby. Let us rejoice.

Love,
Hilary

Third Sunday of Advent

Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come 
among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, 
let thy bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver 
us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and 
the Holy Ghost, be honor and glory, world without end. 
Amen.


(From the Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican Tradition, 1979 edition)