I Missed Your Christmas Letter

I received a note from Sharon Manley saying that she missed my Christmas letter. I didn’t even think of sending a Christmas letter.

Thoughtlesss, in the sense that the thought just didn’t cross my mind. I thoroughly enjoy reading any that were sent to me. I wondered why I didn’t send one.

This year I was in Montreal, and feeling deep in the embrace of the holiday celebrations with Jarvis family there, I saw myself as one of them.

Then I came back to the same happiness with Richard & Miranda’s family. I didn’t even think of my separateness – the fact that I leave and am sometimes truly on my own, as I am right now, deep in the heart of Covid.

Here are the words of my Christmas letter, five months too late.

I can hardly find the sum of the year – I spent time with family and friends in a euphoria of happiness – each day blogging something of gratitude or wonder at my situation. My life seems perfect in every way and my only fear was of losing this happiness.
What didn’t I have enough of in 2019? I think if there were extra time, I would have read more. I do have a back-up of books, and was happy to hear on the radio today that the library is forgiving all past fines. In Calgary’s future, there will be no fines on books. I think I will still have to return them. 

I do read, but in a different way. 

When I am finished in a day with Facebook, then contributing to the Larch Haven blog and responding to email, a significant amount of reading has been done without touching what I truly love about reading: cracking open the front and back of a new book, the smell of its packaging, the soft sound as my thumb flips through the pages in anticipation of reading. 

I love the lamp light that falls on the book, the straight back of the chair I sit in, the warmth of the lap blanket across my knees, the pencil by my side, lest I want to write back to the author in the margins. 

All of that, a piece of me longs for and wishes I could squeeze it into a life already fully lived. 

Christmas wishes to all, throughout the year. And thank you Sharon, for reminding me of the wish I have at Christmas, not just at Covid, to be reconnected to those I love.

Arta