I love the four seasons because I love the sense of rhythm that comes with it. As the weather, the look, and the feel of the new season emerges it gives me a chance to reflect back on the previous year. When I took some dance classes for fun in college, the dance instructor would tell us we have to get the moves into our ‘muscle memory’ by moving to the same song again and again. Years later, I would hear a song we danced to and I would nearly have to restrain my body from kicking, spinning or ‘pas de bourreeing’ to each note. I believe our heart has muscle memory. The smells, temperature, feel, and even, date, can bring our heart back to a moment it is holding onto. The crispness of winter always makes me nostalgic- my heart has held onto the many reunions with loved ones, the generosity of gift-giving but winter is also when my mom died. Memories of her surprise me more often this time of year. This year, however, when I remember where we were a year ago, I am shocked by how different this season feels. A year ago we were at the worst of the pandemic- vaccines not available yet, cases rising, for us the first news of deaths that were closer to home than just statistics, and all of us making hard decisions to limit our normal traditions in various ways. When I reflect back on this year, I think the reunions with loved ones were even sweeter and the joy more palpable. I think our decisions were more intentional. My muscle memory feels more intense, holding onto many new and different memories.
Do you remember how this past May felt? After such a long winter, times of quarantine, and a second Lent that seemed just a continuation of the one before…spring arrived, outdoor reunions began to happen, tiny buds started to come up from the heavy dirt and with them- hope. Hope. I attended two baby showers on the same day, and on this same day received an invitation for a third. What is this feeling? Hope. In Spanish, the word for hope is also the word for ‘waiting’ and the word for ‘expecting’. In English, I think we tend to use the word ‘hope’ interchangeably with wish or optimism or sometimes a ‘just be positive’ mentality, but hope is so much more than just seeing the glass half full. Hope sees the emptiness, the darkness, the ugliness and despite all reasons not to- it plants a little seed. Christmas is the season of Hope, and Advent the season of waiting and expecting. In the northern hemisphere, Christmas is also the season of winter- where the world feels surrounded by darkness, cold and death. It is this world that a baby was born into some 2,000 years ago- this world of cruelty and injustice, surrounded by dirt and animals and nothing but his mother to comfort him. Hope was born, a baby.
When I was pregnant, strangers would reach out and touch my belly. If they resisted touching me, they usually couldn’t resist talking to me. I could see them making up questions just to have a way to connect with me, with my hidden baby. I remember one man in particular, the kind of man who I, ashamedly, usually try to walk by a little faster, but he calls out to me- “hey” in a raspy voice, “I heard it’s good luck to rub a pregnant belly. I, um, could really use some luck today. Could I?” Our Little Flower has reminded me of this experience, because a newborn baby attracts others in the same way being pregnant does. Anytime I bring her out in public, strangers who would normally not give me a second glance, stop what they are doing and think up some question they could ask me, but I can tell they just want to look at her a while longer. Why? My only answer is hope. Logic and calculations should tell us we’re crazy for bringing such a small, vulnerable thing into such a harsh world, yet we can’t help but reach out when one passes us by. Those who know us and know our Little Flower is a foster baby have surrounded us in love-food, gifts, calls, visits. I’ve been inundated with messages of ‘what can I give you?’ I think her extra vulnerability touches us even deeper and we want to somehow make the world a little less harsh. I am moved to watch my own kid’s hearts expanding as they constantly ask to hold her and feed her. The mother, dealing with wounds that go deep, might possibly be saved by this helpless Flower she created. How can one tiny person spread so much love? Mother Teresa is quoted as saying, “how can you say there are too many children? That’s like saying there are too many flowers.” An artist with a beautiful voice turned this quote into a song and, prophetically, it was going through my head in the weeks before we received our Little Flower into our home. My garden had a rough summer- between the record breaking heat, overbearing weeds, and wild animals hungry for a snack- I started to calculate- and then I started to give up. Why am I spending so many hours out here for $15 worth of tomatoes and squash?! But, a yellow flower would open, and I would find myself pulling away the weeds. We planted my son’s marigolds that he brought home from preschool in a separate area and I couldn’t stop tending to them. The deer ate our green beans down to nubs, yet they kept trying to grow so…how could I ignore them? Wildflowers would pop up in patches in the midst of weeds and my kids would run to me, pulling my arms to come see their colors and we would delight in their beauty for a few days, before they would wither away. The short duration of their life may tempt me to ask, ‘what’s the point?’ but I think I already know the answer- Hope.