I have a black, hardcover journal from the days before my son got his autism diagnosis. It's where I'd write what he'd eaten that day, how many tantrums, how much head-on-hardwood banging, how few hours of sleep. Words that came and words that went away for good. It is pocked with asterisks and exclamations and mostly question marks; a scabby scrawl bumping over rippled pages.
I can barely open the thing now for fear of the sorrow that will leak out.
I know, though, that tucked inside is a folded paper snowflake. It was the last one I cut that December, the one that made me draw an astonished breath at order and beauty perfectly manifest on a sheet of cheap computer paper. It was effortless, and it was a promise. Even I could see that.
I'm ashamed to admit that Christmas gets a little harder every year for me. I have a hard time shaking off the year's accumulation of injustice and disappointment, even though I believe those things are not the end of the story. Advent requires some deliberate measures, and now I have a strategy: I defiantly make paper snowflakes, as a reminder to myself that random cuts unfold into effortless beauty.
At least on paper.
*****
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."
Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 1867)