After a year of borrowed addresses, this Christmas comes with nothing addressed to me. Not even a ghost of Christmas past asking for a wish list. Not to worry, when you are displaced and have to pack up again every few weeks, ownership becomes theoretical. I have one close family member, my son, who I suspect bought my gift at a gas station, and I love him for it.
Last winter, fire took the house. It happened as I myself was learning how to leave. It was the first Christmas in years without the old accounting system in play, something like a soul for his sixpence, robbing me again of being the only woman I’ve wanted to be: one who belonged. The timing felt horror-film cinematic, as if to say, “You think you can leave?” How about now?
The fire took the VHS tapes with the only voices of my dead family still inside them. It took my mother’s ashes. It took every piece of art my son had ever made. It took proof that castles had been built on clouds by me, dammit, by me, and that they had been lovely, even if no one else knew it. We did.
Of course, it took more than objects. Even my hands felt vacant to my arms. What remained intact was an isolation I never wanted in the first place, shaped not by cruelty but by scale, a town growing just tall enough that it sometimes can’t see its people.
And still, warmth arrived. Literally, house sits followed by donation after donation. An angel family on sabbatical offered more than most could. Food. Keys. Temporary shelter. Enough to keep us from falling all the way through.
I watched the numbers climb, one-fifth of the way there. Not enough to rebuild. Not enough to rest. Enough to know that people felt the numbness in me that the firefighters could not put out.
I became a figure meant to be kept safe, not kept close. Like a butter dish, something you keep on the table for the right time and place, but covered. Checked on, not invited. I understood this posture came from care. Still, concern quietly replaced the company I longed for.
I would not make a good bear. I have trouble resting, because as soon as I sit, I begin to marinate like salty stew. Time thickens as hours turn to molasses. So I stayed in motion, like onions left in the fridge long enough to surprise you with their kick despite some softening. I kept nursing others instead of myself. Years ago, a woman once told me I would be a nurse. This Christmas, I am not in title or uniform, but in posture. Vigilance. Staying.
Eleven years into parenting, this stage feels like a second pregnancy. Not knowing who is coming forth. It has slowed my roll, this knowledge of where I am meant to stand right now. I am ripe with it. Resting, finally, inside the mystery of a pungent unrest. This season is full of construction and tapering, measured mysteries I want to see the end of. Downcast, I turned away from Telluride, a city I had been walking toward for years that reached out a hand almost big enough to hold us. During break, we will make not one but three moves.
No one has ever come for visits in the past twelve years, carrying cinnamon on their feet. Still, I must find a mountain within to keep going.
The mountain has shaded trails and birds with big noses. Lakes that boil the soup my mother made. Simmering creeks of oil and meat fat. Wind wafting orange slices and sandalwood. Greenery bent with ears toward the deepest layers of grief. Soil sends goosebumps up your spine when you crack your toes into it, ivy bearing droplets of honeyed milk for those who still believe in nourishment.
Lately, however, this internal mountain temperature has been cold, white cold, and somehow it is up to me to warm it.
Author’s note: This piece was written in the year following a house fire and during ongoing displacement.
