Alphabet of the Republic

by Chip Livingston

Always I’m asked what I love about Uruguay.

Because the food, I say, because the people. Because the rhythm of the place, the Culture. Carnaval. Candombe

Drums that demand I dance. It’s different:

Everything. Its Education – free through university and evidently effective. Everyone seems wise, well-read, and worldly. It’s egalitarian. And though I know one Richie Rich, the majority of people are equal. They treat each other as equals. It’s

Fun, I mean, fatal, just

Going to the grocery store, a walk in my

Hawaianas to practice my holas. The Healthcare – universal and fucking fantastic.

lemanja, the goddess of the ocean. Idea Vilariño, the first poet whose collected works I read entirely in Spanish.

Jacarandas.  

Karaoke at Il Tempo. Kioskos to buy my tobacco y hojillas.

Loros, the small green parrots that top the palmeras. La Paloma in Rocha, where I’ve beached seven summers.

Llaves antiguas – old skeleton keys to open my doors, and, oh man, the beautiful doors of Uruguay. There are photo books and collage posters of the puertas in Montevideo. I take

Mate at merienda, I

Nap at siesta,

Obey the rhythms of my borrowed land.

Public transportation. Public wifi. Public Welfare. Public exercise equipment. Institutions that actually serve the public.

Queso. I guess it makes sense that if Uruguay has the most natural beef in the world, its dairy would be as pure. Quince paste, which they call membrillo, and I have a story about that for another time.

Really it’s remarkable I haven’t mentioned the meat.

Rrrreally rrrremarkable but

Seriously, Uruguay outlawed antibiotics and hormones in its livestock in the 1970s, it’s banned Monsanto and GMOs, imported

Transgenic foods are marked with a yellow triangled T.  Tomatoes still taste like tomatoes in

Uruguay; bananas still have seeds. It’s a long trip south but

Vale la pena. Now if I shortened “vale la pena” to just “vale,” it would suggest I’m from Spain. The abridged version in Uruguay is “dale,” used like “okay,” pero ta,

You know I love learning those distinctions between spellings and palabras.

Zorrilla.

Zorrilla’s on the twenty-peso note, which you can imagine as a dollar, Juan Zorrilla de San Martin, an epic Uruguayan poet, whose home, bought by scholars of the state, is now a national museum; a street and park are named for him. Juana de Ibarbourou appears on the thousand peso, another poet. The hundred peso features Eduardo Fabini, a musician and composer. Do you know what I’m getting at? The Uruguayan money has artists and thinkers on it. And I think about the killers I carry in my U.S. wallet.

Zumba, my first onomatopoetic Spanish word, the drowsy bee’s buzz.

Yerba Mate, obviously, if you know me. I’ve nearly always got a mate full of yerba, the Guaraní herb that motors the world’s most nocturnal country, Uruguay.

Xcept Uruguay isn’t really the country’s name. No tiene nombre oficial but is officially known as La República Oriental del Uruguay, the republic east of the Uruguay River, referencing itself by location, by the X on the upside-down map, and uses the indigenous name of the nearby river, this cattle country crossed and bordered by rivers and sea, its bays a sweet and salty mix,

Which are just some of why and what I love about this watery paisito, the first time I met her crossing the Río de la Plata from Buenos Aires, on a whim, a mention, just the first weekend of a 10-day escape from North American winter with another U.S. writer. We decided within 24 hours to stay the entire holiday in Uruguay.

Verdad. Era verano. It was summer in our wintertime. Carnaval. And we toured the Atlantic beaches, convinced we’d been secreted into a kind of heaven, as if the venteveos saw and sung to us, the velas lit for Iemanja an extraordinary riverside welcome, warm beacons with carnations, coins, watermelons. Y acá volvimos, vivíamos, y yo vivo de nuevo.

Uruguay. Uruguay. Uruguay.
“Ur-u-guay? You’re a guy?”
“Ur-u-guay? You’re a gay?”You’re a single gay guy living in Uruguay? Que suerte, che! Uuuuu!

Ta! It’s tranquilo, and truth be told, todavía no sé what it is to be exact. Todo: los tomates, las tortas fritas, los teros, el tortugon, el tango, los tambores. The drum groups in the streets, the people on their feet, the two beats that keep the culture dancing. Los tambores. Los tangueros. The tango. The tambores. And los Tupamaros.

Spanish as a second language. I’d studied a semester with a Spaniard, had Cuban friends teach me to cuss, heard my share of Puerto Rican pillow talk, but learning to speak Uruguayan Spanish, No es poca cosa. No es Catalán, cierto, pero casi Canario, an idioma of opposites, where a former prison is now a luxury shopping mall and the current prison is called Freedom, where barbaric and fatal are adjectives for amazing, where to experience joy is to die or to be killed by something. Sino es así, no? O sí? Sí no? See?

RR. Errrrrrrrre. Mi perrita, mi porro, mi ferrocarril. Mi fat yankee tongue trying to roll the double RR. Joderrrrrrrr!

Really, I don’t know if that will work on the page. The Rambla: among my first and constant appreciations, Montevideo’s Rambla is 13.7 miles of uninterrupted sidewalk along the river and up the Atlantic coast; it’s where Montevideanos ramble, rest, relax, and meet for mate, to read, to exercise, to take sun, run. Its rhythms still and accelerate me. Requesón.

Que tal? How’s it going? Quizás you’re wondering how much love for this little country I’m going to share. I’ll try to be quicker.

Pero el problema es you can’t rush a Uruguayan, and I am growing more Yourugua every day, and there are a lot of things I love in the republic that start with P: poets, there are so many poets, and the people actually read poetry. There are poems etched in marble in public plazas. The people read! And the people are kind, helpful, pretty and peaceful – until it comes to fútbol, then it’s back to the killing metaphors. But Pizza. Pasta. Pan de Azúcar, where I saw a live wild black puma in a sheep pasture. Ah, population statistics: there are seven sheep for every human in Uruguay and there are four cows for each person. Palermo. Piriapolis. Parque Rodó. Cabo Polonio. Punta del Diablo. Palos borachos.  

Olímpicos and other sandwiches de miga. Las ondas buenas, ojalá, y obvio eating

Ñoquis on the 29^th  of every month.

Niños envueltos, delicious sausage in cabbage with a tortuous name, wrapped children. Riquísimos son.

Mira! Mate, mimos, mercados, murgas, the meat (see “Carne”), medialunas at merienda, the extra meal. They have four meals a day in Uruguay! And merienda suits me, soothes mi hambre at North American dinnertime. I have to mention Mujica, the former president, his example, history, and his changing the face of the republic to el mundo.

Lluvia. I love the fucking rain in Uruguay and it’s a good thing because this country is elemental, water falling into water, sky and sea, sea and earth, sol and sky, where llamadas call me to my feet for their ensayas y desfiles.

Lemeyun, and I’m even allergic to onions, but this Armenian-inspired Uruguayan dish is like, paf!, a grilled pita bread topped with spiced citrus beef ceviche.

Kisses – abundant as bread – and everything starts and ends with a beso. How tender and wholesome and masculine and shattering of macho North American stereotypes of how two humans can so naturally touch each other. Granted this is one kiss on the cheek, but there are exponential expressions of their comfort with intimacy.

JAJAJA is how they text laughter. Y les gusta reir. And I laugh at how distant my language just got when I spoke of showing affection. I have a lot to learn yet. Jamón y queso. Juas? 

lemanja, I have mentioned, an important figure in my knowing the country and my gratitude. Part of my introduction,

How we arrived the first time the weekend of her birthday, February 2, and joined Montevideo on Playa Ramirez to light candles and leave her regalos on the sand and in the sea. Olas de hermosas holas. Horneros. Y hombres excepcionales.  Guapos. Guapas. Gauchos. And Gooooooooooooooooool! We’ve gotten to Fútbol! And I’ve become a fanatic. Ya fui a mi first clásico, between Peñarol y Nacional, and now only lack one task to becoming unofficially Uruguayan – learning to play truco – but of my fondness for the other game. Obviously it has a lot to do with futbolistas. Fainá. Y bueno ta, no falta mucho para el fin, and 

Everything yet to be said yet an expression of some sorts shared. Empanadas. I don’t know if Uruguay invented the tango or empanadas, but it has perfected them.

Desfiles of diversity and marches for more derechos humanos, and the country is already known to be the most humanitarian in the Americas. The first country in the world to legalize marijuana, the first country to allow a woman to file for divorce, one of the few Latin American countries where abortion is safe and legal. Gay marriage, claro, like it was never a question. Uruguay elected a transgender senator and a female vice president.

Chorizos, choripán, chivitos! But Che, escuchame, the way Italian, Spanish, and African genes have mixed with los Charrua.

Carne, the best meat in the world. Happy cows and 52 cuts of beef: pulpón, asado, entrecot, lomo, nalga, peceto, vacío, colita de cuadril, morcilla sweet or salty, chinchulín, chorizo. I dated a carnicero. I dated a cowboy. Carnival drums and murgas, parades and bailarinas, las comparsas, la cumparsita, a never-ending series of cenas and cumples.

But because the rhythm of the place I say, because the people: because the food, which centers on the Asado, the barbecue, and ends with aplausos for the asador.

First published in Carve magazine in 2018

Copyright © Chip Livingston. All rights reserved.

Chip Livingston is the author of a novel, a collection of essays and stories, and two poetry collections. His writing has appeared on the Academy of American Poets’ and the Poetry Academy’s websites; and in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, New American Writing, and other journals and anthologies. Chip teaches in the low-rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. 
He lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Comfort Food

by Dawn Downey 

The to-go box on the kitchen counter held a piece of apple pie, a reward for toiling at my computer all morning after a breakfast date with my husband. I savored the anticipation as much as I was about to savor the pie. I imagined the treat nestled inside the box—a deep wedge of sweetness, the peaks of the crust a golden brown and the valleys glinting with sugar. It would be overstuffed with thick filling, an apple slice or two escaping the triangle. How the house would fill with the sweet aroma of hot apple pie when I heated it in the oven. Fork in hand, I opened the box. Staring me in the face was a pile of burnt crust pieces and goop that looked like something swept up from the floor. You call this pie? Scraps. 

Assholes. I can’t believe they pulled this. I should have checked the box before we left. No. I shouldn’t have to check. Maybe they didn’t pull anything. Sometimes pie comes out of the pan messy. Don’t make excuses for them. You might give this to a relative, not to a customer. Who did it? And did they know who the customer was? Assholes. 

As my husband and I pulled into the parking lot of a neighborhood cafe, freezing wind whipped the Stars and Stripes around a flagpole. The lot was packed with pick-ups, except for four off-duty police cruisers. I shoved my hands in my pockets and used Ben as a wind-break, crossing the lot to the restaurant, a red barn with green awnings. The kind of place frequented by regulars, which did not include me, my experience limited to one catfish lunch. Ben ate there often with a buddy. 

A bakery case spotlighted cobbler, cake, cinnamon rolls, and golden wedges of apple pie. The cops lounged at a round table, heads bowed, fingers at work on the keys of their cell phones. I scanned the room for non-white faces (There were none.) and simultaneously chastised myself for the automatic reaction. Beside the pass-through to the kitchen, a life-sized wooden pig held a sign ordering Eat More Chicken. Above the case, another sign boasted Home Cookin’. Just what I needed. Comfort food. In comfort food cafes, the servers were efficient, and they always called me honey. I had a soft spot for both qualities. 

A hostess approached, her expression set in a snarl. She glanced in my direction just long enough to ignore me, then shifted her slitty-eyed attention to a spot near Ben’s feet. “Two?” she asked. 

I knew that move. My sister and I had used it on each other when we were feuding. 

The hostess might have intended the attitude for me in particular, or she might have intended it for both of us. It was also possible a general bad mood had plastered the sneer on her face before we walked in. Ben didn’t seem to notice, much female nonverbal communication being under the male radar. He pointed to a vintage motorcycle balanced on top of a waist-high room divider. “Yeah, two. There’s a spot I like over by the Indian.” 

She’d already shuffled toward stools lined up at a counter. She veered from her original course and headed toward the divider. 

Ben said, “I mean the other side. It’s quieter. That okay?” 

“Wherever you want.” I only saw the back of her head, but I could tell she was rolling her eyes. She led us to a booth, where she dropped two menus onto the table. “Your waitress … “ Her departure swallowed the remainder of the sentence. 

A hook poked from a nearby coat rack, so I reached out to hang my parka. A customer was sitting across the room, glaring over her shoulder at me. I was used to catching an initial gawk when I walked into a room, and then the gawker’s face usually warmed into an embarrassed smile. This woman was ice. She spooked me. She parted her lips, and her companion slow-motioned his stare in my direction. I refused to turn away. Mouths set in twin grimaces, they stared for as long as it took me to hang my coat and fumble out of scarf and hat. I’d seen the expression before—on a couple of good ole boys in a little mountain town. They’d been sitting on chairs outside a pool hall, their legs stretched across the sidewalk, blocking my progress. Mouths frozen in twin grimaces, they waited a beat, then slow-motioned their resentful legs out of the way. 

When I shuddered into the booth, the placement of the table put my back to the couple. Damned if I didn’t land in the path of another poison stare. The woman sat alone in a corner, elbows on her table, coffee cup cradled in her hands. Eyes narrowed, she peered through the steam rising from her cup. Her shoulders were squared as she leaned forward, facing me head-on. She didn’t break eye contact. I was shocked. It was the glare that a guy in a rusted pick-up had used on me years before—both of us stopped at a red light. He’d made eye contact, held it, and then spat out his window. 

Ben studied his menu. I simmered. 

If I mentioned the incidents, how would the conversation go? Me: These people are staring at me. Ben: Well, yeah. You’re beautiful. Me: It’s not funny. And then I’d throw a fit. Or, Ben: Honey I’m sorry. Want to go somewhere else? Me: Let these people chase me off? And then I’d explode. Whatever he might say, I’d blow up. Anger concealed a tangle of other feelings I couldn’t unravel on the spot. Better to bury the knot under pancakes. 

Our server walked over. She was blue-collar skinny, and tension parted in the wake of her unhurried ease. “How are you folks, this morning?” She filled Ben’s cup without needing to ask him, warmth radiating from more than the coffee pot. “Need another minute?” 

I pointed to Number 6 on the menu. “Nope. Pancakes and eggs.” 

“How you want your egg, honey?” 

Servers who called me honey always took good care of me. I relaxed. 

“Scrambled.” Ben said, “Biscuits and gravy.” 

Before I had time to enumerate the ways that choice would shorten his lifespan, she set the plates in front of us. “I’ll be back to check on you.” After the pancakes did their job, I sipped hot tea. A border of chickens marched along the top of the walls, complemented by vintage tin signs. We Feed Our Chickens Gooch’s Best, bragged one. I chuckled at another, a hen that proclaimed He Rules the Roost, But I Rule the Rooster. My rooster and I solved the world’s problems, in between groans of satisfaction. Our server breezed by again to top off Ben’s cup. It seemed her timing was set by a secret code that passed between coffee-drinkers and servers. The magic of the transaction made me smile, and I shook my head in wonder as she walked into the second dining room. “How does she—” I froze. There above the doorway, next to Sweet Lassy Feeds, hung a movie poster for Gone With the Wind. 

But I did not see Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler. I saw bloody stripes on naked black backs. I did not see a love story, I saw slavery. 

Despair and rage threatened to boil over. But I was on a spontaneous date with my husband; it had been my idea. Hell, I’d even picked the place. If I succumbed to my feelings, then the restaurant won. If I shared my feelings with Ben, the restaurant won anyway, by controlling my conversation. I would tell Ben later, at home. The restaurant would not win. 

A phantom self, covered in the slime of partially-digested insults, slipped from her tomb deep within my gut. While I caressed my husband’s fingertips, the phantom wailed, smashed plates, and threw chairs. She ripped the poster from the wall and set fire to— 

Our server gathered up our dirty dishes. “Honey, you got room for dessert?” 
 “Apple pie, please. To go.”

Fork in hand, I opened the box on the kitchen counter. Inside was a heap of burnt crust pieces and goop. 

Assholes. They’d piled scraps in my to-go box. I stared, open-mouthed. Scraps where there ought to be pie. But sometimes pie comes out of the pan messy. Don’t make excuses. But who filled the box? Maybe they didn’t know who the customer was. Maybe this is just about sloppy customer service. Yeah. Maybe. 

I was sick of the constant onslaught. Little things and big things. Repeatedly pulled over blocks from my house for two miles over the speed limit. People who bragged they were color blind. Magazine covers—their dark-skinned celebrities photo-shopped four shades lighter. Pairing up in diversity training class, my white colleagues picked each other and left me standing alone, the black trainer and me staring our disbelief/belief at each other. The neighbor who’d confronted me on my daily walk. “I’ve never seen you. Where do you live?” The straight-haired friend who wanted my nappy-hair dreadlocks, but she sure didn’t want my nappy-hair life. I was a news story on a loop: assault, protest, investigation, no indictment, protest, silence. Repeat. 

Maybe they hadn’t known who’d ordered dessert to-go. Yeah. Maybe. I lay my fork beside the open box. 

White privilege: the ability to attribute mangled pie to bad service. 

© Dawn Downey. All rights reserved.

Dawn Downey is the author of three memoirs: Searching for My Heart: Essays about Love, From Dawn to Daylight: Essays, and Stumbling Toward the Buddha: Stories about Tripping over My Principles on the Road to Transformation. She writes to spread kindness. By writing about her daily challenges, she sees the workings of her mind. In conversations with her fans, she learns that most minds work the same way. She hopes readers will lovingly accept the similarities—in themselves, their loved ones, and the people who drive them crazy. She lives in Kansas City MO with her husband, Ben Worth. Connect with her at dawndowney.com

Little of the Vibration Will Return

by Kim Shuck

At 526 years the fetus is developing thalamic connections 
Vulnerable
Neutrons fluoresce
Limbic system a web spinning into
Memory
Emotion
Transgender home for our research
Water flower shifts
Cream
Lavender
One day and the next
They embrace the diversity of experience of
Experiment
Branches snapped
With science-based fingertips
A focus
A y-shaped brain connection
This human body is evidence-based
Here in the furniture fort of our entitlement
Chemistry bathing in new attachments
We sing the forbidden words into the
Upholstery
Little of the vibration will return
Your self
An idea banned before the seed swells
Before the shell cracks

© Kim Shuck. All rights reserved.

Kim Shuck's life has now lost all semblance of control. In June she was named the 7th poet laureate of San Francisco and she can now be found reading pretty much all the time, everywhere in the greater SF Bay Area. She is having a fantastic time and is grateful for the honor. Her most recent book is Clouds Running In. 

www.kimshuck.com

Yanash Kulli *

Excerpted from Constant Fires by Rebecca Hatcher Travis

Yanash Kulli *

alone on the pathway

ancient spirits 

beckon deeper

into the wooded land

grandfather trees

guide the way

bowing in majestic arcs

peace and silence here

deeper still

to the sacred stone circle

to the healing waters

hidden inside the forest

a private stillness here

but for a trickle over the stones

an extraordinary place

do you feel its secret?

up from within the heart of the earth

sparkling cool waters

bubble since time unknown

the spring gently bestows its gift

stones capture the bounty

hold it as tiny creatures

skim across the surface

water flees over the rocks

across the land

among the ancient trees

and whispering wind

into the rivers to the great sea

Grandmother watches

she sings her blessed song

Yanash Kulli

bubbles on

* Buffalo Springs

© Rebecca Hatcher Travis. All rights reserved.

Rebecca Hatcher Travis is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation who carries deep roots in both Indian Territory Oklahoma and Texas. Her first poetry book, Picked Apart the Bones, won the First Book Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas and was published by the Chickasaw Press. 

Her second poetry book, Constant Fires, was released by White Dog Press, a division of Chickasaw Press, in October, 2017. Other published work appears in literary journals, anthologies, online and recently in Tending the Fire, Native Voices and Portraits. Ms. Travis is a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. She lives in the foothills of the Arbuckle Mountains of Oklahoma, near the land her ancestors settled in early Indian Territory days. She continues to write and give poetry presentations.

chickasawpress.com/Authors/Rebecca-Hatcher-Travis

Dawn Downey on How to Survive Christmas Alone

December 17. 

Pull the covers over your head to block the morning light, and rest in the spot where your husband ought to be. 

Remember sitting here in bed beside him, propped up with pillows, a map spread between you. You had traced the highways and picked the overnight towns between home and the retreat center out east, where you had planned to spend the last two weeks of the year. It turned out you had wanted to stay home. It also turned out Ben had still wanted to go. Ordinarily your disagreements ended with one of you saying I don’t feel strongly. Let’s do what you want. This one had ended with him standing quietly in his truth and you standing quietly in yours. Remember how your certainty had caught you off guard. 

Wince at the prize you’ve won by standing in your truth: Christmas Alone. Your family spread across the country and you without a plane ticket, your friends with families of their own and you without an invitation. 

Think about being one with what-is. 
Think about surrendering to each moment. 
Think how un-enlightened you are. You don’t want to be one with Christmas Alone. 

Suspect if you were a better person—generous, kind, considerate—invitations would flood your email and your voice mail. 
Get out of bed and check your voice mail. Feel ridiculous. 
Eat breakfast. Write. Eat lunch. Write. Eat dinner. 
Drive to yoga class. 

On your way home, curse the shortened winter days. Curse the dark driveway. Curse the gloomy house. Fumble with the remote control. The garage door groans open. Hesitate as the car idles. Idle with the car. Once inside the garage, pause before pushing the button to close the door behind you. Before crossing the threshold into the house, pause again, one hand on the doorknob. 

December 18. 
An out-of-town friend calls. Recognize her country-singer drawl and calculate: she lives by herself four hours away; you could visit her, stay overnight, return on the twenty-sixth, the whole Christmas Alone problem solved. 

A country-singer drawl cuts through your calculations. Your friend is worried her forgetfulness is turning into Alzheimer’s. She’s panicked she’ll be trapped inside her mind, inside a nightmare. 

Remember your grandmother. Fighting with the lock on the front door. She’d tugged the handle, and the deadbolt had banged against the door jam. Her boney fingers had stuck out from the sleeves of a jogging suit, and the pants were falling off her skinny bottom. 

“Where you going,” you’d asked. 
“Home,” she’d said. 
“You are home.” 
 A country-singer drawl cuts through your memories. You should console your friend, but instead think at least you’re not afraid of Alzheimer’s. Feel un-enlightened. 

December 19. 
Make a joyful noise at Second Baptist Church. “Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king.” Pat your feet. Sing off-key. Feel both anonymous and essential. 

Twin girls read the announcements in high-pitched pubescent voices. The church is providing dinner for anyone who’s Alone On Christmas. Laugh when the pastor interrupts the twins, “Don’t get between me and the sweet potato pie.” 

Remember sweet potato pie, cinnamon and clove on your tongue. 
Imagine little boys in grown-up suits and red bow ties. Imagine old women clucking at you to “fill up your plate, child, you ain’t bigger than a minute.” 

Jot down 3:00 Xmas dinner on the back of the worship program, and stick it in your purse. 

Hum to yourself all the way down the church steps and across the parking lot, waving goodbye, God bless. 

Remember your house. It lies in wait, slack-jawed, ready to suck you into its belly. 

Drive to Target. Pretend you don’t see the Salvation Army bell ringer. Push a squeaky cart toward cosmetics, while Bing Crosby drones on about a white Christmas. Pick up a bottle of lotion. Set it back on the shelf. Pluck a cardigan from the sweater rack. Return it to the rack. Inspect a pair of headphones in electronics. Set them back on the shelf. Jimmy Stewart plays on the big screen televisions. Half a dozen Jimmy Stewarts handing out cash to the bank customers. You’re annoyed. Buy dental floss. 

At home, discover eBay. Bid on a coat you’d tried on at a department store but were too cheap to buy. Search the Internet for yoga tights. Search for luggage. Feel the life force leech out through your fingertips. Search for headphones. 

Slam the laptop shut. 
Scream, “What are you doing?” 
Try to recall the rhythms of your weekly routine. Check your calendar for last Sunday. Nothing’s listed, because Sundays are free days. You don’t feel free. 

See your grandmother fighting the front door. 

December 20. 
Stick a note on your laptop: no Internet shopping today. 
Eat breakfast. Check your eBay bid. 
Pick up War and Peace where you left off last month. You don’t recognize the characters. You can’t tell whether they’re at peace or at war. 

Meditate. 
Fall asleep. 
Read. Fall asleep. 
Go to bed at 7:00. 
Don’t fall asleep. 
You have no reason to sleep, read, or meditate. 
You have no reason not to. 
Hop out of bed at 8:00. Run the dishwasher. Mop the kitchen floor. Write a check for the water bill. Lay the pen gently on the counter. Whisper, “What are you doing?” 

December 21. 
At 2:00 AM throw a down coat over your pajamas and venture onto the patio to witness the eclipse of a blood moon on Winter Solstice. An icy breeze bites your ankles as patchy clouds drift across the heavens. The clouds part and then close. Part and close. Dissipate and reassemble. Each time, the moon re-emerges as an ever-thinner crescent, until the final sliver disappears. 

Witness yourself on the patio, in the middle of the night, alone, and calm. Feel yourself dissipate and reassemble. 

Go back to bed. Get up again at 7:00. Decide to do something fun today. Try to remember fun. Draw a blank. 
Check your eBay bid. Search online for yoga tights. Search for luggage. Search for headphones. Read celebrity gossip. 

December 22. 
Attend your Wednesday night book group. They’re surprised to see you. Your Catholic friend says, “Thought you were on retreat with Ben.” Remember how welcome you feel at her place. Ask what time she’s having Christmas dinner. Paste a fake that’s-great expression on your face when she says, “I’m not. I’m going to my sister-in-law’s.” Feel like a cage door has slammed shut behind you. 

Call your out-of-town friend; anticipate her country-singer drawl. 
She’s four hours away and at the same time right there in the palm of your hand. 
She tells you her girlfriends are all going away for the holidays this year. You laugh ironically at how the universe is handing both of you Christmas Alone. Say, “If the weather’s okay, I’ll come down.” Fail to appreciate the irony when she says, “I won’t be here. I’m driving to Little Rock tomorrow.” 

December 23. 
Check your eBay bid. You win. The coat is yours. Feel triumphant. Feel let down. Insist on fitting entertainment into your day. Write a To-Do list: art museum, grocery store, bank, drug store. You hate all that running around. Scribble out art museum. 

Check the forecast. The weatherman is wearing a Santa hat. He says snow all night tonight and all day tomorrow. He looks proud of himself. Curse the weatherman. Curse his Santa hat. Dig the worship program out of your purse, with its 3:00 Xmas dinner note. Toss it in the trash. 

Grab the grocery list, and point the Honda toward the store. Let the car take you to the art museum. Find yourself in front of “Mill at Limetz.” Find yourself in front of “Guanyin of the Southern Sea.” Feel content. Find yourself confused trying to exit the parking lot. 

Navigate through stacked-up traffic on your way to the store. Feel the drivers lean forward against their steering wheels at the red lights. Only two shopping days left! Everything must go! Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? You’re not part of it; you’re an alien floating in an alternate space-time continuum. 

Park, and float across the lot. 
Pretend you don’t see the Salvation Army bell ringer. 
Notice the turkeys and hams and tubs of whipped cream in the other carts. 
Toss your bag of frozen dinners into your back seat. 
Loneliness encases you like a casket. The casket walls press against your arms and the top of your head. Feel the coffin lowered into the ground, shovels of heavy dirt raining down on the lid. You can’t see. You can’t breathe. You don’t want to. 

After a block, that whole feeling evaporates. Your car is in drive, but your body and mind are in neutral. 

Pull into your driveway and discover you left the living room light on for the plants, and now the interior is backlit through the etched glass of the front door. Notice the sight of it feels like opening a present to find exactly what you wanted. 

Every few days, your phone rings. Expect it to be Ben, even though there’s no cell phone service where he is. Think this is what it will feel like, if he dies before you do. 
Lie in bed, read, feel drowsiness coming on. Nothing happened today. No museum. No grocery store. No today. There is only the bedroom. Right before sleep descends, understand there’s no bedroom. 

December 24. 
Fold clothes that are bunched up at the foot of the bed. Vacuum. Sweep away a cobweb from the ceiling near the window. Dust the nightstands and the headboard with lemon oil. Take a whiff. So clean. 

For dinner, treat yourself to pizza and a fire in the fireplace. Pop a movie into the DVD player. After the credits roll, you don’t want to go upstairs to bed. The flames flicker and wrap a smoky scent around you. You want to linger. Stretch out on the couch with a book. Let your fingertip relish the soft edges of the pages. Ask, “What are you doing?” Sleep there, in front of the fire. 

December 25. 
Bundle up for your morning walk. It’s only fifteen degrees. Even though there’s no snow (curse the weatherman for making you worry for nothing), marvel at the stark beauty of winter. Naked branches of oak and cyprus trees, evergreens poking into a steely gray sky. The shocking quiet in the middle of the city. Feel the urge to tiptoe. 

You stop abruptly further down the block. Someone has parked too many cars in their driveway. Your tidy neighborhood usually has nothing out of place. Two-car garages. Two cars per house. Weave a C-shaped path around the cars, into the street, and back onto the sidewalk. 

Wait. Turn around. One, two, three—six cars. What’s going on? Football party so early in the morning? 
Family visiting … from out of town. 
Realize: today is … Christmas. 
Wonder when it happened. Was it Christmas before the overflowing driveway, back there under the steely gray sky, beneath the naked oaks? Did Christmas arrive in one of those six cars? 

Picture the travelers crowded into the house, children in sleeping bags on the floor near the tree. Are they awake yet? Are the parents saying wait ’til after breakfast, honey? 

Realize Christmas arrived when you painted that picture. 
Feel calm. 
Remember when your grown siblings came home to your parents’ house for Christmas. 

Try to hear the word honey. Hear your father ridicule your brother because the handcrafted rug he designed for your sister is taking too long to finish. “You planning to give it to her next year?” Hear your mother count the presents she’s bought for each member of the family, because “somebody complained about getting fewer than everybody else.” Hear the handcuffs snap around your cousin’s wrists, the cops helping your father teach her a lesson for hot-wiring your car, even though you didn’t press charges and your mother’s crying “Bill, don’t do this.” 

Realize the Christmas you miss never existed. 
See your grandmother fighting the front door. 
“Where you going?” 
“Home.” 
“You are home.” 
Walk back to your house on this ordinary day. 
Wash clothes. Write. Play a Bob Marley CD. Sing off-key. At bedtime, watch a funny movie. 
When it ends, sob. 
You speculate you killed Christmas, and you’re grieving its loss. Then speculate you’re grieving the loss of a past you never had. Sense it doesn’t matter. 

Blow your nose. 
Picture Ben on retreat, meditating with the other retreatants under the gaze of a golden Buddha statue. Say, “Night, Sweetheart. I miss you.” 
Catch a faint scent of lemon oil. Take a whiff. So clean. 


© Dawn Downey. All rights reserved.

Dawn Downey is the author of From Dawn to Daylight: Essays and Stumbling Toward the Buddha: Stories about Tripping over My Principles on the Road to Transformation. Publications featuring her work include Persimmon Tree, Kansas City Voices, and Skirt! Magazine. She lives in Kansas City. 

Connect with her at dawndowney.com