Special Selection for the 2022/2023 Winter Holiday Issue
Nonfiction by Cindy Jones
The brunch dishes lingered on the dining table. Clothes half-out of overnight bags and pillows lined the walls. Someone had cleared away last night’s wine glasses from the coffee table. Aaron Neville quietly sang “Please Come Home for Christmas.” I nudged two friends from their private patio conversation that it was time to come in.
He sat crossed-legged on the floor next to the tree, wavy hair the color of sunlit wheat and strawberries, locks falling into his eyes, wearing a too-small Santa hat and the softest red shirt, not bright enough to be crimson, not brown enough to be burgundy, it was carmine I think. I loved him in that shirt. He made jokes, called out names and passed gifts across the room to our daughter and friends, our hearts filled with laughter and the warmth of belonging.
That might have been our 15th Christmas or our 25th, they are a jumble in my head.
My hands moved the yarn over with the hook, and under and then pulled up a loop. I worked quickly through the simple repetitive motions, counting stitches as I sat alone in the radiation waiting room or rested in bed for months at home. The evidence of my obsession was a pile of crocheted scarves and wraps that threatened to collapse when I tossed on the latest one.
My daughter laid the old camping blanket down and slid the Douglas fir across the back seat. Through my rearview, its tip leaned out the open window, bending in the wind. I dreaded dragging up the ornaments from the garage and recounting the stories that went with each one. Christmas had abandoned me in a new house in a new town. What remained were gamma rays cooking me from the inside, my daughter leaving for her father’s house and me wandering the deserted hallways of my past, tripping over the shattered dreams and broken trust.
I walked down my dark hallway, pulled a new skein of yarn randomly from my basket and got back in bed.
“I made it safely Mom,” she texted, “I’ll miss you for Christmas.”
I pulled the covers higher and reached for my hook and yarn. Long lengths of gray drifted from light shades to dark, morphing into sections of carmine, and pops of yellow, warm as Christmas lights. I began to work, quickly and mindlessly at first and then the movements became slower and slower, and more deliberate.
The sensation wafted stealthily through my bedroom window, open even in December, settling in the middle of my chest before I could stop it, blanketing me like a newly fallen snow over the rage and devastation that festered inside.
I stilled my hands from the over-under, closed my eyes to the colors, quieted my mind from the counting, inhaled the sweet belonging that lived in me, and tasted the unexpected gift of grace.
Dear Louis, Today I am filled with the spirit of Christmas. I thought of you when I saw these colors.
After I wrapped the scarf in tissue paper and placed it in a small shipping box, I imagined his hand reaching in to lift it out, my note falling to the floor. I saw him raise his arms and slide it around his neck, brushing across his stubble to the small fine hairs on the back, as my lips used to do.
Cindy Jones is currently living her best life in Mazatlán, Mexico while navigating Stage IV cancer. She spends her days walking on the beach, enjoying live music, writing creative nonfiction and photographing the external world in ways that reveal our inner landscapes.
