THAT MOMENT

“In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You are aware of the beating of your heart.The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment…” – Frederick Buechner

The snow went crunch, crunch under her boots.  Her boots were not  new. They were  years old, but still warm, with just a hint of wear on the fake fur lining. 

Mornings were usually cold and unforgiving these days. Especially in the weeks before Christmas. There was snow. Surprisingly. There was ice. Not as surprising. There was wind. My mother walked to the store in the mornings to pick up  a newspaper for my father. Sometimes she took the bus. She preferred to walk these long days.

My father was home now. Home. What  a lovely word. We grew to cherish that word. Especially that Christmas. He would wait for her to return with the paper in the mornings.  He would wait.

Meanwhile, my mother trudged along in the snow.  How she loved these December mornings in the dawn.

Ahead of his homecoming, My mother  made shortbread and fruitcake( her terrible fruitcake, so dry  and hard you could stop a truck with it.) And mincemeat tarts. They would have that with tea later. My father  dunked the fruitcake, trying to make it palatable.

She decorated the tree with lights, popcorn, icicles  and elves. The cats liked the popcorn best!

In the evening, my mother escaped to her book “The Snow Queen” . She  read it to me by the fire. I never quite understood the story, cause I was so little. My father in his comfy chair, opposite me. He  listened till sleep had him nodding off

My mother turned down the lights, till there was only the glow from the flames. She sat there in the peace, in the quiet, touching the window with her hand, feeling the frost on the windowpane.  Snow fell reverently. She would pray. Under her breath. Silent as the snow.

She never thought I saw her. But I did. Many nights she did this. 

Christmas lights twinkled. She even attempted to sing a carol, until my  father came out of his quiet revery. He’d shake a slipper at her.

She couldn’t sing a note, in truth.  But she never gave up. “”I’m not singing,” she said.

My father attempted a glare. She smiled.  Then they laughed.  They sat by the fire as the embers  glowed and died down. I watched them. I always watched them. It was burned into my mind, the peace of that moment

They did not know what  morning would bring.  But the heart remembers, every  Christmas, every time the snow flies. Not with sadness, but with love and wonder.

The next morning, my mother would rise again, and be out walking,   to get my father’s paper.  Her boots ever worn. Her spirit risen.

At Christmas she made our home a place of beauty, a place for us to hear of hope and peace and joy and love.

We even let her sing once. Just once. It was awful, but she knew it and  giggled.

. I can hear her still. 

Then my father smiled

.....threw a slipper at her and they laughed in that moment. 

For  soon it would  be morning again…….

Photographs 2022