Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

One of the best gifts I ever received was from my son Duncan. I had lost my leather gloves before the holiday, and was distressed I couldn’t find them. He said to me, “Don’t go buying yourself some new ones—you never know what you will get for Christmas!” He was only 13 at the time, and not particularly good at keeping secrets. He would often hint at what I might be getting from him as a gift.

So I suffered for a few weeks without my gloves. Christmas morning, he was very excited—he had bought a scarf and some earrings. He then said, “There’s one more thing in there,” pointing to my stocking. I reached in the toe, and pulled out a pair of leather gloves rolled up into a ball. But the gloves were not new—they looked just like my missing ones.

“You found my leather gloves?” I asked.

Duncan couldn’t stop smiling. “No,” he said, “I took them as a joke and hid them in your stocking, and they’ve been there since before Christmas. I kept thinking you would find them!”

I laughed. Here I thought Duncan couldn’t keep a secret—but the secret was on me.

That year, Duncan had helped me find something I had lost. And it made his gift that much more special. So as I think about my goals for 2021, I am thinking about reconnecting with something that was once part of me, but has since been lost.

My dear friend Kathleen said to me this week, "Don't you have 100 poems or something in your files?" I published my first poem at 10 and have loved writing poetry as long as I can remember. But I haven't incorporated it much into my life and work lately. So that's my goal in 2021—not to start something new, but to reconnect with something that I love, but that has been lost.

What can you reconnect with in 2021? What is your goal for the new year?