A million December blogs run through my head-- about a season so draining it frays nerves like split ends down strands of blonde hair, a season filled with memories behind twinkling lights, banks of snow, poinsettias, weddings, friends who remember the anniversaries you are no longer allowed to talk about, and who toast your anniversary of independence, and of realizing that that being lonely while single is so much better than being lonely while lying next to someone who cannot love you, because being lonely while single means only that-- that you are alone, while being lonely while lying next to the man you are trying to love and knowing he does not love you means (possibly? probably?) you are unlovable, and of secret December lives, and lies, and people dying, and birthdays, and Rudolph's nose lighting the way home from Grandma's house along every radio tower in St. Paul, and drawing with your finger against the frozen molecules of the car window, and your mom telling stories about how she worked in the 1st bank downtown and turned the flashing light that dots the skyline on and off, and on and off, because she didn't think you understood, at seven, what statistics meant. And a Santa who knocks on Grandma's door when you are three because he sees you waving in the window and hands you a wooden toy car that has wheels you can take apart, and later, how you learn no one knew who this Santa was, that he appeared out of nowhere, and how somehow you brought that Santa down the aisle with you in December, twenty one years later, and how now both memories slide along the ventricles of your heart with slow, easy, deliberate serrated blade edges.
This is my December.
There are a million December blogs that dance in my mind, like sugarplums laced with acid.
But the blog I will write is my December 29th, the day after yesterday. And today I took a step forward only to have to go back, but stepped forward again, and, after visiting the phone store three times in one day, after making friends with gay, Jewish salesman Bill, the Somali couple buying a phone from the Somali salesman who recognizes me by the third visit, and after somehow offering to bring lunch tomorrow, two days after yesterday, to everyone in the office, I purchased a new phone. Finally.
Today, December 29th, I abandoned the flip phone I had borrowed to replace a much loved and dramatic Blackberry with another. Which meant I had to reenter all of my contacts. One. At. A Time. Phone. Number. By. Phone. Number.
So what I learned was this-- in the middle of My December, my emotional mini-drama, my endless lists of school work and course work and syllabi and syllables, I pushed everything aside to sit on my couch next to my yorkie-poo, watch Sandra Bullock in The Proposal, and type digits into my phone one by one--that while the first ten minutes felt tedious, suddenly a shift occurred. I learned that entering phone numbers into a phone, remembering birth dates, figuring out birth years and anniversaries, brought all of these people into my living room. All of these happy memories and people got my undivided attention as I thought about them and their important dates and numbers. I couldn't help but feel happy as I thought about each and every one. My favorite numbers went into my phone, right alongside my favorite people.
And everything felt right.
And that is why I wrote this blog, this, the day after yesterday. This is my blog for December 29.
Everything just feels right.
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