Time plays dirty tricks on us.  Faces in the mirror crack and crinkle.  Curls assume a frosty sheen not imposed by the crafty hands of a sympathetic stylist.  Eyes dull.  Muscles weaken and wither.

Our minds bend with the weight of shifting weeks.  We strain to discern the details of disappearing days.  Words fall from the mouths of folks no longer able to correct us.  We brag of feats that in our quiet moments, we cannot honestly claim.  Bitterness fades and only the thrill of the tender glance remains.

I cannot describe with absolute certainty what I expected from life.  If I guided the construct of my waning years by my mother’s predictions, I’ve nearly fulfilled them.  She expected me to have a profession; I’ve had one, after a clumsy fashion.  She wearily intoned that no man could abide my unruly nature; none has.  She cautioned me not to pursue a life of dance or theatre (I did not); she typed my poems for me and encouraged me to scribble (I did).  I do not know if the outcome would satisfy my mother, except in her own keen knowledge of her baby girl’s potential.

For  many, Christmas marks a celebration of a savior’s birth.  Five decades stand between me and my belief in that reason for this day.  Twenty-five years have come and gone since my brother Stephen’s death, so we no longer mark his Christmas birth except in quiet contemplation.  My son has grown and does not have children of his own, so no small children of my lineage gather around tree or table.  Truth told, I sold the table around which I might collect them, along with the house in which that table sat for all of my son’s own childhood.

I’ve now become the visiting aunt; the solo sister who comes to town with an assortment of gifts collected here and there in hopes of hitting some imagined mark.  I stay in hotels and rented rooms, with a suitcase spilling from the closet every time I try to dress.  My brother’s cheerful kitchen draws me for Christmas Eve.  His family provides the customary holiday gaiety.  Thus far, weather has kept my son from driving down, and so a wistful note dances behind each pleasant exchange.

But mine’s a fine life.  My health totters but it holds.  My bank account bears the weight of this trip; never mind that I didn’t plan my life well enough to retire.  Messages ping my phone from time to time, reminding me that folks do care for my well-being even as they gather with their own closed tribes.  If my belly feels empty, food can be had.  I drink coffee from a china cup delivered to the hotel by my sister and sleep under an afghan that she also provided for my comfort.  Mine’s a fine, fine life; even though it pales in comparison with what it might have been or that of which others smugly boast.

So I will dine at a restaurant today, served by souls whom fortune compels to work rather than frolic.  I will leave a tip on my pillow for the cleaning staff in similar situation.  The lady whom I met in the lobby last evening will continue her drive toward Chicago where her son lives, while I silently pray that mine will leave his Chicago home to travel here, where his mother lingers.  All the while, the minutes will fall into the abyss without chance of reclamation.  I’ve squandered enough of them to disdain sleep in favor of better uses for the passing hours.

From a room larger than my entire tiny house, in a hotel with a greater current population than the community in which I live, I send greetings and hopes that your day holds joy.  Merry Christmas from Mary Corinne, with love and all sincerity.

It’s the twenty-fifth day of the one-hundred and eighth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.