Writing exercise with prompt from Saundra Goldman: Where I am ... ten minutes - go ...
Today early morning here and now visiting family across the nation in Seattle area. Enjoying good foods that are different from the every day of our lives in Philadelphia. Special Christmas cookies, especially those small round snow white ones filled with butter and pecans. The kind that melts in the mouth even before I am able to wrap my teeth around the first bite. Enjoying different trees lit by soft white lights. Both family tress I witness here are decorated very simply with just matching balls and soft colors. I think about our humungous tree back on the east coast every year with all kinds of odds and ends, and knick knacks from everywhere: angels of all kinds, one made of metal and wire from Kenya, and one made only from straw. Even a miniature Starbucks cup dangles from one of the branches and a large glass mirror that has inscribed on it "2007" from the year we bought our large angels from Pottery Barn. We were living in different apartments still and each had our own tree. The angels, one pink and one burgundy sat atop. Each year I buy one new ornament. We merged our lives together over twenty years ago - life partner and me. Bringing with each of us different traditions - his of Christmas in the Pacific North West. Me from being Jewish and also nothing really - sort of atheist - somewhat spiritual - Buddhas in every corner of my life - a collection that has built up over the years. Our holiday time has a large Buddha face staring over the Hannukiah twinkling with candles right next to our knick, knack filled tree. I stop writing to think a moment. Merging our cultures has not been easy at times. My way emotional and stormy, his stoic and quiet. And yet somehow we cross the stormy lines and come out the other side together - stronger. The hardest part is always, in the end, accepting that each is different from the other - that we don't have to be the same. We are able to express ourselves differently and still understand one another.
In the bigger picture of where I am, I face the reality that I am now a Senior on this life journey - with wisdom and experience to accompany me on the next twenty years or so. But whenever I think that I may be through with the past, inevitably I discover so often that the past is not through with me. My childhood is always peeking in even as my hair turns whiter, and wrinkles embed themselves as little lines about my eyes and mouth. Dawn has arrived and soon others will stir. Facing a large clear window in the living room, I observe the soft white and orange lights of Seattle city beginning to fade as the day light struggles to push its way through the clouds.
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