December 2022

Got my holiday FOMO in high gear again this year, feeling sad and torn over the lovely holiday events and activities going on that we won’t attend. Too busy, too behind, too stressed, and too much dealing with the “extra curricular” of life to enjoy the seasonal fun. Facebook feeds it, of course, and of course I’m supposed to be wiser and more well-poised to enjoy the deeper meanings of the season, but I find that right about this point I’m feeling blue. Even my ugly sweater fits in.

Then I look again and see that, why, we have attended a right many things over the years. We’ve done the “School concerts with an open headwound” – twice! Love that one. We’ve done “Christmas Open House (literally!) sans house siding, when the front of our house was half hung and half falling off. Deck the walls with walls of Tyvek. Christmas Eve dinners with no oven or kitchen floor? Check. Oh Little Town of Bedlam. Hard to get tickets to that one, but so worth it. If you can’t score tix to front-row disaster, just plan all of your house repairs and major appliance purchases after December 1. Easy peasy. Or take last minute out of town trips. For many years, we did the “Polar Express” high-speed edition, screaming home from North Carolina on the 24th straight into our angel and shepherd costumes. (Hmm. Is this a pageant, or a pitstop?) 

I think by now everybody seen “Sickness, Disease, and Despair, a new Christmas classic. Really enjoyed the blockbuster of 2020. Sold out performance. Sure ‘nough, my notes from last year show the very first gift of Christmas morning–6:30 AM, no one else awake–was an email, containing our negative Covid tests. We’ve done broken bones and snapped tendons (yes, middle finger). I find the ER is always so nicely decorated this time of year; if only they would serve cookies and cider we could call that a holiday outing. And I hear people pay good money for online scavenger hunts. Sheesh! You can look for stuff all durn day around here and not spend a dime. At the Burk house we do “tacky,” and we’ve certainly done “light shows.” But I should probably leave that one alone for now.

So, you know the sadness they talk about this time of year? I’m there. Three of our four kitty cats have departed life during this season, just one weeks ago the day of the UVA shooting. We’ve also lost two beloved family members while the Christmas trees were still up. So as for all those lovely posts about Christmas markets, holiday open houses, historic tours of beautifully decorated homes, concerts, cookie swaps, plays and parties, I’ll be hiding out in an upstairs bathroom. I got nothing funny enough still fit to print. Maybe you can relate. Do you feel it? Got some sadness too big for the stocking? Because who really wants a Christmas letter stuffed with the news of the headlines – mass shootings, political strife, global warming?

And it’s a mixed bag from Santa this year, to be sure. William will be singing “All I want for Christmas is my wisdom teeth,” as he gets a big box of nitrous oxide on the 21st so as not to miss any (more) school. Sophie “where-the-wind-blows” Burk will get a flat gift that goes the furthest in the form of a plane ticket to California. I hope she and her new beau will stay a few nights here when I retrieve them at the airport in January. Probably the guy with the most gifts this year will be our beloved father Bill. Yep. We let him unwrap one early, a torn rotator cuff to go with his bum knees. Then we got him a broken 60-year-old boiler at church two weeks before a brand new Bishop visits our parish, an annual event postponed by–you guessed it, Corona. But wait, there is only one crown in this story. Read my Christmas poem from 2020.

I must keep in mind the blessings that have showered us with wonder and joy all year. We missed the February showing of “Inclement weather dashes all hopes of much anticipated travel” when I drove Ellie to Dulles in an ice storm and maybe six minutes after her required PCR popped negative, to put her on that plane to Florence for the semester. Get behind me, Pandemic. You are no match for this mama, or this traveling girl, although it did finally get her on the last days of her study abroad, as it got me and Bill the last days of public school. He had a miserable time, but still managed to help Sophie outfit her new-to-her car that she proudly bought and baptized by driving it across the country. Both of them fully masked in a little side yard dance improv called “Social distancing with power tools.” She then starred in a play in four acts called “Backcountry camping with Covid.” I wouldn’t recommend that one. Goes on forever. And you get lousy reception while four beautiful college women girls throw Life360 to the wind and go all Thelma and Louise under the Arizona sky. Another highlight this year was our whole family’s “Escape to Italy” at spring break, what with the pre-fight Covid testing feeling every bit like a pricey escape room and the re-entry guaranteeing a thrill for all. 

This year we’re going to have a meltdown–I mean, mellow Christmas, no travel. Entertaining friends and family the highlight, along with some unexpected repeats. There isn’t anything bluer than what Will is out of, so about a month ago he literally sunk down the stairs and said, “Think ima gunna join the swim team.” So he did. And there we are, “Timing on lane 3” at a 20-team swim invitational the coach threw down 48 hours before Christmas (thanks, coach), when I have so much stuff undone I want to jump in a pool. Let’s just say it’s hard to spend the entire day around water when you already feel like you’re drowning, as the mother of all deadlines draws near.

Turns out we have a double feature this week, with a two-day college graduation celebration thrown in at the end of the week for Ellie I’m-changing-my-major Burk. This world-traveling student of being alive has amassed 162 credits from taking six classes a semester for nine semester straight and is, yes, leaving her double major and minor to go to grad school for archaeology. Because, why not?! Digging has a long history here at the Burk house, where in the first cold days of March 2020 boy went out and began digging a hole in the back woods. Every day he dug. When he got home from Italy he dug sideways, tunneling through the Virginia clay, inspired I guess by all those cool underground trips and necropoleis we had explored. Plus, well, you always want to leave an escape route. It’s easily 10 or 12 feet deep and as wide. Though it no longer involves a shovel, he is digging still.

Yes, the season can make me sad. And it is not, Facebook friends, because my family isn’t out throwing axes or posing in holiday wear on pick up trucks. No, I get it. The manger was gross. Muddy, cold, and smelly. And one of his first gifts was embalming oil, so that’s not too hard to figure out. If this manner of living has been hallowed, as it has, then frankly, I’m all set. Death, in life. Darkness, and light. And the darkness cannot overcome. We’re practically tripping over cornerstones around here. Still, the struggle is real. Matching pajamas? I’m lucky if I can get the five of us together in a moving vehicle three times in a calendar year, never mind Into a photo. And if that elf dares to darken our door, I will escort him to the hole

This year you just have to read between the lines. I won’t be the only mother in history to pray her son back to the straight and narrow path, but right now in the land sans prefrontal cortex, I feel like the most desperate. William “wanna-see-the-video” Burk is hoping for bike parts under the tree. I watched him conclude his bike racing season by (deliberately) sailing off the side of a cliff for a 30-foot drop on his bike. He survived. The bike did not. Like I say, the extracurricular is killing us. Let us suspend the belief that school is the only, or even the best place to learn. And let us certainly dispel the pressure to be in the right place, at the right time, wearing the right outfit and/or, saying the right thing. I tell you what. The same hand that punishes is the hand that pulls you out of the smoking rub and pushes you forward. We’ve had Mercy herself knock on the front door and come to stay. And I ain’t kicking her out or making her pay rent. 

So, Christmas is a busy time at the Burk motel. Maybe it always has been, if not in the ways we may expect or wish for. This is what I know. The word “trial” and the word “trail,” a frequent typo, share the exact same letters. It’s just a matter of where you put your feet. And of course, who you walk with. Wishing you front row seats to the best show in town – Silent Night.

Merry Christmas and God bless, from the Burks