Christmas Mourning

I loved Christmas. Every year Bach’s oratorio filled the church, the boys’ voices soaring skyward. We drank mulled wine at the market, lighted candles on the wooden pyramids, carefully set up mom’s collection of nutcrackers, carved by hand in small villages in the ore mountains. We baked Grandma’s cookies, smelled the incense in the wooden smokermen, and sang the old carols, mom at the piano, we all perfectly harmonizing. Gathered around the big table, extended to fit everybody, we shared meals and love. All this is decades and an ocean away. Now Christmas means loneliness in a land that is still foreign, when the homesickness, held at bay during the year, flares and distance bites like a bitter wind. Date: 11/18/2018 Contest: CHRISTMAS MOURNING Sponsor: PS Awtry