(Cross post from inbetween.)
Last year,
the year before, and now this year, we've participated in an annual ritual of tree-cutting with the same friends.
The afternoon sun was brilliant as we trekked across the hills and through the fields of a new tree farm. The quest so familiar, the terrain new and unexplored.
When you look at the faces of the kids, it's clear that we are all older, always growing, always changing. Jaelyn and Addison felt free to run and play and explore with the older kids this year more than ever. They are becoming their own selves. And looking at them helps us remember that, while time seems to be racing by for us, (
wasn't it just yesterday that it was summer? and five minutes ago we were doing this last year?) in fact we are *all* always growing, always changing, radically becoming our own selves.
There are particular grooves that are ours to keep. Marcia and David deliberate on the merits of various trees (
in the photo above) -- and represent a groove that defines all of these friends to some degree. We deliberate endlessly. We rarely leap and we're adept and critical distance.
Scott looks meditative and when I reviewed the photos I found myself taking the picture imprinted as a shadow across his red jacket. With a little imagination, I might be making shadow theatre: Look! An ant crawls across a bridge! Instead of holding the camera with an oddly effete pinky raised as I snap the digital shutter.
I've had thousands of conversations with Lynn. I have never seen her open her mouth this wide. This photograph, this moment is an anomaly. And Michele has just discovered my covert papparazzi-izing. The picture manages to capture her before she ducks behind a tree to hide from the greedy glare of the camera.
These particular moments, these fleeing apparitions of how we were in a particular time and place, these unique traits that interrupt our repetitive gestures are why I love rituals.
Amy and David saw together for the last few seconds before their tree let go of its ground.
It's all so familiar, these patterns, these gestures. Yet when separated by the years, the particulars of any given moment braided with the rhythms and familiarity of the return grow richer and beautiful.
Is that really my Ford Windstar in a caravan of christmas-tree bearing minivans? Was my life ever so normal? Was the light ever really that beautiful? Would we really then retire to spicy cuisine and raucous laughter in our favorite little always-too-deserted-for-comfort Thai restaurant? And wasn't that the year that Jaelyn's sore throat almost made us cancel? And the week that the kids became obsessed with monopoly? Do you remember that Marcia had just been called up for jury duty? And that I had just received a summons informing me that I was being sued? Wasn't it just before Michele put up the advent art in the sanctuary? And we cut our tree off halfway up, because the tree was too tall and the base was too scraggly?
The light and the cold and the wide blue sky.
The runny noses, the crunchy grass, and the long bushes and weeds that catch your boot when you don't expect it.
Everything is exactly the same. Everything is completely different.
