I bought new bedroom curtains. White. Gauzy. Woven, with a texture that is more sustantial that sheers.

Jim asked me why. Why now? We’ve lived most of our lives without them.

I don’t know why I bought new curtains, anymore than he does. And then I cried. Because maybe I do.

Maybe I want our house in order.

For me. For us. For now. For later. To waken to softly filtered light. Light that’s traveled millions of miles to reach our eyes, light that woos us up and out of bed more gently than the snap of a shade on a roller gone rogue .

Muted light calls to my childhood, shimmering through white Priscilla curtains in my parents’ blue and white bedroom. Light, glistening on Mom’s cut glass dresser tray that now rests atop my own unkempt chest of drawers, so unlike Mother’s tidy one.

Light calls to a wee bit of a girl, a jumble of legs and arms, quiet and still on Mother’s lap. Safe. No questions. No answers. Just safe. Held in love. Now I wonder how weary she became carrying two of us inside her womb, with two tykes hiding behind her skirt.

Maybe the child within wants to hide in the curtains’ folds, waiting for light’s return. Watching it travel from pane to pane, from wall to wall. Illuminating cobwebs in forgotten corners of my room and heart.

Each day a new beginning.

Each evening another ending, a pause for rest as curtains close.

The season of darkness is the best time to celebrate the coming of light. I push the rod through each panel’s pocket as a sacred act. If my lowered immune system confines me to home this winter, at least I’ll view the season through new curtains.

Why curtains, when there’s gift shopping to do? What do they have to do with getting ready for Christmas? Nothing. Everything.

Our children are coming. A family Christmas. Celebrating a birth. A baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes. Not white, nor soft nor gauzy, yet safe in Mary’s arms.

A swaddled baby, born to hold the child within us all.

The night before our son was born, I strolled the sidewalks with his Nana under a moon as round as my belly, in awe of moonlight on August gladiolas.

The night before our first daughter arrived–at dawn on the summer solstice–a burst of energy kept me up sewing pillows, then covering an old wooden footstool, made by Great-Grandfather Woodard.

The night before my final delivery, I lay between our son and daughter in the same spot where Jim and I now sleep. Their smooth young hands felt their baby sister doing handstands, safe within my womb. The fragrance of lilacs in the air, I soon was pinning cotton diapers on the line. White, woven, soft, and gauzy.

Angels still watch in wonder at the miracle of birth, each little one so close to heaven, its holy glow reflected in their eyes.

It’s the hush–not the rush–of Christmas that we yearn for.

We ache for the hush of Christ’s coming, as He came to a manger in sleepy Bethlehem, not the crush of discovering there is no room at the inn for strangers.

Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

Angels guard me thru the night.

Between two windows, robed in white.

And so we wait. For family. For Emmanuel, God with us. For Light to guide our way down the unknown corridors of another year, new as a baby’s first cry.

“And this will a be sign for you, you’ll find the babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes…” – the Angel of the Lord. (NKJV)

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/Indiana Gazette

(Elias & Josiah’s pensive photo by their mama, Tara)