Find the Glow

During any holiday season, everybody
needs a reason to smile.

The one man and many women of my Memoir group in Flushing are quiet today. One woman reads her story and weeps through it. I first notice as they are silently writing and I see a teardrop slide from her eye to the paper. "Are you okay?" I whisper. "Yes," she says, wiping both eyes. The power of writing. I have asked them to write about a landscape that still takes away their breath. The crying woman mentions several scenes and each one touches a spot in her that only she knows. I urge her to let it all out - that crying indicates the heart is healing the wound - and just to have a good cry.

Another woman who has been with the group for the year we have been meeting is cranky and silent. She is my favorite (shhhh, don't tell) and I catch her staring at me. Later, she snaps when I announce we will meet again next Thursday. "Of course we will," she says, "I mean last week was Thanksgiving so of course that was a change, but otherwise we meet every Thursday at the same time."

I pause and agree, wondering what has made her so off center? And then I figure it out: Perhaps her Thanksgiving wasn't so great. So I ask them all how their Thanksgiving was? Fine, they say.

I know, fine is code for don't ask.

So I ask them if they'd like to meet on Christmas Eve since our regular Memoir time fell on the 24th? They stare at me. "Aren't you busy?" one asks, "My daughter is coming in from Boston and my other daughter will be out of the Country, so I can meet with you. I'd be honored to meet with you,"  I reply. They ask me to bring the one daughter who'd be in town. "If you'd like," I offer.

"They grow up and you have to let them go," says my favorite angrily. And for a minute I think she was talking to me until I realize she simply is thinking aloud. Perhaps her daughter had had plans at Thanksgiving and she had not been included or not able to go or hadn't been invited? My heart pulls for her.

I ride home thinking about my mother who I will not celebrate Christmas with again. We had such a rough go of it, but at the end, she and I both knew the truth and that is what causes me to pine for her even though I know she is better than free.

I will take my daughter with me on Christmas Eve and she will delight the ladies and my one gent. I will take them all a one-year anniversary gift for our Memoir group.  I will fill up the candy dish they act like they don't want, but reach for throughout each session.

"We have gotten so used to eating well," says my fav, "that nothing is new or surprising anymore." Except maybe letdowns. I will surprise them the night before Christmas. I will give them reason to smile. Just the way they did for me when two of them broke out in a song for Hanukkah. I listen to them, and ask them to please sing one song for every meeting. One woman who always tells me she is "tied up in knots" is one of the singers. When she sings, her voice is soft and smooth like the way my mother's hands went over my arms when I was really upset.

I read Gloria Steinem's book on self esteem,  "Revolution Within" on the ride home.  I remember the woman who cried so freely and painfully at the beginning of the memoir session. She lingers behind as one of them often does as I put the chairs away and gather the books. She rides in the elevator with me and gets off at her floor. "Adios," she says, smiling with the frozen jaw-like way she does. "Later, gator," I say, smiling as the doors close. On the 7, I read how one man who has been a bully all his life transforms when he realizes there is a universe inside each of us. I read and close my eyes. I swim in my own universe, blessing everyone in theirs.