Saturday 
23 December 2017

— Too excited to sleep much after 5:00.

Good Morning All,

Around 10:00 last night, I wrapped my last Jul Gaver (Christmas present) both for out at my nephew Mikey’s house Christmas Eve, where traditional pork roast with all the trimmings is in the offing, and Christmas day here in Fjenneslev, with Chief Chef Esther and her friend Assistant Chef Gitte supplying the traditional turkey and all the trimmings.

I must say the house is looking mighty spiffy, both down the basement and here on the ground floor. Before heading for Ringsted Station to pick up Johs around 3:00, I still have some vacuuming, and I’ll run around once more with the duster and a flashlight (torch) in search of ceiling cobwebs. But all things considered, we look pretty shipshape.

Johs and I will swing back here (8 kilometres) to drop off his luggage and possibly get in a game of cribbage, before heading for Kaastrup to pick up Holly around 5:00.

With the Messiah on the box, I’ve put up some—but not all—the Christmas decorations, including the red/yellow/blue/green plastic bells on the silver sparkly green string that used to hang in the archway to the living room back at 42 Brunswick Road. I’ve no doubt whatsoever my mom tied those bells to that silver sparkly green string. She may have done so back at our house at 7910 Sleaford Place in Bethesda, Maryland. If not, the string has since Arlington been up at my folks retirement apartment on the Cape, at our house in Sengeløse, and now here in Fjenneslev. Counting Arlington, that’s four places in 54 years.

I’ve put up some of our Danish Christmas decorations as well, including a small Danish village made from ceramic buildings and churches into which we slide tea candles to light up the windows. There are also the woven stars and red-and-white laced hearts Britta and the kids have made over the years.

It’s hard to believe the poem below is fifteen years old. I’m pretty sure it did then what it says it did back then, but also made me sad. Today, five and a half thousand days later, it still does what it says it does, but the sadness has softened into a glow of poignant memory.

First Christmas without You
Bheka Pierce

In June our lilacs bloomed and came to pass
July crickets fiddled Mozart in the grass
While fireflies beneath the pines
Sparked their tiny lights
Like August meteor flocks
Surprising summer nights.
September’s honeysuckled vines
And ripe apples on the bough,
Leaf-lovely October afternoons,
Hushed November dusks, and now
Has Christmas come,
Your favorite season through all our years,
The carols, candles, gifts of love,
All brimmed with family cheer;
Though I’ve ached the hours of all these months,
Time’s fine linen torn,
December feared I the most
Without your flame to light our Yuletide morns;
But grief is filled with mystery,
And love learns through its own command,
For when I took the bells and boxes out,
All neatly labeled in your hand,
And hung your woven hearts and stars
And all your Christmas art
At once and with relief could I
Rejoicing hear you carolling in my heart.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. One Johs snap and one Holly snap: