Kissmiss Wights

Yesterday we took down our Christmas decorations. For the first time both children eagerly participated in the process. And as I watched my three-year-old daughter pull down ornaments from the “kids’ tree” and help to put them away, I couldn’t help but remember how she had been last year at this time—a toddler then, still on the edge of infancy, more babbles than words. Now she was a little girl—a stubborn, articulate little girl who knew the difference between handmade ornaments and store-bought collectibles, and could put them (if she chose) in separate bags.

Last year, in the weeks following Christmas, I’d drive her around every night at bedtime to look at Christmas lights. The holiday had thrown off her schedule, and she’d become impossible to put to bed at a decent hour. And so I suggested driving her around at bedtime to look at Christmas lights—an activity she was eager to do. Of course, the drone of the engine and the movement of the car, the darkness and the stillness—these things would do what Mommy and Daddy could not. Within twenty minutes she’d be fast asleep.

It would always happen rather suddenly. One minute she’d be shouting from the backseat about the Santa or the reindeer or the “binking wights” she saw out the window. Then, silence. I’d crane my neck to see her in the rearview mirror, and her little head would be slumped forward in sleep. And so I’d turn the car around, head on home, and carry her to her crib (still a crib, then). She’d feel tiny in my arms, her little face pressed against my neck, just as when she was a baby.

It was an effective way to reset her internal clock, but I continued the ritual longer than necessary for that purpose. And every night, the number of houses with Christmas lights diminished. In the days following New Years they were still blazing in every neighborhood. But within a week, many of houses that had blazed with lights went dark. Elaborate displays came down. Santas vanished. Grazing reindeer constellations returned to their sheds. A week after New Years the rate of disappearance accelerated, until only a few hold-outs remained.

My daughter and I continued to drive around, looking for the displays that remained. And her excitement when we found one seemed almost greater than before. Until, finally, all of them were gone. But even then, she insisted that the lights shining from the miniature golf course were Christmas lights—Christmas lights which were never taken down, which blazed on in memory and anticipation.

Few a few days more I continued driving with her, driving in memory and anticipation. I resisted giving up our nightly ritual, because I knew that it would never be like this again, that my little girl was growing so quickly, that a year would change her in astonishing ways. A year from now, she wouldn’t look at the golf course and see Christmas lights. A year from now, if I drove her around the neighborhood at night, it would be a little girl in the back, not a toddler with the contours of infancy still shaping her speech and face.

And so I drove with her, past the golf course, waiting for that little voice to shout out “Kissmiss wights!” And I held onto the sound of it, and the emotional space, holding it as if it were a prayer. And then, finally, I let it go.

For me, in a way, that is the essence of religion--to savor the good, embrace it and experience it, and then to follow that with an act of release. Relinquishing the dream of control. If there is an enduring meaning to ritual sacrifice, some meaning that transcends the ugly and bloody propitiation of the gods, it is this: to hold out all that is limited, and to acknowledge that we cannot keep it by our own efforts. We release it in an act of trust, giving ourselves and every finite thing we have, trusting that all that is good, all that is true, will somehow endure in the bosom of the infinite.

Now a year has passed, and my daughter dresses herself—in fact, she insists on it, and her clothing choices are always interesting (usually featuring either her pink cowboy boots or the ruby slippers from the Dorothy costume she wore for Halloween). A year has passed, and as before the holidays did a number on her sleep patterns.

But this year I didn’t propose driving her around to look at Christmas lights. After all, we’ve put in place an effective bedtime ritual now, one that not only does the job but which it would be better not to disrupt. But that’s not the only reason I didn’t propose it. The deeper reason is that it would feel too much like attempting to reclaim something that can’t be reclaimed.

There’s a sequence from the film, Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray’s character has his first authentic romantic evening with Andie McDowell’s character. They play in the snow at night, and it’s spontaneous, alive with real emotions. But the pretense of the film is that Murray’s character keeps reliving the same day—and so he attempts to recreate, moment for moment, word for word, the romantic evening he had with this beautiful, sincere young woman. And it all rings hollow.

That’s what it would have been like. I would have tried too hard to recreate those after-Christmas drives with my two-year-old baby girl. And my daughter’s sincerity would have collided with my pretense, and the result would have been little more than an ache. And so, instead, at bedtime I lean my head against her mattress and she wraps her arms around my head and tugs my ears, and I sing “Sunshine on My Shoulders,” and she sings along in her little three-year-old voice. And I whisper, “May you dream of all the people you love, and all the people who love you.”

And I know that this moment will pass. And so I hold onto it, closing my eyes and embracing the emotional space, holding it like a prayer. And then I let it go.