The mantel at Sandhill is one solid piece of heart pine, the soul of a tree that, were it still standing, would be well over 100 years old. It is solid and square. Its rings are the color and thickness of the layers of a love-baked caramel cake.
Last week it was also full and flush, strung with pine and ivy and bay leaves, twinkle lights moving in and out of the branches like a creek through woods or a snake through high cotton. Last week, nestled among the greenery, were the shiny glass ornaments that were too big for the tree, the string of paper doll teddy bears that Adam and Kate made the Christmas they were six and four, and a set of three ceramic angels, a gift from the mother of a college student who used to work for me.
This week, though, it looks lonely (I have a tendency to anthropomorphize.). There is an empty vase on one end and three brass candlesticks, their tapers leaning precariously, on the other. For the life of me I can not remember what was there before.
I walk around the house thinking that something will jog my memory (Was it that antique copy of The Plays of William Shakespeare? The pine needle basket I bought at a craft fair decades ago? A photo on an easel?), but nothing does, a consequence of what I can not be sure and I refuse to debate myself over old age or inattention as the culprit.
Instead, I forage the bookshelves and choose three hand-thrown pottery bowls holding nature’s debris. The smallest bowl, fired a shiny cream with its rim outlined in teal, guards a handful of seashells, a sand dollar, and a single sycamore pod. The second bowl, heaped high with more shells, is the color green of 1960s bathroom tile. The largest bowl, big enough to have held the black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, contains a nest blown from its perch by Hurricane Helene, its outer rim a Jenga-like construction of twigs and small branches, the inner lining made of small roots and specks of dried leaves.
I examine the tableau from various angles. The negative space between the bowls feels almost prophetic, as though the room between them, the noticeable emptiness, is intentional, purposeful, meant to leave room for what is to come in the new year, already a quarter of the way through the century.
I light the fire. I light the candles. The bowls make shadows on the wall. Outside the wind is picking up. It makes howling noises as it careens around the corners of the house. It is, I think, safe to assume that real winter is upon us.
Today, I remember, is Epiphany. The twelfth day of Christmas. The day on which Christian church commemorates the arrival of men from the East to worship the Infant Jesus. “Epiphaneia” is an ancient Greek word which meant an appearance or manifestation, specifically of a diety to worshippers.
When I woke up this morning there was no indication that, on this very ordinary day, a handful of astronomers would be showing up with gifts. And, yet, the three bowls are just that – the gift of forgetting the past; the gift of provision for the present moment; the gift of sight into what can be.
I kneel before the fire, reach my hands toward the flames, and whisper a prayer of thanks for my sweet sanctuary and a prayer supplication for all those, man and beast, who have none.
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