On the phone with Margie

Our internet failed us today, so we talked on the phone instead. Margie says in all her 94 years, this is the first time she’s ever heard of holidays without socializing. “And it’s global!” she said in a whisper. No families, no colleagues, no friends. No group meals, no gatherings around a Chanukiah or Christmas tree, no egg nog, no wrapping papers, no mistletoe kisses. We muse about the up-sides and the down-sides of that. I remember drunken uncles with groping fingers and frantic, tired women running last-minute errands, defeated by pie crust and weeping over burnt turkeys. (I come from a long line of hapless cooks.) She remembers grief: the empty place at the table; blended families and the awkwardness of step-parents trying to measure up to the missing parent.

But also the sensual beauty: candlelight, bayberry, cinnamon cookies, music. The pleasure of choosing gifts for those we love, imagining their surprise. The rattle of glittery paper, snow globes and old ornaments. The joy of children awaiting magic.

As we talked about what will not happen this year, we each gazed at the sky, doing its best to compensate for the drama not coming with the holidays. I live on the 10th floor. She lives eleven blocks east and nine blocks south, on the 11th floor. We see the same sky. “Look at that darkening sky,” she marveled. “The dark comes earlier every day, and every year of our lives, we are surprised by that. Here it is again, that enfolding winter sky.”

She wants to make me a neck scarf, which I’ll be happy to receive if she has time to make it. I want to surprise her with a book she will enjoy. She loves photographs of landscapes, especially of places she has gone hiking. Casting about for what she might enjoy, I asked her what were some of her favorite hiking places. "Everywhere I went was my favorite place," she laughs. The Dolomites. Yosemite. “There was a mountain in Austria where there was a forest pass through which Jews escaped from the Nazis. What mountain was that? I can’t remember.” I couldn’t help her, as I’ve never been to Austria. Ideas, anyone?