"Phillip"

Phillip is a Kishu Tangerine tree we gave to Peter for Christmas about five or six years ago. Peter calls it Phillip so of course now we all do.  I think Phillip is outgrowing his wine barrel.. This certainly seems to have been the year for citrus. We have so many lemons on our lemon tree that it is falling out of its planting bed  under the weight of  its crop. Half of our orange tree is producing lots of fruit which is ripening nicely even though the other half burned.

There has been much talk about how different Christmas  and the holiday season has been this year . We have missed our families, changed our plans, wondered  about the trajectory of the pandemic now that a vaccine is available (but to whom ?and when?and how?)and  whether we will be able to pick up our lives where we left off almost ten months ago. 

I would say that everything is always changing and evolving all the time but it takes a catastrophic change like that brought about by Covid19 for us to stop and think about it. I had an old fashioned telephone call with Tim on Christmas day, and we were talking about the Chromecast device we sent to the family to enable them to see video games on their television. He mentioned the amount of time he had spent installing , downloading and searching for the right cords . "Remember when you spent Christmas Eve putting together toys with an allen wrench?"

We couldn't have predicted it but we couldn't have predicted that we would be ordering electric blankets so we could eat Christmas dinner outside in freezing weather either!

The things that don't change are the love that we have for our families that drives us to find a way...the ingenuity of keeping  traditions alive in different ways, the hope that carries us through holiday meals spent alone, but with all the trimmings, the joy of a lighted fire or a candle glowing in the night, the caring that takes us to the food bank to serve special meals to those less fortunate,  the cookies baked for a lonely neighbor. 

The nature of the meals, the gifts, the recipes may change, but the spirit of humankind is what keeps he traditions going. Life will change again when we have a vaccine, but perhaps not in ways we can easily predict.

I am grateful for the spirit that moves us forward and encourages us not to give up, to recognize the difficulties and find ways to deal with them, and for the spirit of community and caring that makes it all possible.