September. It’s mid-month. The days have grown cool. In unexpected bursts, the winds whip and whistle. The shift is subtle, and I’ve been told it’s usually warmer than this. I can already tell I’m going to miss the crisp air of the east coast fall, the smell of cornfields in the night under a harvest moon – and everything that follows (though maybe not the November turn to bitter cold).
The other day, and again this morning, I read a poem, “Christmas in August,” by Bay Area poet and former poet laureate Robert Hass. In exquisite detail he tells of Maria C. who makes hundreds of tamales every year for Christmas Eve… the roasted pork, the simmering mole, guajillo or chipotle chiles for smokiness, masa kneaded with pork fat. He then shifts to his friend who makes herring for Christmas Eve… juniper berries, slices of fatty fish, garlic and peppercorn and just the right amount of mustard. Finally he shifts to his wife browning celery and onions for the stuffing. All of this is framed as a reverie/meditation sparked by the light in August at an open air market.
The poem has me thinking about the holidays and traditions. There’s a warmth to what he describes – a sense of intimate community. As the poem progresses, the speaker moves from a tradition he’s heard about (Maria C.’s tamales) to one he seems more familiar with (his friend’s aging hands preparing herring) to the personal (“at our house we peel chestnuts” and his wife making stuffing). Sometimes, I wish I had developed my own intimate traditions – or found a way to keep them. In my nuclear family (when I was married) we always did the holidays somewhere else: Thanksgiving at my mom’s, Christmas Eve at my dad’s, Christmas dinner at my mother-in-law’s. That’s not to say that those weren’t enjoyable – they absolutely were, but aside form the night we set aside to decorate the tree and the opening of presents on Christmas morning, we didn’t have anything that felt uniquely ours. Having spent the last seven or eight years floating about (Yardley to Memphis to State College to San Francisco), I haven’t quite adjusted to the tradition of having no tradition or not having built my own intimate community/family.
It’s mid September and I can feel a stirring in the weather. Wanting something hearty, I put a roast in the crockpot. I spend my morning in my own bit of reverie – wondering where I’ll be for the holidays – almost longing for the specificity and routine described in the Hass poem. I’ve often imagined myself as the gracious host instead of the attendee – or at the very least as a part of something larger, warmer, and more convivial than what I’ve managed on my own these past few years. September’s fading fast.