The holidays are incredibly hard for many struggling with infertility and loss. The child like innocence and magic of it had been stolen away, never to return again, but it was pretty, especially if there was snow on the ground. After the passage of still more time, I even grew fond of it again. I could look at it, and driving past it no longer caused me to white knuckle my steering wheel. Eventually, that path lost any solace for me as well, and I would have panic attacks, because I knew I was only on the bypass to avoid driving past my trigger.Įventually I moved back to the area, and as more years flowed through the river of my life, I came to an uneasy truce with the wreath. My heart would race as I approached the fork where the bypass separated from the interstate, and my palms would sweat.
As the years passed, I wanted to try to take the shorter path home. When I went to college, and then moved away afterward, I would drive miles out of my way when coming home, just so I wouldn’t have to look at it. It was a symbol for everything I couldn’t feel anymore. That damn wreath, shining like a beacon of holiday merriment from it’s lofty perch atop its bluff. I hated everything I had seen that day, every building I’d seen out of the car window, and every road I’d been driven on. It’s still not my favorite day, if I’m honest, but there’s a lot of food, and I like food. Then he took me back to his apartment and raped me.
I was dizzy, and not just from the height. He drove us up the narrow, steeply slanted bridge, high above the ground to get to it. On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, the year I was sixteen, a man that I had a crush on took me to see it up close. The wreath would show up, and other Christmas lights and decorations followed close behind, and Christmas itself could not be far off. Reflected in my young eyes it just seemed so magical. When I was a small child, I viewed it with such innocent wonder and delight. They used to put it up the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and must do it earlier now, because it’s already been shining up there for a little while this year (not too surprising, since Christmas encroaches earlier into autumn every year, it seems). With the exception of a year or maybe two, it has perched up on top of a river bluff during the holiday season for longer than I can remember. It’s made from neon lights on the frame of a ferris wheel. At Christmas time, near where I live, there is a giant wreath.
0 kommentar(er)
