It’s early in the morning and I just woke up from yet another epic dream that seems to play all night long in my head, leaving me a bit worn out in the morning after working so hard emotionally. My dreams are visions of family and friends, reunions and home. I am seated around a quilt with some of my sisters and friends, talking, noticing the smaller children playing around us. Then magically we are at the campfire, sharing stories and thoughts, listening to music, watching the flames as they take the center of attention in the dark night on the mountain, somewhere, sometime. Next I am strangely yet logically transported to a sunny day, the light muted beneath some trees where I am working at pruning the dead out of a shrub, the satisfying work of clipping off branches no longer needed and shaping those stems that are reaching beyond the boundaries. I hear the grownup giggle of my friends as we visit side by side, working and playing (in our unique way) in the gardens surrounding the temple. I find my grandson is by my side and I stroke his silky blond hair and study his face, little gaps between his teeth, baby cheeks and sparkly eyes as he speaks to me, telling me something he has imagined. Someone else’s tiny little hand is tugging on my fingers and I look up and there are more of my grandchildren, laughing and chasing on the lawn. How could I not have noticed them? I join the group and we hug and chat and do things together that I can’t really remember now. But their faces I remember, the intensity of their beauty and distinctive characteristics that make them who they are. Back on the mountain I am preparing food, shoulder to shoulder with one of my adult children, and the mountain somehow morphs into my kitchen at home. The familiar countertop displays a cookie jar I have that is a replica from the one at my grandma’s house, and I open a drawer to grab a towel and dry my hands. I know right where everything is. Wait a minute, where have I been all this time? I come back to consciousness as I wake up in the dark room and listen to the train rumble past on the other side of the interstate, calling out for that same person whose name I don’t recognize but the pronunciation ends with a moan, signaling they have been calling for a long time, days, even months. I hear it again as the Appalachian Mountains echo it back, distorting the single-syllabled name even more.

Amen and Merry Christmas.