I could use some calm and bright.

My craving for silence, kept at bay by small daily rations, has gathered intensity in the past few weeks. I’m fantasizing again about a remote island with no phone service, no TV, and no Wi-Fi. No sound but wind and waves and the crackle of a wood fire on the hearth. Maybe a carol or two played on a guitar, preferably by someone I love.

It’s not happening, of course. It’s December, season of lists. Season of click to order. Season of mall aversion and overcharged credit cards. And now, season of fear.

I wake early and lie in the darkness and wonder about the day ahead. This used to be the time when I would sort through my inventory of worries, conducting a mental triage. By the time my feet hit the floor, I would have the rough draft of a plan.

Now my catalogue of woes seems flimsy compared to whatever waits on the CNN homepage. As for a plan, I’m drawing a blank.

Terrorism is about unpredictability. The bombs and bullets are devastating, but so is the sacrifice of ordinary days, days when the unthinkable was just that and people whined about traffic and the weather as though these were real problems.

Now an uneventful day feels like a luxury. I scan the headlines and breathe a sigh of relief when the news turns back to politics and celebrities behaving badly.

I lie in the dark and think about refuge, and how people threatened by violence have found some measure of peace. When I was growing up, World War II was a proximate and vivid memory for the adults I knew. My father’s reserve uniform hung in the front hall closet, pressed and ready.

The war stories I remember best came from the women, black-and-white snapshots of the home front. No one seemed to spend much time cowering or trembling. My grandmother made ration-card meals of meat loaf with cornflakes and applesauce cake without eggs and spent her afternoons volunteering at the veteran’s hospital. We kept busy, she told me. There was plenty to do.  

On Christmas Eve in those wartime years, she and my mother trimmed the tree with blue and silver ornaments and hung the tinsel strand by strand as they always did. They spiked the eggnog and opened the door to friends and neighbors who might otherwise be alone that night. They sang carols and joked and laughed. It was what we did then, my mother recalled. It was a way to stay strong.

I rise and treat myself to an extra ration of silence, watch the sun gild the edges of gray clouds as the morning begins. The news will break through soon enough, whatever it may be. For now, silence fosters wholeness and creates space for the holy.

I haul the crèche up from the basement and set it in its accustomed place, arrange the plaster figures as I have each December for 40-something years. The shepherd is down to one lamb, and the stable roof could use some work. Still, the story is intact: travelers seeking shelter, a baby in peril from Herod’s unthinkable violence, the makeshift comfort of a homely refuge. An angel who says what angels always say: Fear not.

I sit at the table and start another list. In a few days, our house will fill up with small children and their assorted parents, uncles, and cousins. We wait for their arrival to decorate the tree, unwrapping blue and silver ornaments from long ago. The youngest child will place the angel on the highest branch, and someone will turn on the lights, and the world will be still. Calm. And for a moment, bright.

Stephanie Piper

Stephanie Piper's At This Point examines the mystery, absurdity, and persistent beauty of daily life. She has been a newspaper reporter, editor, and award-winning columnist for more than 30 years. Her Midpoint column appeared monthly in Metro Pulse from 1997 until 2014.