As Yet Untitled

I’ve been writing this particular story, trying to finish it since 2013 when I took that very first Christmas morning family picture. Remember? 

They say, "a picture's worth a thousand words," and I can go along with that, but what does this particular one really say?

It really was a beautiful picture, and I loved it, and everything I had to say about it in that post was deeply felt. Maybe I also wanted to be a rebel, a non-conformist, and not for one second be a part of that social media false imagery. Maybe I was angry about it all, and wanted everybody else to be angry too. Maybe I was sad or tired or relieved or maybe I was all of those things. "For all the "perfection" that a picture can portray, there is always something behind the scenes.  Something you don't see.  Something you can't know unless someone tells you. What I'm telling you is that my family is not perfect."

When I wrote about the 2014 family picture, I wanted to go all the way, to explain why why why. In hindsight, I can see that I was trying too hard, though I didn't actually know what I was trying for.

By 2018, I'd made "THE annual Christmas family picture" the pinnacle event, the primary reason we gathered ~ so that we could prove to ourselves more than anyone that we'd survived another year, that we remained a family. I was the only one noticing its absence (via pithy blog post). ...or so I thought.

Publisher's Clearinghouse tells pretty much everything that I'm fighting the urge to tell again here and now, that I probably already have told again and again, as if there's no story at all without those pieces, those years. But it's because there's something yet unfinished. There's a lingering uncertainty that I am ever trying to resolve. There's a piece of the story ~ the entire story ~ that I am ever trying to claim and control and write so that I never have to wonder about it again.

There's a thin, pale thread that runs through all my stories, really, but that is double- and back-stitched in that first, formal, Here Is My Family photo from 2013.

who will not be here next year?

My story is hanging in the balance.¹ For the last however many years, while I do think the thing, or draft the post, or take the picture, I put very little of it out there. In some small part, I am trying to respect the boundaries of other people's stories, but it's more that this thing remains unresolved. I am stuck, pressed down, unable to do the new or the next thing until the previous thing is finished.² I need the ending.

As for the absence of my pictures, the Christmas picture in particular, maybe no-one out there notices, but I never have to bring it up on Christmas morning. I could actually linger here for several moments, appreciating the unspoken fact that the picture matters to all of us. We have breakfast and then we clear the spot.

2018 "made it."

2019

"There are years that ask questions,

and there are years that answer."

2020 (Shared in Jan '22)

MAYBE you know that I've taken this picture and shared it via pithy blog post for more than a few years now. I'm STILL trying to write last year's post. Eventually ~ I suppose, probably, maybe ~ I'll figure out what to say about '21.

Maybe.

Til then.

2021
(This is the first time anybody's seen this one.
I still haven't figured out exactly what to say.)

Christmas 2022 was (good) different, and while we did take the picture, I told the story a different way. The whole of it gave me great hope.

This year, we did not gather, and that's all I have to say about that.

I'm finishing this now, closing this and moving on without the ending I'd hoped for. I'm finishing it so that I can move on because no amount of lingering or reflecting or hoping or trying will give me the power to know or control the ending.

This is not the close or start of a new year but of an entire decade. May God guide us gently through the next. He alone holds the ending.

1 All of our stories are hanging in the balance, of course. Mine is no more important nor precarious than anyone else's.

2 It’s in writing this that I realize just how many things I leave unfinished because I still haven’t finished that one thing.