just over here smoking by the litter box
Tethered | December
You’re reading Tethered Letters, a monthly long-form letter on creative faith and faithful creativity. Everything I write is AI-free. Thanks for reading.
Hello loved ones,
Another year has come and gone.
There were many times over the last four months that I wanted to write to you. The days were full — camping at Turkey Run, visiting Lake Huron, celebrating four birthdays, birdwatching, mushroom hunting, Hobbit Day, the potato harvest, drying out the loofahs and popcorn and putting the garden to bed, keeping tabs on that crazy election, Thanksgiving with family, etc. Autumn and early winter were as busy as we thought they would be, and I was glad to be fully present for all of it, good and bad and indifferent.
I didn't end up finding much time to work on the long-term projects I planned for my hiatus. In fact, the only real writing I did was in my role as a library board member: numerous letters and emails to the county council and commissioners, as well as board statements, over the ongoing attacks on our little town's public library by the Hoosier version of Moms for Liberty. I might write more on this in 2025. There's much to be said. Suffice to say — while it was important and good writing, it was not the kind of writing I most enjoy, and I'm a little tired of explaining the whole thing to people. For now, I'll just say: go encourage your local librarians. They might need it more than you know.
But beyond that, the days have been sweet. Our youngest turned five in October (five! how??) and we're more and more aware of how quickly the years are flying by. Linnea and I enjoyed our Christmas date early in December, going out for Indian food, a stop-in at the local bookstore, and a concert with Over the Rhine. We definitely were lowering the age average at that concert. I think I saw maybe a dozen people our age; the rest was a sea of Christmas sweaters and gray hair. That's what you get when the performers have been on the road singing "reality Christmas" songs for over 30 years, I suppose. We loved it.
I've dipped back into Substack from time to time; I wasn't very self-controlled on the whole unplugging thing. I read a lot of what those of you who are writers wrote, and appreciated it from afar. I'm grateful to those of you who are new for tuning into Tethered Letters during my absence from it. I'm glad you are here, and I hope you find something hopeful and true somewhere amongst all the paragraphs and poems I'll write in 2025.
Speaking of which, I don't know what I'm going to do here in 2025 aside from a monthly letter like usual and some poetry here and there. I guess we'll find out as we go.
On Christmas Eve, I cut back the asparagus and rhubarb.
Our only far-flung siblings had arrived from Florida a few days prior, and we were all looking forward to enjoying Christmas Day with my entire family. For a number of reasons that are none of your business, this Christmas mattered more than usual. It mattered that we were together and well.
But on Monday night before Christmas Eve, Linnea came down with a particularly nasty stomach bug. Neither of us slept well, she for obvious reasons and me because I took our couch and our couch has, shall we say, lost some of its spring after five children have enjoyed "sitting" on it. Mostly it's because I'm about half-a-foot taller than it is long, so my legs are always up in the air. I probably could have made a better bed on the floor.
She was out of commission all day Christmas Eve. We had done as much of the Christmas dinner preparations as we could — brining and butterflying the turkey we picked up on sale after Thanksgiving, making eggnog and shortbread, doubling a batch of Chex Mix, etc. But with the threat of stomach flu looming over Christmas and a lot of us crammed into the same house, the Eve became about stocking up on ginger ale and crackers, brewing tea and managing kids, and praying that it wasn't going to hit the rest of us.
Halfway through the day I realized that the last thing on my garden list for the year was finally available to me: trimming back the asparagus and rhubarb. According to better gardeners than me, you shouldn't trim these perennials back until they've had a chance to pull all the good stuff back into their roots after the first few hard frosts. But once they've yellowed and flattened, cutting them down stops pests from overwintering in them.
From the window I could see it was time, and I needed to get out of the house for a bit. So while Linnea was sleeping and the kiddos were occupied playing a game with their aunt and uncle, I grabbed some loppers and a rake and carted them out on our wheelbarrow to the garden. I also packed my pipe, plotting a bit of a smoke afterward if there was time.
It was good to be out in the fresh air. It was warm for December, a bit surprising since we'd had a few very cold weeks early on, with enough snow for the kids to make a fort and a lopsided snowman. But it was still cooler than inside, and breezy. It smelled damp and earthy, more like a false spring than the steel I'm accustomed to during our Indiana winters. The sky was cloud on cloud, each indistinguishable from the other and moving only imperceptibly if you squinted hard enough. Flat gray as far as the eye can see. Gloomy skies, slimy rhubarb, empty garden, bare trees, sickness stalking us all.
But boy did I rejoice over that slimy rhubarb, and the stubborn thready asparagus too.
Winter in Indiana is always too dark. If it's a cold spell, it goes into your bones. You walk outside and your boogers freeze on the way to your car, which may or may not start. You worry about the chickens even though they're probably warmer than you are because you covered the entire coop with Visqueen and plugged in not one but two heaters. Those cluckers are living the high life. The DMV (or whoever decides when to do this stuff) sends you a new license plate for 2025 and one of the screws is rusted and stripped, and your fingers go so numb while you're taking the back half of your car apart to get at the inside nut that it's not worth crossing them in hopes the WD-40 will be effective (it wasn't).
If it's warmed up somehow everything is slick and muddy and the snow looks like its full of ashes from some distant nuclear explosion. The kid's snowman becomes a commentary on the futility of existence, without Hobbes there to soften the blow. The starlings storm your Bradford pear trees and eat the late-ripened berries, then poop purple all over your house and vehicles. You pray for snow to cover up the browns and yellows and purples. You can’t wash your car yet because there are still berries and birds, so you resign yourself to looking through spattered poop-windows while you wait for the stomach flu to take you down. Merry Christmas.
Anyhow, that's how I was feeling Christmas Eve, despite all the reasons to be thankful this year, despite all the good celebrations and preparations of previous weeks. I needed to check off those two garden items. I needed to get some dirt on my hands. Lopping down the asparagus and bundling it over to our fire pit was peace on earth. Piling the rhubarb into the compost bin repeated the sounding joy.
I had a bit of time after putting away the tools, and no kid had called my name yet, so I snuck into the back storage room of our garage with my pipe. Yes, this is where we keep the cat litter box. Yes, it's crowded with fencing and buckets and extension cords and tools. It's also where we stack our plastic Adirondack chairs, it has a small heater and a window, and there's a lock on the inside of the door.
For twenty glorious minutes I sat there in total silence, periodically bumping my head on a pump sprayer that was dangling over me, sipping slowly on some Capstan. When it’s cold you can’t really smell cat turds like you can Capstan. I blew some smoke rings. I didn’t think about anything worth reporting to strangers on the internet, and even if I had, I didn’t feel any need to share it.
The kids eventually came knocking, so it was back inside. But when combined with some simple gardening, those 45 minutes might have saved my Christmas.
Linnea was feeling good enough to join us for chicken soup that evening, if not for the Christmas Eve service at our little church — so I went with the three olders. It's one of my favorite services of the year, just carols and the Christmas story and communion. We end by candlelight, singing Silent Night in a long, low-lit circle around the church.
trimmed and burning
I went along with all the others
to service, to wait upon the Bridegroom
as every year we wait. I held
the silent night in my hand, lit
from my ancient neighbor's trembling flame,
and I lit the next in line: my son's.
I held also the hopes and fears of the year,
of all the years tumbling down upon us
in the darkness of December,
in the hearts behind our waning wicks.
No purchase from candle or oil, no long hoarding of light
no rush to buy or wrap or bake
can push back this night, only
God with us. Shy in the candlelight,
we burn on, for that which burns within us
no darkness will overtake.
Then on Christmas Day, a not-so-minor miracle: no one got sick. Everyone came. The kids played well together. There were Christmas movies and grapefruit and breakfast casseroles and lots of coffee. We played games and grazed throughout the day on Chex mix and a delicious onion dip my sister made. In the evening, the turkey turned out decent and Mom helped me fix the too-thin gravy.
The gifts were thoughtful and fun: rubber band guns and whoopee cushions and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans for the kids, sweaters and gadgets and treats for the adults. Digory got a blue ukulele, and spent a lot of time jamming out with his cousin on sleigh bells. We played several rounds of a game called You Laugh, You’re Out, in which I totally lost my mind while rolling around on the floor proclaiming, "I'm a hot dog!"
Which is to say, we kept Christmas well.
The day after Christmas people got sick again, the kids and adults were grumpy, there were messes to clean up and everything felt off again. But for that one day, as if Christmas still bestows the odd miracle even as late in time as 2024, everything was perfect somehow. I still don't know how it happened. But it was exactly what we needed in some ridiculous and wondrous way, like raking slimy rhubarb leaves on Christmas Eve, or smoking a pipe in silence next to a pile of cat turds, or stringing lights and baubles all over a mostly-dead conifer in your living room.
It was Christmas, is what I'm trying to say: as absurd as it is beautiful, as necessary as it is every year even when I'm worn out by it.
And I guess that's all I've got after a few months away from writing. Nothing profound. I unearthed no revelations or reflections in my time away. I have no pithy inspirational quotes about writing to encourage you. I have no project I completed to show for my time away, and no resolutions for the new year.
I'm just here to say that there's hope to be had in the dark, that He is Immanuel. He loves us, He's with us, and He’s said He will never leave us, even when the new year comes and we're not ready for it or it's not what we expect. In my experience, He keeps His promises.
Maybe that's all I've ever wanted to write about, maybe that's all I've written about to this point. No point in stopping now, right?
Happy new year, loved ones.
December Favorites:
Returning to Andy Squyres’ Poet Priest album in these early days of 2025.
Gurwinder's article on the dark side of empathy, “How Empathy Makes Us Cruel and Irrational,” might have been my favorite recent read.
How to Forage for Mushrooms and Not Die, Paul Hyman. The perfect gateway book for those who want a little knowledge combined with common sense. I also picked up this brife (a knife with a brush on it) specifically designed for foraging mushrooms.
Eggnog. With a splash of bourbon it’s an annual delight.
Muppet Treasure Island. I watched this repeatedly as a kid, and it was a joy to return to it all these years later. Favorite quotes are "He died? And this is supposed to be a kid's movie!" (Rizzo) and “He has demons? Cool!” (Gonzo) but the whole thing is a gem.
I missed seeing you in my Substack inbox! Hope the break was refreshing and grounding... sounds like not writing was the right thing to do. (And thanks for doing the Lord's work with your library. good grief, the moms need to chill and read some romantasy or something.)
"It was Christmas, is what I'm trying to say: as absurd as it is beautiful, as necessary as it is every year even when I'm worn out by it."
Sigh. That truth really resonated with me. Chris, if you write nothing else than the muddy beautiful reality of your everyday life, and the closeness of God, I will be most grateful. I too have been wondering what else is there to write? Other than how God has been faithful this time. Again. Happy new year. 🥂