The family Christmas Eve activity at our daughter’s house last night after a top-notch dinner of her homemade gumbo, spinach salad, and French bread was each person sharing a poem around the table. Tim shared a short AI generated Christmas poem. Brady shared a fun poem, “I Like Pie” styled somewhat in the Green-Eggs-And-Ham mode. I shared a poem about friends and being together from a book of poetry entitled “Same.” Charlotte had introduced me to it at Thanksgiving. Riley recited from memory Robert Browning’s “ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” And Charlotte shared a Christina Rosetti poem. We all enjoyed it.
Then Charlotte declared a 30 minute quiet reading time after which we each shared a sentence or short paragraph from our reading that caught our eye and each shared why it interested them and what it meant. Then we shared a tray of assorted Christmas sweets for dessert.
She had handed me a short work of fiction set in a small Irish town in 1985 at Christmas time. It is a sweet story about a simple man with deep thoughts and longings who finds that unexpected and disappointing discoveries lead to new understanding and revelations that change all he has ever known about himself. Of course, I didn’t finish it in 30 minutes, but I did take it to bed with me and finished it before going to sleep. It offered a perfect setting for a sense of wellbeing for turning in on Christmas Eve.
CBB 12/24/25
