Waiting for the Manger

It is -5 outside but, with the windchill, feels like -20. Luxy peed as quickly as she could, haunches shaking, and then skittered back inside.

Today you will be portraying Jesus in the St. Olaf Christmas pageant, but for now you are sleeping. Daddy and I decided that the most appropriate outfit for your theatrical debut is a peace sign sleeper. This decision was made, of course, after asking WWJD?

It is advent. A time of waiting and anticipation. A time decked out in blue lights and empty mangers and toasted nuts. I often feel this sense of waiting, this sense of being "on the verge" of what comes next, but it is an anticipation of all the wrong things. Waiting for the semester to end, waiting for the Christmas list to be completed, waiting to descend with you into airport security, into Gail and Michael's home, into repeated syllables and grasping and sitting. I am waiting for your nap to end, for the cold to slither away. I am waiting for the pageant to start, for the coffee to brew; I am waiting for job security, for a house with rooms we can paint. I am waiting for my breast to refill with milk, for the car to shudder to life; I am waiting for your father's hand stroking my hair while he grades and for the plastic pump parts to dry.

It seems like advent asks another kind of waiting from us. Not the kind where we shift side to side, crossing and re-crossing our arms, coughing politely in the hopes that the woman ahead of us in line buying 17 cans of cream of mushroom soup will hurry up already. Usually waiting is filled with impatience--or at least my kind of waiting is. Advent seems to ask for patient waiting, the kind of waiting that is not filled with wanting the next thing but with preparing to receive whatever comes next with grace.

Your mother, Thisbe, is not a particularly graceful person. But for you, I will try. From upstairs, I hear the tiny smacking sound of your lips. Here in the living room, the sun lays an arm across the back of the purple armchair. The space heater is whirring, the couch is still filled with yesterday's debris (board books, the boppy pillow, burp cloths, an oven mitt). And our Christmas stockings are hung from the black Target bookshelf with care. The next thing will happen soon enough.