Through the Glass Dimly

The candlelight flickers in my December-darkened living room. Jarred red pillar candles with warm light speckle my piano by number, along with the Christmas cards of cozy families that have begun to criss-cross my living room. Edmund's favourite Christmas album is playing, the one from Charlie Brown and his lovely Christmas special. There is a quiet ache filling this space, and my 8-year-old has said once again, "It doesn't feel like Christmas." And so it has begun. That ache really first began for me when my family of origin moved during fourth grade across the continent from Kelowna, BC (where we lived for a few short months with my grandparents and spent days filled with fun with cousins, and I slept in my auntie's old pink bedroom, sharing a bed with my oldest sister Christi) to a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. I remember that winter and Christmas feeling particularly cold and lonely, as I had spent the warm, bright summer months and early fall in what had alway...