Christmas night

For Christmas dinner, Heather made "Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic," prepared with chicken stock we made ourselves. Wonderful. (Though there weren't literally forty cloves; twenty, maybe.) It's a French recipe, and I made baguettes to go with it; we spread the roasted garlic on the bread. With ginger glazed carrots. A bottle of Chardonnay, too. And the dessert was also French, Pots de Crème au Chocolat, gloriously rich little chocolate custards.

At the end of the evening Heather read a short story she wrote about Jesus' birth. Here's an excerpt from the middle of it:

“How close together are they? Can you sit up? Here...” The midwife beckons me to slide my hips forward onto the torn blanket, and Joseph supports my shoulders as I try to push myself up on one arm. I inch myself forward, off our mat and onto the packed earth; I can feel it through the thin blanket, rock-hard and unforgiving under the weight of my hips. A wave of power and pain passes from the core of my body down towards my legs. Or not power... power going out of me, not coming in, yet it doesn’t feel like my own at all. I have no power. I am breathing fast. Can I do this? How much worse does it get? Will there be room for him to come out, through that place where I have never been touched? Will I tear?

When the angel came, there was strange light in the room, different from anything I knew. Like a color I’d never seen. It outlined everything so clearly—my needle and thread, the folds of that cloak in my lap, looked twice as real as they had ever been, almost alive... There is no light here. Rachel and the midwife crouch beside me in the dark, whispering.

I know what they think. They can’t help it. The oil lamp lies dead and silent in a corner of the doorway, and I will give birth in the dark. Sometimes I could wonder myself if I really saw that unreal light—that light more real than me...

Another pang grabs me and twists my body on the hard earth. Joseph’s hands on my shoulders grip harder and I can hear his whisper: Breathe... it’s all right Miriam... I’m here... I want to answer him somehow but all my breath is stolen.

I knew. The strange light and the strange voice, saying God was with me, God... I knew then that there was reason to fear. He told me not to, but he didn’t say I had nothing to fear. God’s favor, yes; I know the stories, I know how it is with those on whom God’s favor rests. Hard earth and darkness, David in the caves and Jeremiah in the cistern, yes, and your husband’s family all around you calling you a whore under their breath... God is with me. It’s His son they’ll call a bastard. I know. He knows.

Another pain is coming. I take a long slow breath in the huge dark.

We followed that by singing a song based on Mary's magnificat, and then took turns reading the passages from Luke and Isaiah that I quoted in the last entry. A good way to end the day. Maybe we'll make a tradition of it.