“I’ll have a blue, blue, blue Christmas…”

Upbeat big band music plays while ironically sad lyrics croon in accompaniment.

Toes tap. Feet bounce. Little lady smiles abound.

The strange fragility of human compassion and relationships slaps me in the face like the frigid swirls of snow floating down outside.

Some family can only be visited in hug-soaked memories and silent tear streaks, while others are separated by distance that’s greater—and more disturbing—than any amount of frost-covered or heaven-bound miles.

Decadent aromas and lingering wafts of fragrant ancestral recipes surround my Strawberry Shortcake blanket-swathed self.

Forward, back, forward, back, forward back as I write (in my favorite lined-paper notebook) and creakily rock in the wooden glider I’ve had since saving my allowance for it in the eighth grade.

Fluffy, downy light-brown curls cascade down the nape of her neck; fallen from the curled, pink ribbon-wrapped pigtail perched upon her cherubic head (so similar, sometimes, to ours).

Her toddler smiles bring childlike smiles and I know that across the snowy state my missing counterpart feels and mourns this too.

A tattered, beloved (now coverless) Strawberry Shortcake Christmas book fills her small, silk-soft hands.

I look out the big front picture window at the gentle drifts of white and notice also the blue smoke that puffs from the green ceramic smoker holding our brined and buttered turkey dinner.

“I’ll be so blue just thinking about you…”

I’m engulfed by the uncomfortable mixture of those silent (and invisible) tears that prick at the backs of my eyes—from longing and disappointment both—as well as the divine lightness in my smiling, swelling chest from the love sweetly centered all around me—and I know that across this snowy state she feels this same way.

Strange and fragile though we may be, love cannot die—or be torn apart.

“…blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas.”

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Editor: Bryonie Wise