Don't Open til December 25

It’s Christmas Day, little sweetheart. It’s a bit rainy and unseasonably warm outside. I’m making a little dinner later, I’ll roast a chicken. 

Even though it’s a bit too warm today to be wearing it, I have right here beside me your first Christmas gift to me - the lovely blue and grey scarf you knitted for me, working on it daily, all during the Boston run of Rock n Roll. 

The words you wrote you me that Christmas remain with me always, too - the card itself framed and hanging on the wall in the red table room, a copy or two of it hanging over my desk and magnet-ed to the inside front door, and its last lines tattooed in your handwriting on my right forearm. 

Also, here, below, let me repeat them. I think somehow, little sweetheart, you knew you would need to give me instructions on how to carry on, something to hold to my heart and know that you would always be with me even if we were separated by mortality and the physical world. You gave me that not just with these words below but every day, with the great gift of your love. I’m so forever grateful. 

Merry Christmas, little sweetheart.

My Dearest Michael,
 

I’ve been working on this in the green room and backstage since we came to Boston. I’d drape it around my neck to keep warm while knitting in the dark of the freezing wings. The cast is decisively in favor of the striped color combination.
 

It’s Christmas day, and I’m wearing my pajamas. I’m in my P.J.’s even if you’re reading this when the sun has set. Ryan is making another bourbon and coke even if you’re reading this as the sun rises. My Dad is reading aloud shocking statistics about religion or politics, my Mom is spraying perfume on the dog, and me...? I am missing you. Maybe one day we’ll spend Christmas together.
 

Coy says “You are where you’re meant to be”, and while I like that idea, I know, far too well, what it feels like to be in a world where everything feels wrong – where everything is wrong. You have also been to that place. And as the world spins on its own axis, people are lost in their own needs and trials. We falter blindly, and strive endlessly. But no matter where you are, whether you should be there or not, and no matter who is present... know that you are a treasure in your own right. If the chest is buried, the key is lost, or the map stolen, it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t change the fact that it’s inside you. I just see what’s there. You carry it with you. What’s hidden can always be found.
 

I love you.

 

Your Gingersnap,


Summer