A Tree of Paper Cranes
Stringing popcorn and cranberry garland or tossing it all in the air and seeing where things land
Odds and ends today, but the memory of the hope tree is a touchstone this week and a catalyst for looking back. The invitation to shake the personal snow globe is undeniable. This is the allure and softness of the final weeks of the year.
“Every crane I fold is a prayer for peace.”— Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
Happy Sunday!
My goal this week was to just make and keep a few notes, the threading and stringing of a popcorn and cranberry garland to record the flow of days.
But, really, who needs such an orderly progression?
The fragmentation is intentional. This is the feeling that fits. The scatter. The layering. The mishmash. More and more I embrace this diffusion.
We had carolers at the door this week, a family of four. A first. It was charming and wonderful.
We still have no stove/oven and no clear plan.
I need a plumber and then an electrician?
Or do I need an electrician and then a plumber?
Do I really need more than I need?
Each day has a part to play in what I share each week. By Friday morning, I usually spend my pre-work, first-cup-of-coffee hour really honing in on the shape of the opening. This week, I got lost in the forgotten past.
On a particularly dark morning (literally, because I am still tracking morning light, and this it’s-gonna-rain morning was the darkest yet), I turned on my “River” playlist. (I think to know me you have to understand and appreciate having a playlist of “River” covers.)
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Thinking about the crane tree, I opened Google Photos and started scrolling through photos from Decembers over the last eight years. The crane tree photos are nestled among hundreds of other tree photos. There are so many photos of my mom and me, so much visible change…hair, face, weight. I know the changes this year have been dramatic.
“I’m functional,” I told the doctor this week.
“But could you be better than just functional?”
In my photo scrolling, I ran into year-end grids I made in other years. These are probably better suited for the last week of the year, but it was nice to see them, to sink into them a bit.
I burned up the top of a piece of pizza this week, only the top because the bottom and inside were still doughy and uncooked. Disheartened and feeling exposed by my doctor’s appointment, I wanted frozen pizza, not another sandwich, so I decided to try it in the air fryer. Ultimately, I found a combination of time and temperature that worked. I ate the blackened piece, too.
I took my mom to Trader Joe’s for Oatmeal Cranberry Dunkers, an annual household obsession, and we came out with an amaryllis. I am excited to see it unfurl.
I had a doctor’s appointment earlier this week, and I planned my whole day around the anxiety of that only to drive across town, arrive, leave my mom in the car to avoid parking issues, and discover I was there on the wrong day.
We have worked on an advent puzzle, a puzzle for which the pieces are presented in small daily boxes of pieces that are already sorted and will all go together.
I feel this week like the things I want to write about probably come across as too heavy, but that is really just me thinking through life. In the real world, I am struggling with the responsibilities and the emptiness, with change and the puzzle of memory, with multiple kinds of loss, and with hurt that has pulled the rug from under my sense of self, my sense of my own value.
We spent a few hours trying to solve a weatherstripping problem on the garage door. We thought we had done a good job, but as we watched the garage close the next several times, something was clearly wrong. We had to remove everything we had done and do it differently. The next day, half of what we had put up had fallen off, so I used bigger nails and tried again.
I think the idea of stringing strands of popcorn and cranberry is silly.
I finally changed the car tags this week.
Sometimes writing the Sunday letter is an escape, a subversion. In the real world, I am struggling with responsibilities and realities, but in words, I can stretch and reach, survey the land, close my eyes and wander in the dark, feeling and listening for whispers and answers and the sound of the wind through the trees.
We have watched a mix of holiday movies in the last few days. I re-watched a few before my mother arrived, including Single All the Way and Home for the Holidays with Jodie Foster, which I hadn’t seen in years. This week, among others, we watched the Lindsay Lohan Christmas movies; Candy-Coated Christmas; Love, Actually; A Very British Christmas; and Last Christmas (which features a bunch of Wham songs).
Typically, we watch a bunch of Hallmark movies (because my mother loves them), but I don’t have Hallmark anymore. It’s okay because there are plenty of lightweight movies on other networks about women who go home to find the family inn struggling or return to their home town and run into a high school ex or land in the purview of a sad widower and his child.
If we get to them, my favorites for yearly re-watches are: Family Stone, Love the Coopers, The Holiday, Family Man, and, sometimes, the Tim Allen Santa Claus movies. We love Miracle on 34th Street, too, and It’s a Wonderful Life, but they don’t typically make my every year rewatch list.
The check-in questionnaire asked me things like how distracted are you and how many times in the last week have you been disinterested in doing things and how well do you sleep?
The check-in questionnaire asked, given your answers to questions like “how well are you focusing” and “how interested are you in doing things,” to what degree are these impacting your ability to make it through your day, your work, your responsibilities?
Not at all.
That’s the catch.
The stove doesn’t have to be done. We can do a lot with a microwave and an air fryer and bread and cheese and arugula and mayonnaise and lunch meat and spinach and chicken salad.
But work is not optional.
I’ve had a toothache.
I’ve had two toothaches.
I didn’t mention the toothaches when I finally saw the doctor.
I forgot to mention the rate at which my hair is falling out. I forgot to mention other things, too.
She didn’t mention the weight gain.
I said how fine I am.
With tears in my eyes, I said how fine I am.
I’ve turned the tree on one time.
The tree is a separate story. Maybe it’s a next-week story.
I think there are not enough weeks to space out some of the touchstones that I keep running my thumb across in the month.
There is also another tree in my head, a tree of cranes, a giant towering tree of paper cranes.1 The tree stands in a church across the city right now. I won’t see it this year, but I know it is there. Every year I contemplate volunteering to help hang cranes. Every year, I don’t follow through. It’s just a little too far, and there is no parking. But maybe some year.
That tree is special to us.
That tree was special to us.
That tree is special to me.
The shifting of language.
That tree and all those cranes were at City Hall one year.
It was a random and lucky coincidence.
It was fortuitous.
It was a sign on that shortest day of the year.
The idea of all of those paper cranes, all of those hopes and wishes, carefully and lovingly folded, the quiet, the unheard flapping, the slight movement in the air of more than 15,000 pairs of wings, the golden glow of the lights.
This week it will have been eight years since I stood in front of that tree the first time. Eight years, a quarter of the story.
December is so often a battle between the softness and quietness in my head and the brash, curmudgeonly me that ends up on display. Finding ways and patterns to bring more of that inner me to the surface is always the quest, a modern day hero’s journey, the kind of journey so many of us are mapping.
I hope that you have the end of the year in your periphery, that you have a little pile of things you will rustle in coming weeks, but I hope you also stay present in coming days. Planning ahead is good, but don’t let yourself miss the time you have to be with your people, in your thoughts, with your memories, and with your emotions.
Turn on a favorite holiday song and listen to the words.
Take an ornament from the tree and draw it.
Read one of the holiday books that you still have on the shelf from when your kids were younger (or visit your local library).
Watch a classic movie.
Draw your kids or your partner or your hand.
Fold a paper crane for the tree.
Fold a Victorian puzzle purse.
Turn off the lights and sit in the dark with only the glow of tree lights or a candle.
When I look back at photos, I often find simple grids like these. You can do a lot with your hand and a cup. There is always something to draw or draw again from a new angle.
I have wrapped nothing.2 My mother has made proficient use of a set of wrapping bags. Things look a little different this year.
“Sometimes the holidays can be hard (the first year),” said my doctor, an awkward (obvious) form of happy holidays as she wrapped up my visit.
Someone else always enjoyed wrapping and making things fancy and beautiful.
I remember a special tower of presents, years and years ago.
The kids have said it’s fine with them if we just put things in cardboard boxes and just pass them out.
I’m the one who is quietly sentimental. I will miss the bit of fancy.
In the mix of photos that popped up, I latched onto these from a lookout my mom and I often visit for a selfie to mark the new year. This one was only a handful of years ago, but the shift in time, then to now, is startling. On that same day, there was beautiful golden light.
I am doing some digital drawings of my mom while she is here, as I mentioned last week and as I did last year. It’s a challenge and one I approach with an open heart.
Thank you for reading.
Amy
Weekly Bits and Pieces
Diary List Comics / 52 Weeks (almost a wrap on a year)
A few older December things
Made It?
Thank you for reading along! I always enjoy your comments and invite you to chime in. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.
My December often involves juggling work (which always seems even more chaotic at this time), writing, my projects, and time with family. With my drawing split right now between digital and my journal, it can be hard to fit it all in, but once the new year opens, I know that the journal will continue to be my daily companion.
I hope you are thinking about an illustrated journal for your new year, too.
Why not go ahead and give it a try over the next two weeks? Check out the weekly Illustrate Your Week prompts for some simple nudges.
I will be drawing with my small Sunday group via zoom on the morning of New Year’s Eve. If you are interested, let me know.
The illustrated journal is the one project that is always in play. It is the anchor and the lifeline. I will always encourage you to start your own.
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Done.
I said how fine I am.
With tears in my eyes, I said how fine I am.
Boy. Do I relate to this.
So much to say about this post, Amy. You're the most wonderful writer. I feel so lucky to have made a friend in you this year. It's one of the top items on my annual gratitude list.
Oh...that tree of paper cranes! It's really quite magical, isn't it? How are they collected/created? Are the messages on them related to a theme or just whatever someone feels inclined to write? (I could most certainly read this at the link you shared, but I'm taking the interpersonal route - heh.) Knowing what the scenes look like in person, you may think I'm off the mark here, but there is something about the city in the picture with you and your mom that reflects a similar white-angled beauty. Like the buildings are the beginning of another tree. I think a paper crane tradition might be a good one, but I'm not sure my family would comply.
By the way, I like your short hair. I don't remember seeing a picture of you that way until now. It's spunky!
Saying how fine you are with tears in your eyes.
Saying this: "Finding ways and patterns to bring more of that inner me to the surface is always the quest, a modern day hero’s journey, the kind of journey so many of us are mapping."
They're not easy, these lives we live, and sometimes they're pretty damned hard. I hope your thumb runs across points of joy alongside the ache of separation and loss.
For what it's worth, I've been known to recruit people to wrap their own packages. Anything without an identifying label is fair game. Or I give one person someone else's gifts to wrap and vice versa. A few years ago, I decided I was SO DONE with being the sequestered in a back bedroom until 2a on Christmas Eve, still trying to "make the holiday special." Letting it go is a good approach, but I'm too much of a traditionalist to be willing to go there, at least so far. Thus, Beelzebub joins up with Mrs. Claus.
Sending light your way, Amy.