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Family is the reality of our lives,  we all  have it, it is source of great nourishment and joy to some, an insoluble difficulty for others, a little of each for many. Family is the wellstone of love and pain, identity and loss, a complex brew, sometimes a nectar, sometimes a poison. The marketers who run our world love to invoke the Rockwellian notions of family at this time of the year, for most of us, these are images to make us feel we have fallen short.

Family can make us feel very good or very bad. I think family is rarely simple,  I’d like to write a series on Surviving Our Families, it might be the raging bestseller I’ve always wished for. During the holidays, especially at Christmas, our struggles to be comfortable with our families, to find the right balance between honoring their place in our lives and moving beyond the traumas and conflicts and discomforts of living with them comes into focus. Some of us are showing our children how to make their way in the world, some of us are caring for aging and in-laws and parents. A few of us love it all and center our lives around family.

My own solution has always been to start making Spring around Christmas, to look for color and light, my nourishment and best medicine. Family is the dilemma I have never sorted out and never will. When I was a child, my sister and I loved Christmas and made it together, scouring local stores and shops for months for gifts, saving up our pennies, making cute things for our parents, Christmas was a beloved oasis in a bleak house, it was the brightest day of the year, usually the only one. It had a lot of meaning. My sister and I mean a lot to one another, we have not had a simple relationship, but  we love and care for one another. That is enough sometimes.

When I fell apart a few years ago, my sister appeared out of the mists, she steadied me, helped me to save myself. That is the thing about family, I suppose, they are always there.

My family fell apart for various reasons, we have no shared our holidays for many years, we have all found our own families, made our own way, we are a strong and brave and determined tribe, life has not sunk any one of us yet. Maria and I share so many things, one of them is this struggle to figure out family. We have come to see that we are building a new family in our own lives, and we have come to see that we are family to one another, a miracle and a beautiful thing. Family can be about love and nourishment and support, after all. How lucky we are to see that, to find that.

This week, we are scrambling to get gifts for the people in our lives who matter to us – the list gets longer all the time. We are spending a quiet and simple Christmas  together, no family, the two of us in our lives, in our home, with the animals of Bedlam Farm, with some close friends. Joy, joy, joy, and reflection and gratitude for our lives together. Then this weekend, something special, something different, we are going to travel to see my sister, spend a night in her home, enter her life, share ours. The circle turns, family is in our heads and hearts, in our imaginations, in our blood. I am happy about this Christmas, I have good stuff for Maria,  hidden all over the house, we have people to see that we love, a new community we are happy to belong to.

I am open to finding the spirit of Christmas with my sister again, I think we are both looking for it.

Maria makes Spring every day, we make Spring together, even on days as gloomy and dour as this.

I will be making Spring all week.

To those whose families provide love and nourishment, blessings and blessings to you. To those for whom family can be a dark or painful thing this week, perhaps even one of loneliness or  loss and suffering, my hope for you is the gift of Spring, the meaning for me of Christmas day.

Colleen Flaherty is new to the Cambridge Valley Veterinary Clinic, where we take our dogs and cats and when I spotted scabs and sores on Red, she agreed to see us at the end of the day, when the sun was streaming through the windows. It struck me as timeless scene, almost out of Normal Rockwell and I was pleased to try and capture it. I like the way she approached Red, introduced herself, shook his paw almost formally while making eye contact and talking to him.

He seemed to connect with her right away, her demeanor was calm and direct, we both liked it. Veterinary medicine, like health care, is caught up on all sorts of complexities – the invasion of greedy corporate pharmaceuticals and equipment companies, insurance,  concerns about money, the growing emotionalizing of animals,  controversies over vaccinations. This is our world for people and animals.

But at the core, the people I know who are drawn to veterinary medicine – most are women now – love animals, and that’s why they do it. I don’t know any rich vets I thought this moment between Colleen and Red was reaffirming for me, perhaps in some way for him. It paved the way for her to put Red on his back and probe some sensitive spots, and he turned to her and I asked if she wanted me to hold his mouth, and she looked at him and said, “no, I’m going to trust you.” He returned the favor. At the core, this is what it’s all about.

The State Line Diner sits on the boundary between Shushan, N.Y., and Arlington, Vt. I imagine it was a busy tourist and truck stop at one town. Norman Rockwell painted the diner once, I’m told and I think I’d like to be breakfast chef there for just a few weeks, see how I do with scrambled eggs, bacon and home fries.

We set up the Bedlam Tree last night, striking some simple LED lights on it, putting it by the front window. We plan on having a happy and meaningful Christmas this year, and that changes. For us, it will be a quiet day alone. My daughter usually comes up for Christmas but she can’t make it this year, so it will be me, Maria, some dogs, donkeys, a barn cat, chickens. This will be the first Christmas in memory without anyone from my family or Maria’s being around. And we aren’t going anywhere.

That feels a bit lonely, yet also quite beautiful and we love our farm and the idea of a quiet day together seems right. We often project the Norman Rockwell image of Christmas – the family gathered together for the feast. But I was reading Salman Rushdie’s powerful memoir, “Joseph Anton” ( that was the name he used in hiding for more than a decade) and he wrote that the Rockwell image is a myth, mostly. Family is often the dark chaos that runs beneath the surface of our lives, the pain and anguish that boils inside of us. I think there is something to that, as so many people seem to suffer through the holidays.

You can take the animal thing too far (at various points in my life, I have) and animals are not a substitute for humans for me – I often say the dogs are great, Maria is better – but even though I will miss my daughter,  I look forward to this Christmas. Red, Lenore and Frieda mean a lot to us, so do the donkeys. We are even coming to love our industrious chickens, who do no harm and work hard. It seems right we spend the day with them in our new home. We will walk dogs, commune with donkeys. If Christmas is about birth, it is also about rebirth, and the farm is a symbol of rebirth for us, of our lives together. I am excited about it. I will research some great Christmas meal to cook and think of some other simple ways to mark our own journey, the start of something powerful and new.