The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

There was a moment early in my dating years, dating the man I would marry first, when I should’ve known it would not work out. But I was too eager and young to pay much attention to myself back then.

The moment goes like this. I have spent some time, a couple days, at his place, a beautiful old English-style cottage high on a hill in a quaint neighborhood in midtown Knoxville, and now it is time for me to go home and do laundry, check on a pair of neglected cats. His place, to my way of thinking, is superior in every way to mine, which is messy and leaky, although one day we’ll make our first home in it.

His place is also tough to reach up its long, winding driveway edged on one side in massive boulders, tougher still to leave. Backing down the driveway in my 1977 Olds Cutlass, with shit sightlines out the rear window and mirrors, is all but impossible. (It is in fact a perfect metaphor for our marriage.) On this day, I back over one of the boulders, effectively running my car aground upon it, so now I must stomp back up the driveway to ask for help freeing it. But when I open the back door, my future husband has changed clothes, thrown open the windows, and put Kate Bush on the stereo, which he has set to a gamillion decibels. The consternation on his face when I report my predicament says everything: I have just purged myself of you, and now this. He had jettisoned me right out of his life on a sunny Sunday afternoon, and here I stood, a bothersome fly in the ointment.

Decades later I learned his own parents had urged him to marry me, I’m guessing because I held the promise of a person who’d do his laundry and in general restore order to his life, which is mainly what happened. It does not matter now, and I’ve already been through the same ‘what if’ exercise, scores of times, and that doesn’t matter, either. What if I’d had the good sense that day to give him the finger and never looked back. I’d never have…. You know how it goes.

This doesn’t stop the nostalgia river from flowing, and in fact I summon it to flow, because that is who I am. Lately it has reached flood stage and immersed me once more within the magical home where I raised a complicated boy and tried so hard to make his life magical. Mainly, I think it worked. I go back to that place in my mind’s eye often, in part because I loved it so and still lament its loss, but chiefly because it reminds me of the beauty that makes life worthwhile but that sometimes one must work hard to evoke amid all the noise.

So here we are on the cusp of the upcoming holiday season, which will arrive before we know it, and already I have started planning menus and décor; pondered what to do about Christmas cards this year (how can we wrangle a family photo of two adult humans, a senior canine, and a dervish, especially when there is no one around to take it in the first place); wondered about how our newest canine family member will regard the tree (has he seen one? we doubt it); put pen to paper to make lists; inquired about one secret holiday surprise that requires no small amount of forethought. Halloween is not yet here and I realize that (anyway I hate Halloween), but the soundtrack from The Snowman is already imposing itself as an earworm, music I have not listened to in decades.

Memories I refuse to linger over in the high tide of this nostalgia: Shopping alone. Decorating the tree alone. Staying up too late on Christmas Eve alone so that Christmas Day is perfect. Taking an over-sugared kid to Christmas Eve service, because that is what we do on Christmas Eve, when what his challenging little person really needed was to hang out in the relative calmness of home. So many efforts made alone or without the meaningful support of a loving spouse.

What I will summon instead: My favorite dressing recipe. My favorite cranberry sauce recipe. Mulled cider. Experimentation with baked apples. The joy of hanging out in the kitchen with my loving spouse and surprising the people I love with the things they love. My favorite music and stories. Enjoying my dogs.

My kid and I have already started consulting and anticipating because, as of right now, his plans are to be here for the holidays and I could not be more excited about that. This morning we discussed stew making and bread baking and his method of pancake-making versus ours, his offer to make breakfast while he and his S.O. are here (accepted).

All these memories made and memories-to-be fall under the guise of ‘beauty that makes life worthwhile.’ There is no use crying over wasted time, better to rejoice in the best bits and pieces. Here they come again, and I find myself strong at the broken places after all these years.