December 23 Advent Gratitude
My favourite California flower — a beautiful immigrant that has thrived

In California where my sister lives it is still December 23rd. In London, it is morning, still dark, everyone in my house asleep.

I have been writing these advent gratitudes into the dark of this winter. Sometimes someone else will read them and send a clap or a like. Mostly, I know I am writing them for myself — to remember light, to take a moment to be grateful for life, for the surprises that the everyday world brings, gifts that can be as simple as a sky crossed by clouds, a bird in the feeder, a smile from a stranger, and deep, too — so deep we take the gift for granted.

Today’s gratitude is like that. Yesterday brought many gifts: doing a Zoom quiz with a group of family friends, hosted by the teenage son I’d last seen when he was a round and quiet ten year old; sitting by the window in the rain, writing cards, listening to music, giving a minute’s thought to each person whose name I put on an envelope, thinking about them with my whole heart. Mentoring a work colleague who is writing a book and hearing about her progress; finding out a poetry pamphlet I edited will be published.

The real gift, running under all of it, was my sister. The 23rd is her birthday; middle child, she was also born just two days short of Christmas and my mother’s birthday — the big event overshadowing hers every year, her gifts pulled into the Christmas melee. She is one of the most interesting and powerful people I know, and yet she is least interested in herself.

When I got married, she told me that she loves to be next to the spotlight, but not in it. Those who are close to her know what it is like when she gives you her attention, the way you grow in the beam of her light, and how hard it is to turn that beam back on her — to make her see how she herself shines like a star. Sometimes I think the people who have the most right to light up the world are the least likely to recognise that, to claim it, their turning away from attention part of their magic power.

We both like reading about other people’s lives — books where people reveal emotional truths that otherwise might remain hidden. Recently, she told me to read Know My Name by Chanel Miller; I am now nearly finished with it. I probably would not have read it without her recommendation; in our current moment, it is hard to be drawn to books associated with assault, with violence against women. But this is a book about surviving; it’s a book about claiming your voice. It is also a story about two sisters: how they look after each other, how they ride through life as passenger and driver, sometimes one, sometimes the other: stronger together than alone. I have always felt like the world is bigger, better and more possible because of my sister.

What a gift she is to me (after a lifetime together she still surprises me with her depths); to her clients; to her friends; above all, to her family.

Today, for the gift of my sister I am truly grateful.
['Catherine T Davidson']
['Gratitude', 'Advent', 'Reading', 'Sisters']