Two Poems: Christmas in Kibbutz Usha, Our Own Christmas

Sometimes it takes years to discover and establish our individual traditions for celebrating the holidays. Being away from family often creates the safe space for this miracle of adulthood to happen.

Our Semester Abroad crew cast for a Halloween play: that’s me front and center. My costume mystifies me. Wha? Most of these folks trooped to Bethlehem for Christmas. (Front row: Gillian, me, Scott; above left: my roommate Claudia; back row from left: can’t remember her name, Janet, Mark, George, Stewart, and Unknown)

Christmas in Kibbutz Usha

The dorm echoes like a windbreak

a few close friends huddle

with potluck gifts and food

in a clammy room smoky

from kerosene heaters.

The day before, I hiked

a mile into town

between fields plowed

as if by slide-rule

and stucco apartments shaded

by dripping palms and eucalyptus.

Shops hoarded their light and goods

Only one store reflected any cheer

its neon sign declaring

in cursive Hebrew of many colors:

Supermarket!

Hebrew words had grown

phonically familiar

after two months in a kibbutz kitchen.

Plastic bags of currants,

sugar, cinnamon, even milk

Collected in the basket

dangling from my arm.

Polished floors, rows of shelves

freezers full of cheese

replace traditional shops in town

with their open barrels

of bulgur wheat, barley, rice

burlap bags of whole nutmegs,

coffee beans and legumes

pyramids of bee-swarmed bakhlava

oozing with honey and fragrant

with attar of roses.

My choices tumble onto the check-out stand

one of four, each equipped with register

and surly crone to check the prices.

Even in Arab markets

one does not haggle over food.

Later, stirring rice and milk

with currants, sugar, cinnamon

I piece together my gift from memory

a recipe passed from my mother

the only one of four sisters

who made it correctly

without cooking the eggs.

I gave her legacy to friends

she feared I would meet

in a bleak and weary place

a world away from heritage and home.

Our Own Christmas

for the first time as a family

our own Christmas

just us

mother father child

not unlike a Family long ago

our own event

a rite of passage

to make our way

into tradition

and memory.

To help us -- me -- feel

all grown up

instead of merely older

and more useless

next to clever sisters

whose success cannot be disputed

but mine is still so fleeting

after forty some-odd years

finally it's my own Christmas

with tree and dinner and gifts

and a special heirloom dish

it’s my own full-blown

unrepentant

just-the-way-I-want-it

Christmas.

If you enjoyed this poems, feel free to explore more stories, poems, and essays in the Ring Around the Basin Archives.