A Paper Christmas
Pandemic Christmas streaming Houston’s Alley Theatre with paper decorations all around.
We moved across the country in the middle of the pandemic. No in-person goodbyes. 10 years of life and friends and history and habits just…gone.
We moved into an apartment in a city we didn’t know. With travel difficult and everything closed, we celebrated a paper Christmas. Just us, our dogs and paper – paper snowflakes, paper chains, even a cardboard fireplace.
When we came out of that season, we had missed the window where you excitedly explore all a new city has to offer. When churches and stores and restaurants opened back up, we were accustomed to being home. Alone.
Paper chains.
In the years since, I have missed so much. My friends. My family. The culture. The sky. The Tex-Mex! The produce in the winter. The reasonable gas prices. The reasonable food prices! The giant independent bookstore. The writing community. The film community. The Town Lake YMCA. The rugged beauty. The Hill Country. Round Top. The warmth.
The Austin I knew was frozen in time. And in my mind, life went on there, as it always had, only without me.
Only it didn’t. And it doesn’t. During the pandemic, after the pandemic, Austin changed too.
But I didn’t see it.
Since I left, friends have moved. Stores and restaurants have closed. And even before we drove across the country that pandemic fall, I had, quite honestly, fallen out of love with our house. We were ready for a change, and we would have had to start anew in Austin even if we didn’t leave Austin.
It took me until now – four years after that paper Christmas – to realize that I will always miss the Texas of it all. It’s my heart’s home. But I finally understand that what has made this transition so much harder is missing – more than Texas – the before. I am grieving a moment in time that no longer exists. That Austin – that life – is gone. Like the paper snowflakes and the paper chains and the cardboard fireplace.
But the silver lining of adrift is freedom. And in the season to come, I can look around, see this place for what it is, acknowledge the truth of what was lost and decide whether it too can be home.
Cardboard fireplace - made from a television box.
