Christmas Cards

RutsOriginal Xmas Cards 2013

At last. The cards are done! Usually they’re in the mail and received by now, but it seems this year everything is late but Christmas Day itself. Even my annual panic over theme and rhyme came later … though it was no less acute. I suffer it every year. My card deadline looms and I have nothing in the tank. Then, an inkling stirs. Then nothing more for a day or two. Then the first poem comes in a rush, soon followed by a complementing cartoon. If I’m lucky, I’ll get two more in rapid succession. That might be all for another couple of days, but it’s enough to get me rolling. I do eight cards a year, for family and dear friends. Once I hit the halfway point, the rest but one comes easily. The last one brews in my head while I finish up the others. All told, I completed 2013’s batch in roughly twenty-four hours, spread over a week or so. I fretted over the dry spell for days. I’ve been doing this for years. You’d think I’d know by now to trust the process, but a writer is never sure that the block won’t last forever.

The best part is that I have great fun once I’m in the zone. I’ve been told that the cards themselves are the gift (which is reassuring, since a card is often all the recipient will get), but the pleasure of creating them is also a gift.

And so are the people for whom I make them.