While I was driving the vanpool van home from the office earlier this week, I found myself in an odd emotional state. I was a bit sad, a bit lonely, a bit longing for something that was out of reach. Of course this was another facet of my grief, but the combination of feelings caught my attention. I found myself stepping back from the feelings so that I could understand just what was going on, and by the time I reached my own car I had found the perfect word to describe them: wistful.

wistful • \WIST-ful\ • adjective. 1 : full of yearning or desire tinged with melancholy

What I was feeling was a longing for Christmas’ past, and the child-like excitement and wonder that always accompanied the holidays. It’s missing this year, and for good reason. There is no pile of presents under the tree; there isn’t even a tree big enough to put anything under. There are no stockings hung by the chimney with care. There is no one to decorate with, or to watch old favorite Christmas movies with. It’s a very different holiday for me this year, and I’m working on creating new traditions to replace the old.

One new tradition, I think, will be the making of apple butter! I was able to locate all the proper ingredients, as passed on by Fred Campbell of Lowesville, Virginia, some years ago. The Piney River Volunteer Fire Department makes apple butter every fall as a fund raiser; theirs is the best ever. When I was able to get my hands on a jar of their apple butter I would treat it like liquid gold, making it last as long as possible. My supply ran out a couple of years ago, however, and there is nothing even remotely as tasty in this part of the country. But having found a supplier of Stayman apples and a bottle of cinnamon oil, I was finally ready to try my hand.

Traditionally, apple butter is made in a huge copper kettle over an open fire. It is stirred constantly using a large paddle at the end of a long pole; a pair of stirrers would stand well back from the fire and stir the apple butter in a figure-8 pattern: “Once up the side and twice down the middle, that’s the way you stir the apple butter kettle.” I, however, had to resort to my trusty crockpot, cooking apples for hours, adding sugar, and then cooking some more. Finally, I added the cinnamon oil, the “secret ingredient” that makes all the difference!

My friend and neighbor Bonnie came to help me with canning, and now I have a few jars of delicious apple butter set aside, waiting to be spread on hot buttered biscuits! It may not be Piney River Volunteer Fire Department’s finest, but I think it’s pretty darned good! Bonnie agrees…

Awareness is an interesting concept. When I became aware of what I was feeling, driving across Tularosa Basin that afternoon, I found myself centered, looking out at the feeling from a place of space and calm, owning it but not overwhelmed by it. First, I experienced the feeling itself. Then I became aware of what I was feeling. It wasn’t until I consciously realized I was noticing my feelings that I moved outside of the feelings themselves and into awareness. As J.Stewart Dixon,  author of Spirituality for Badasses: How to find inner peace and happiness without losing your cool, says: being aware that you are experiencing emotions, and not merely feeling them, is to recognize awareness.

And in recognizing awareness, you will find that difficult emotions become less overwhelming, and good emotions are enhanced as you are able to appreciate not only the moment itself, but the experience of recognizing the presence of that happiness, that bliss, that wonder.

As I think about wonder, that childlike appreciation for the magic of the moment, I realize that maybe it isn’t so far away as I thought:

The wonder of that burst of flavor, of the cinnamon and apples as I bite into a hot buttered biscuit slathered with apple butter still warm from the crockpot…

Or the wonder of an unexpected gift of words from a friend, acknowledging me and my contribution to their world…

Or simply the wonder of a smile and a conversation shared with a stranger at Farmer’s Market, and synchronicity discovered…

The wonder of you, my readers, my friends!

And as I experience these moments of wonder in conscious awareness, I wish for each of you the same  this holiday season: that you, too, experience awareness in your own moments of childlike wonder.

Here is one of my favorite Christmas songs: Star of Wonder, written and performed by The Roches: