perspective

5:34 a.m.
December 24

I always note the time when I begin my morning yoga. Mostly to keep an eye on it. If I let myself go, I could move, chant, breathe, and meditate far longer than I intend to. Now that I’m no longer working, I try to keep it to an hour.

But that’s beside the point.

It’s Christmas Eve.

I was going through the asana (movement) portion of my practice when, as happens every morning no matter how cold it is outside, my body warmed enough that I cracked the window—just a hair. I always welcome the exchange of outside air. If air were visible, I imagine I’d see it doing what it naturally wants to do: balancing itself. Not unlike the balancing of breath and energy moving through my body.

I stepped back into Mountain pose.

Suddenly my ears woke up to the outside noises now creeping in.

It was still dark. Across the lagoon, a few houses glowed softly, their lights scattered in the darkness. Cool air brushed my skin. And then—an intrusion. A siren, distant but unmistakable, cut through the quiet.

Years ago, when I was a newer yogi and throughout my 500 hours of teacher training, I practiced in a studio where sirens passed by regularly. Every single time—no matter the teacher—the class would pause. The teacher would acknowledge the sound and offer a moment to send good thoughts to whoever was on the receiving end of that siren.

I’ve kept that habit.

But this morning, standing in Mountain pose with the window cracked and the siren echoing across the water, I was suddenly ten years old again—on the eve of Christmas Eve.

Brooklyn.

School vacation had started, and I was giddy with the thought of no school until after the New Year. I was standing by the front door of our building, the one at the bottom of the stairwell that never locked properly. I was alone, waiting for my parents to come home. I don’t remember where my brothers were.

Before going downstairs, I had been at my parents’ window, looking out into the dark at the buildings across the street—some windows lit, most not. Now I stood behind the door. Cold air slipped through the cracks. Somewhere, a siren wailed.

And in that moment, I remember truly feeling the Christmas spirit for the first time.

I thought about Mary and Joseph, traveling, searching for a place where Mary could give birth. I remembered a teacher once asking us whether, knowing what we know now, we would open the door if they came knocking. I shivered, imagining them walking the cold streets of Brooklyn and stopping at the door in front of me.

I reached into my pocket and found a brand-new ChapStick. My lips were always chapped, though I never paid much attention to it. My mother was constantly handing me ChapStick, and I was constantly losing it. This one was new. I applied it.

Mint.

The first mint ChapStick I’d ever tried. It cooled my lips further, but in a way that felt clean and refreshing. To this day, that scent takes me right back to that moment.

Alone in the dark. Cold air. Mint on my lips. A siren passing by. And the quiet awe of Christmas.

And then—almost immediately—disappointment.

Earlier that evening, I had overheard my mother arguing with my grandmother on the phone. I heard my mother tell her she was not welcome for Christmas. I remember thinking that Christmas wouldn’t feel like Christmas without Grandma there.

Standing in Mountain pose this morning, holding that memory, I briefly wondered what that fight had been about. What could possibly have been so terrible that my grandmother wasn’t allowed to come?

I started doing the math.

I knew that these bans happened—arguments, cutoffs, declarations that someone was “no longer welcome.” And then, eventually, everyone would reconcile and move on. But some holidays passed while the ban was still in place. And those holidays are gone forever.

Now, in this moment of my life, my son—whom I have always been wildly close to—has declared no contact.

Perspective.

For the first time, I truly understood how my grandmother must have felt.

I don’t have grandchildren yet, but I can only imagine how much deeper the pain goes when they’re involved—when you long to see them as much as they long to see you.

Back then, I didn’t understand my parents’ issues with my grandmother. I think they thought she meddled too much. Something about money. I don’t really know.

What I do know is this: my grandmother was the single most important positive influence in my life. I don’t know who I would have been without her.

As a child, I listened to her talk for hours. She loved to talk. As an adult, we spoke for hours each week while I cooked on Sundays. Sometimes we argued—but never in a way that interfered with holidays or love.

She died in 2007, but her words live on. And as I get older, they take on new meaning.

As I continued my practice, I thought about how much I love this time of year, and how different morning yoga feels in winter compared to summer. I thought about what Christmas might be like next year in Italy.

I imagined Christmas in Rocca di Neto, where my father was born. I thought about what it means to be a foreigner—how everything looks familiar and unfamiliar at once. I thought about what it must feel like to go “home” when home is no longer where you live.

Only after visiting Rocca a few weeks ago do I think I can truly appreciate the depth of that difference.

Doing the math again, I realized that on that Christmas Eve in Brooklyn, my father had only been in the United States for sixteen years.

Sixteen years.

At this point in my life, sixteen years ago feels like a blink. It’s nearly as long as I’ve been with Daren, and he still feels new in my life. In the scope of my father’s life then, he was—figuratively—fresh off the boat.

He told us stories about Italy, about traditions, about his parents. But my brothers and I didn’t really understand. It all felt distant, foreign. The grandmother I cared about was here. And that Christmas, I was devastated that I wouldn’t see her.

That year, my grandmother must have been fifty-nine. Around Daren’s age now. My mother was thirty. My father thirty-six. All young adults, really—raising children while still trying to understand themselves.

Over the thousands of hours I spent talking with my grandmother, she often sounded genuinely baffled by the arguments with her children. All of them, at one point or another, cut her off. She often didn’t understand why.

Lately, as my relationship with my son has unraveled, her words echo in my mind—especially around money. The confusion. The pain. Her insistence that she gave out of love, not control. That adults are adults. That gifts are not entitlements.

I’ll leave it there.

I’m turning fifty in two months, and I understand elders now in a way I simply couldn’t a year ago. Losing my father—and intentionally and unintentionally stepping into his experiences—has changed how I see him, how I see family, culture, and the chaos we sometimes mistake for normal.

I understand, in a small way, what it’s like to live inside someone else’s world. To speak from memory and have those memories land on deaf ears—especially when those ears belong to your children.

And Grandma… yes. I get it now. The money. The bafflement. The heartbreak of being shut out for something that was meant only to be loving.

My greatest gift in 2025 is perspective.

Perspective on many things—but most of all, on my elders.

I know there is more to learn. Things I still can’t see. And things my children will someday learn for themselves in their own experience.

You can’t replace experience.

Thanks to yoga, fresh air, sirens and memories for a new perspective this morning. While in Mountain Pose.

Maybe I should go buy some mint ChapStick??

Namaste