Page 6 of Christmas Promises
He would never tire of the view from his office, whatever the season.
Even as a boy, he’d dreamed of spending his life pursuing academics. He’d been drawn to transcendentalism during his undergraduate work and had ended up making that his field of study for his doctoral work. Although he didn’t enjoy farmwork, the call of the natural world tugged at him. Exploring how transcendentalist writers perceived nature as a moral and spiritual guide, with implications for modern environmental thought, appealed to him. In fact, it fascinated him. As a college professor, he could spend his life focused on the work of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, and no one could say anything about it. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. His brothers loved to poke fun at him about his work. Not that he minded. Teasing was one of his brothers’ languages of love.
At 9:00 a.m., Nolan sat at the table in one of the classrooms waiting for his students to arrive. This was a discussion-style class, where the students were expected to contribute to the conversations. Nolan loved lecturing, but this was his favorite style of teaching. He remained consistently amazed by the insights of his students and felt he learned as much from them as they did from him.
The young people filed in, stamping snow from their boots and peeling off gloves, hats, and scarves. He greeted each one with a friendly nod as they took places around the table.
This was his preferred group of students this semester—every one of them curious and interested in exploring deeper ideas than the videos that played upon phone screens.
He paused for dramatic effect before starting. “Thoreau wrote, ‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.’ On a day like today, with the quiet peacefulness that comes with a snowfall, does it seem like nature’s inviting us to pause and reflect? To consider what it means to live deliberately? Do you know what he meant by living deliberately?”
The discussion was lively, with students debating Thoreau’s transcendentalist ideals and whether they had relevance in today’s hectic, technology-driven world. Nolan asked questions when he wanted them to dig deeper, but for the most part, he let the discussion flow. He’d found that students could learn as much from one another as they did from their professor.
During his lunch break, he stopped by a colleague’s office for lunch, where they ate sandwiches and talked about a lecture they’d recently attended, given by an environmental historian. She had led a fascinating discussion about how literature and science might work together to shape cultural attitudes toward environmental preservation. Nolan had been thinking about it ever since.
After lunch, he returned to his office just as his teaching assistant, Lisa, entered with a handful of papers. They worked together to finalize the grading for his Thoreau seminar, chatting occasionally about their plans for the winter holidays. As he shrugged out of his jacket, he glanced outside, watching students emerge from dorms, tossing snowballs and chasing after one another. The world may consider them grown, but Nolan knew they were still children in the bodies of adults. Encouraging playfulness was one of his tenets of teaching.
His Whitman seminar met right after lunch. The small group gathered around the polished table, wearing thick sweaters and an occasional beanie. The kids loved those knit caps.
Nolan leaned forward as one of the students read a passage from Song of Myself:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
One of the more athletically than academically inclined, Marcia, who played on the women’s volleyball team, asked, “Dude, what does that mean? Am I the only one who doesn’t get it?”
Nolan smiled. “It’s not unusual to struggle with this passage. Does anyone have an idea?”
His cleverest student, Sarah, raised her hand. “Whitman’s asking us to embrace our complexity. To recognize that we’re all more than one thing.”
“Oh, wow. Dude, that’s deep,” Marcia said, sincerely. “I totally get that though.”
Most of the others weighed in and soon an interesting discussion arose about various aspects of one’s personality and how they could be reflected in different situations and relationships.
He ended class with this directive. “In the season of reflection, as the year draws to a close, I encourage you to think about the multitudes within yourselves. What truths do you hold that might, on the surface, seem contradictory?”
The students left the seminar thoughtful and reflective. Which meant he’d done his job.
As he walked to his car that afternoon, daylight had dimmed. Twinkling holiday lights strung along the lampposts made him feel festive. Two more days and he would be off until the new year. He enjoyed relaxing and spending time with his family, not to mention mornings curled up with a good book.
Speaking of which, he needed to make one stop on the way home. A friend had told him about a new mystery that sounded perfect for his winter break. A supporter of independent bookstores, he liked to spend his money at Clever Fox Books in Sugarville Grove. Edna, the owner, was a favorite of his. And not just because she was the aunt of the girl who got away.
3
LANEY
Laney stood at the window of her aunt’s bookshop watching the snow fall as Christmas music played overhead. Sparkly lights framed the glass, and best-selling books beckoned to customers as they passed by. Near the front, a table displayed a mix of staff picks, signed editions, and holiday recommendations, carefully curated to suit a variety of tastes. The bookshelves along the walls were packed with everything from literary classics to hidden gems, each section labeled in Aunt Edna’s neat handwriting.
Laney turned from the window to look at the back of the shop where Edna stood behind the central desk, expertly wrapping a book for a customer. Her aunt was beyond cool, with her spiky silver hair and stylish glasses. This time of year, she mostly dressed in sweaters and leggings, with tall riding boots showing off her slender legs.
Laney breathed in the scent of the cinnamon pinecone decorations and said a silent prayer of thanks. She’d gotten here the day before. This morning she’d asked Aunt Edna to put her to work.
The night of the wedding that didn’t happen, Aunt Edna had suggested she come stay with her in Sugarville Grove through the end of the year. A change of pace and scenery would do her good, Aunt Edna had said. Laney, sobbing in her aunt’s arms, had agreed.
She’d been surprised her mother had encouraged her to go with Aunt Edna to Sugarville Grove. Her mother had grown up here and had returned only a few times since she’d left decades before to go to college on a scholarship. She and her sister, Edna, had been raised by their single father in a run-down shack outside of town. Although her mother didn’t often mention her childhood, Laney knew enough to know that it had been rough for her and for Edna. When she’d escaped, as Mom put it, she’d never looked back.
