Christmases

Every Christmas is different, every family gathering is unique from all others before and all others that will be. Each time, the dynamic has changed, there are new sounds, a different mix of voices. Everyone is older than last time. Children have grown and matured. Someone has relocated to a new job and lives at too great a distance to be here. Someone else is gone forever, leaving an empty chair that cannot be filled. There may be a new baby, or a visitor. 

December 25, 2011 was my first Christmas without my mother. It was different, made me think wanderingly of Christmases long ago and far away. Christmas 1969 my ship was at sea in WestPac, off Vietnam. There was no email or cellphone in those days, but you could sign up, get on the list for a phone call home, and I did. Someone will correct me, but seems to me it was single sideband, not like a phone call at home, it was back and forth, you spoke, and when you paused the channel switched to the other end. Bit awkward and ten minutes was your limit. “Daddy. When are you coming home?” When that Christmas phone call ended, my loneliness, homesickness for beloveds at home in San Diego was excruciating, physically painful.

Just before Christmas the following year, December, 1970, Linda’s father died. They were living in Scottsdale, Arizona, close driving distance from San Diego. After the funeral, Linda’s mother came home to San Diego with us for Christmas. Her sadness was -- the word is palpable. 

Christmas 1973 we were living in Columbus, Ohio and instead of coming home to Panama City we stayed in Columbus. Santa brought a new sled and we had snow and rode the sled at night. Tass was almost two years old. One of her gifts was a doll crib, which she promptly climbed into, laid down, and shouted, “Mom! Look at her! Daddy, look!” 

Christmases 1963, 1964 and 1965 we were stationed in Japan. The Navy Purchasing Office in Yokosuka purchased Christmas trees for all U. S. Armed Forces throughout the Far East. From forests in Hokkaido, they were cut in October. Needles shed as we brought our tree into the house.      

Christmas 1962 the Navy had me studying for an MBA degree at the University of Michigan. For Christmas that year, Linda’s parents gave us train tickets home. We got on the train in Ann Arbor, changed in Cincinnati, had a warm and comfortable bedroom, detrained the next day in Pensacola. Arriving home in Panama City we found that my parents had purchased this old house where we live now. Built by my grandparents in 1912-1913, it had passed out of the family in 1920 because they moved away after Alfred’s death. During WW2 someone made it into four apartments; but Christmas vacation 1962 my father and I tore out dividing partitions and converted it back to the single family home he grew up in.

Here for Christmas 2011: Malinda, Kristen, Joe, Tass, Jeremy, Caroline, Charlotte, Linda and me. Plenty of room, because with both leaves, the dining room table holds twelve. English crackers and your hat, a turkey with four legs so everyone who wants a drumstick gets one, 

stuffing, oyster dressing, squash casserole, oven roasted brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, English roasted potatoes, gravy, English bread sauce, chocolate cake, bread pudding with whiskey sauce, English Christmas pudding with brandy butter. A nice pinot noir. Sunday evening while the girls rode Caroline’s new scooter up and down the concrete walkway that my grandfather put down front, everyone went outside and picked grapefruit from the trees, harvested 87 grapefruit, some pink, some ruby red. The trees grew quickly from seeds planted by Linda’s mother a dozen years ago. When she had grapefruit for breakfast, she’d save a few seeds then go outside, punch a hole in the ground with a finger, shove a seed in and cover it up. The trees are mature and this year prolific. The thorns are long, sharp, eager to puncture.

Christmas 2011 was unique, Sunday, so church first. 

A beautiful day, as is every day of life and love. Next Christmas will be different. None of us is entitled to the future, and there’s no gain in worrying how next year will be. As Mike Cazalas said in Sunday’s PC News-Herald, we live in the moment, it’s all we have. Enjoy. Love. Be grateful. Cherish the moment, it won’t be here again.

The little girls are up now, playing a game on Caroline’s iPad. Caroline, eight, will be nine in a few weeks, is wearing her bike helmet. Charlotte is six. My love: a house with children. Loving the little girls. Cherishing the moment.

TW+