MX: Going There

MX! which is to say, “Merry Christmas!”

My thought was Where Shall I Go? during the Prayers of the People at our late Christmas Eve service last evening, opening memories --

waking up from the nap my mother made me take so I could stay awake through my first Midnight Mass as mama handed me a cup of hot chocolate. December 24, 1948

driving to church with extra caution on icy, snowy roads after a near-blizzard in Pennsylvania. 1976. I had dropped Linda and family at Mount Calvary, Camp Hill and was on my way to St. Luke’s, Mechanicsburg for smells and bells.

going to sleep in my stateroom, USS TRIPOLI somewhere in the miserable Pacific Ocean, December 24, 1969, missing the three people I loved most in the world back home in San Diego. Naval officers don’t cry and one day at sea is like the day before and the next.

baking a large mackerel for our first XMAS Dinner in Yokohama because we’d always been home for Christmas before and had never cooked a turkey. 1963.

train home from Ann Arbor, bitter snowy cold as we changed trains in Cincinnati for overnight to Pensacola in the warm, comfortable Pullman bedroom arranged for us by Linda’s cousin Joe Farley. 1962.

Christmas vacation that same year in this house where we live now --

-- helping my father take down partitions that were installed during WWII to make four rental apartments. XMAS 1962

standing on the front porch of Trinity, Apalachicola and lighting incense as Wesley Chesnut in the balcony finished singing “O Holy Night” and the choir broke into “Adeste Fideles” 1984 - 1997 -- Trinity Choir singing the Gounod Sanctus and Benedictus Qui Venit in Latin OMG the beauty

AMTRAK porter who’d forgot to wake me in my bedroom, apologetically pushing me and my luggage onto the freezing platform as the train slowed but did not seem to stop in Lynchburg, Virginia. December 1990. In a chill breeze, finishing dressing on the platform as the sun rose. Next day, driving home to Apalachicola with Tass in her MB 300SD. Life’s blessing: all times with Tass.

in our new 1948 Dodge with my father, leaving St. Andrews Episcopal Church after my first Midnight Mass as John Pennel called to him, “Merry Christmas, Carroll.”

jingling bells softly outside their bedroom window in Annandale, Virginia to hear Malinda 8 and Jody 6 screaming, “Santa! I hear Santa Claus!” 1966.

Our years in Yokohama, the Navy Exchange received their Christmas toys along in late summer or early fall and had a grand opening of the toystore. The first year, 1963, about October, Linda and I bought a Christmas morning load of toys for two beloved, indulged, doted on children ages five and three. We took Malinda and Jody to the baby sitter service at the base, loaded the car with toys and took them home, decorated the house for Christmas, with an enormous collection of toys where the Christmas tree would be months later. We then picked up the children and as we drove home I kept saying stuff like, “Did you see that in the sky? A sleigh and reindeer and a man in a red suit. I know I saw it. It can’t be Santa this time of year, can it?” The children kept rushing from one side of the car to the other to look out the window into the sky. We parked at the house and went in the back door. As the children went into the living room, Malinda shrieked, “Santa Claus was here!!!” Especially being so far from home, an October day as exciting and happy as any Christmas morning in my memory.

The mind can go many places while prayers are said.

Table is set and we are waiting for beloveds to arrive --