CHRISTMAS PRESENT
December 24 2012
Thirty-seven years ago on Christmas Eve, I took my tiny toddler of a daughter to a frosty field in upstate New York. There, under the night sky, with a borrowed hacksaw, I felled a tiny Christmas tree while the 2 of us wept.
Those were our welfare days, a food stamp Christmas, the tree, free, because we were the last customers of the season. While my daughter slept I stayed up to decorate the tree. I may have been poor but I was creative; as the saying goes: “necessity is the mother of invention.” And so it was that for weeks, every time I had made us scrambled eggs for our dinner I had pierced each egg at both ends and blown out the eggs, leaving the shells intact. With a bit of glue and glitter I decorated some 20 eggshells with the names of those we loved and hung them on our humble tree.
It’s that time of year, isn’t it, when nostalgia weaves around us like a ribbon of mist, wrapping us in memories, some dear, and some not so much…the hopes and fears of all the years….
This year I have been preparing for Christmas with great pleasure. Have wrapped each present as soon as it was bought or made, have hung the wreath, invented this year’s tree...
Maggie's Photo
...made the butternut squash soup and thimble cookies and, as I write, Joel is in the kitchen preparing the Provençal fish stew for tomorrow’s dinner. There will be 12 of us, each of us well blessed. And mingled with the gratitude I feel, is the sadness and the tears that visit everyday as thoughts arise of those slaughtered children and poor parents and all those still homeless from the hurricane. It must be a burden to be named Sandy right now.
I don’t know how to reconcile all these feelings, nor, I think, is it necessary to. Time is not as linear as we insist it be. Every moment is in every moment.
This morning, as I came into the kitchen I smelled my father’s cigar. He allowed himself one a year, always on Christmas Day, his gift to himself. Although he’s been gone 42 years and it was 5 years before that that I last saw him, I can see him right now, sitting in his armchair by the fire, puffing on that cigar while the chestnuts roast.
I don’t know how they did it, but my parents managed every Christmas Day to be the people they were incapable of being the rest of the year. They seemed able, for that one day, to muster the kind of love and generosity and humor that was nowhere to be seen the other 364. Mother baking fruitcake and mince pies, Dad in charge of the goose and ham. The house and tree magically decorated on Christmas Eve while my brother and I slept. The presents at the end of our beds, Santa’s sooty fingerprints on the envelope that had held our wish lists. My brother and I devouring chocolates, the Queen’s speech, the paper crowns and the radio rich with festive music and then, my favorite moment, when the card table was erected in front of the fire and the 4 of use would play a game called Happy Families. For one day every year, that’s what we were, a happy family.
There have been many families since then …that’s what you get for having married 5 times! Not many of those families were happy. The demand for perfection that Christmas brings is such a set-up for disappointment and yet we try, millions of us, year after year, to be a happy family for just one day. But happiness can’t be bought or baked on demand. We would be better off spreading our effort at it throughout the year. A little more kindness to those we tend to ignore, to those we hold resentment against, to those whom we have failed.
I was in a shop with my daughter last week and an item reminded me of her father…husband #2. Suddenly I was right back there 40 odd years ago as we gave each other precious nicknames and pledged each other eternal love. We went on to fail each other miserably and as a consequence caused pain to the daughter we loved so much.
I bought the item and sent it to him; a way of saying that those good moments we shared were not only as real as all the painful ones, but in fact are the ones that remain most treasured after all these years. This morning I received a card from him saying it was good to have warm memories of our past.
And so it goes: Christmas Past, Christmas Present.
To all of you, dear readers, dear friends, dear family, I wish you moments of joy, of remembrance, of kindness. And may we all practice peace and healing in 2013.