Wednesday, December 21, 2016

GRANDMAS LAST CHRISTMAS

                                            

Six years ago this Christmas Eve our whole family gathered to celebrate Christmas at our house as we had done for years. But that year’s celebration had a problem in the room. Grandma had been diagnosed with cancer earlier that year and had only months to live. Christmas is always hard when someone is missing. But this one was especially egregious because she wasn’t missing and we all knew-- and yes even her-- that this would be the final one.

The gifts were there as she was an early shopper and most of them had been bought months before. She sat in her favorite recliner trying to mask the pain she was in. A frozen smile on her face. She made all the grandkids open their gifts one by one so she could enjoy that last giving moment with each of them. Then lastly the adults. In the meantime the gifts that had been given to her sat unopened. She said she would get to them later. She didn’t want this to be about her, it was her last time to make her grandkids happy. There in, laid her whole reason for Christmas giving.

Christmas had always been her forte. Each year she started shopping the day after Christmas for the next one. Every closet in the house was stuffed with bags by Thanksgiving time and then after the meal, she and her grandkids would decorate and then the wrapping started and the gifts piled up, until you scarce see the tree.

Christmas has been somewhat hollow for all of us since her passing. Oh, we put on our best faces and try not to let it spoil the celebration. But I’ve seen those wet eyes mirrored in the lights of the tree. Those wistful looks and I know what they’re thinking. There is no delete button in the human heart. What lives in there, is there, as long as the heart lives’ on. Oh we can try to override those precious memories and yes for the sake of the heart and for the sake of those who love us, over time it is probably a good idea. I know I have moved on. This year has brought a new great grandbaby. New memories with my special friend Pat and a winter home in a warmer place. My Christmas has been scaled back considerably because I think we, as a family all know, there is no forgetting what once was and there is no sense in trying to emulate it, even if we could.

I didn’t write this to be a sad letter, just a letter of a fond memory of days gone by. I am sure that in every home and heart there are similar stories and life tells us if they aren’t there now-- they will be someday. Rather we choose to live in the here and now and we can ruminate about the past but its not good to live there. This is the Christmas season 2016 and it will be, just what we make of it.

 So Merry Christmas my friends and in the words of Tiny Tim, “May God bless us every one.” It’s kind of fitting to say that, because after all he is the reason for the season. God that is-- not Tiny Tim.
                                                           

Mike

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

CHRISTMAS 1953

                                              

This year for Christmas I want you to come along with me as I set the scene for one of my most memorable Christmas’s. Our house back in Staples was what many would call a shack. A large boxy house that sat back from the street on a big lot surrounded by mature trees. We were the last house on Third Avenue before the end of town and the beginning of the woods and swamp. There was always peeling paint and cracked windows and a porch on the back that looked like someone started something they had never finished. A driveway full of chuckholes that had your car lurching from side to side as you drove in.  In the winter the smoke from our wood fired furnace would settle over the neighborhoods on the west end of town to the ire of our neighbors. I think we were the only ones in town, who still burned wood.

But as we all know perceptions can be deceiving and so it was then. For inside the house was a family that did care what others thought of them but didn’t get caught up in all of the hoop-la of keeping up with the Jones’s. Oh, I guess the Christmas I remember so well would have been in the early fifties. Dad had taken the family out on our annual tree hunt. It was right after Thanksgiving and we brought home a splendid spruce tree he’d, had his eye on for some time. Tied to the roof of the car he drove through town like a young man showing off his big buck deer at hunting time. Six little snot nosed kids with rosy cheeks rubbing the frost off the car windows with our mittens as we made our way home in that old thirty-six Plymouth. The tree decorations had been brought down from the attic by dad and were waiting for us and after supper we all went into the living room to trim the tree. The little ones got to decorate as far up the tree as they could reach, as mom carefully handed them each a bulb and then the older kids did there part and then at last dad crowned it all off with the angel on top. Then the final thing was dads magical bubble lights. He would handle those lights like they were the Crown Jewels of England. Each night we would get to watch them for few minutes and then he would shut them off; until Christmas Eve, when the lights would be allowed to burn until we went to bed. Over the ensuing weeks more and more packages would find their way under the tree. There were things we had made at school for our parents and a box from Grandpa and Grandma. But the gifts from mom and dad, to us kids, wouldn’t appear until Christmas Eve. It was their way of making us behave for a while. Like Smith Barney used to say, “We had to earn it.”


All of my life since those days, I have been so blessed with opulent Christmas Gifts, fabulous dinners and spectacular decorations. Happy Christmas holidays for sure, but yet those days, from those meager beginnings, still burn front and center in my heart and it baffles me why. For you see it is in our nature to want more and better things and here I am, hanging onto memories of that frugal Christmas. As I said it baffles me-- but then when I dwell on those long gone holidays looking for that elusive meaning. I find that there is something that was there then, that just isn’t here now and that is we never expected, anything more then we got.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

SO GOD MADE A BABY

                                               

This year my oldest granddaughter gave birth to the first, of the fourth generation in my family. I have yet to hold Emily because we are separated by nearly 2000 miles. But next week I am going there and I can’t wait to meet her. Her mom and dad have sent so many pictures and I feel like I already know so much about her.

What is there about a baby that just buoys every ones spirits? No other creature on earth can make you feel so humble, so mellow, and so caring. Only a baby can make you act like a goofball making funny faces and crawling around on the floor with them. Babies have a way of making a family, from a relationship that was once just two loving adults. “I saw a quote once from a new mother who said, “I never knew how much I loved your daddy, until I saw how much he loved you.” I have only seen pictures of Emily, that maybe involved minutes of my time but I already have so many ways to love her.

I remember so well when our first-born came along and one thing that was so new to me was to see my wife basking in her new found motherhood. A side of my wife that I had not seen until then. I call it motherly instinct but call it what you may, it is a bond that is unequaled in this world and now I will get to see it in my granddaughter. It is a built in love in moms and dads that passes all human understanding. There is an emotional side of all of this for me. Because I am going to see in Emily’s mom, something that started a long time ago in another mom who has gone on before us-- her great Grandma. I am sure today that she too, is so proud. My wish is that some day, Emily will lie down on a clear night and look at the stars twinkling in the heavens above and as Rick Bragg said, “See them as holes in the floor of heaven.”

If I could talk one on one to Emily today I would say this. “On my walls are pictures of all of my grandchildren Emily. Yes, I knew all of them when they were like you. Brand new and just entering into this world. I saw them grow up and be the young adults they are today. Your Mom was one of them but I can tell you the moment you were born, she was changed forever. For you see, you are her first-born and that brings love by a whole different name to all parents. Children have a way of doing that to you. My biggest worry about my grandchildren growing up was that they would succumb to some of the temptations, this world today can give you that steers you in the wrong direction. But they didn’t and my worries were unfounded. Their mom’s and dads like yours will too, showed the whole world and I, how to create goodness. I won’t be around for much of your life Emily but I ask you to make us all proud as your parents did for us. God bless you on this journey little one.”

Each day there is born into this world many babies. I think what I wrote above goes for all of the mom’s and dads and grandparents of the world. That was our hope, was it not? To be a part of something that will live on long after we are gone. Emily is for me the start of something good. Babies-- what a wonderful way to start out as human beings