I’ll be home for Christmas

It was a day much like today.  It was near the end of the school term, twenty two years ago. Snow was falling, and students were bouncing off the walls in anticipation of the coming vacation.  Most everyone, including my family, was planning a trip somewhere for the break.  One of the drawbacks of living in paradise is that your home is everyone else’s dream destination.  This is even more pronounced in our town since Tahoe looks like a living Christmas card, especially in the winter.  Our town’s population remains pretty steady at around 10,000 except in the summer and on winter weekends and holidays when it can swell to over 30,000; all of the extra souls seemingly trying to get simultaneously stuck in the snow.  They have merry snowball fights and take up every spot in the grocery store parking lot.  They drive too fast and don’t understand that talking on a cell phone while driving on dry pavement is hazardous enough; but when there’s ice and snow on the road, it has the potential for vehicular manslaughter.  So, mostly we locals strive to get out of town if we can.  I could hardly wait.

You can count on me

Only two more days to go and we’d all be free – staff and students alike.  I was working late to finish my lesson plans which were aimed primarily at keeping my students busy and engaged (yeah, right) during the final days; a ploy designed to preserve my sanity as much as anything else.  My sanity was in short supply.  Christmas was closing in fast and I had a million things still on my list to finish.  It had been a monumentally difficult year: In February, my beloved father had died of complications from a heart attack (I had found him, started CPR and called 911); In June, my husband at the time had major back surgery, rendering him  essentially bedridden for three months.  During his recuperation, we stayed with my mom and had seen her steadily fading into a pale, washed out version of her once fiery self.  On top of all of this, I had an eighteen month old daughter who was the light of my life and a major handful.  Everyone was counting on me and I was worn out.

I sighed as I looked around the classroom and contemplated how much overtime I’d have to pay the babysitter. I had stacks of papers to grade, a drama performance to finalize and Lord knows, the cast off gloves, hats and assorted papers and books weren’t going to pick themselves up. I dusted the chalk dust off my hands, for we still used chalk in those days, and dug in.

Please have snow and mistletoe, and presents on the tree

My husband, Steve, had been making regular trips down to San Francisco for his postoperative checkups most of the fall and made it a practice to check in on my mother each time he went. Today, he was making another such trip and I was worried about him traveling in the snow and rain. I paused to look out the window at the snow and made a mental note to remember to pack extra clothes for the baby.   We were going, as we did every year, to my parents’ for Christmas and I was eagerly looking forward to it.  Christmas had always and forever been both a magical and angst-ridden time in my family, but my mother’s rage, so overwhelming when I was young, had dissipated as she got older and she had mellowed considerably making holiday times more joyous than not.  I was finally getting to know my mother as a kind, gentle parent and grandparent – not the disturbed woman who had surreptitiously broken my crayons and destroyed my books when I was little. There was a softening and warmth that I had always craved. There were years and years of hugs to make up for and I couldn’t wait to get on the road and be home for Christmas. Really, truly home; for home always seems to be where you’re from, doesn’t it?

Christmas Eve will find me

Finally, I had brought enough order to my classroom to be able to call it a day. I packed up my bags so I could finish the grading at home and started to put on my coat when the phone rang. Phones in classrooms were a relatively new thing and when it rang, it startled me.  Who would be calling so late in the day? I was irked at being caught by the phone just as I was ready to get out the door and answered with an annoyed tone in my voice. It was my principal.

Could I please come downstairs and get the phone?

Couldn’t the call just be transferred to my room?

No, please just come down.

As I flounced down to the office, I felt an odd frisson of fear. A shadow of premonition. I shrugged if off and attributed it to being tired, overworked and overwrought; after all I had a 18 month old who still wasn’t sleeping through the night – who wouldn’t be exhausted?

Where the love light gleams

I didn't realize it until much later, but as I walked into the office, it was suddenly silent.  Furtive, sympathetic glances were exchanged; the normal hubub of a school unusually subdued.  My principal, who just happened to also be my Episcopal priest, beckoned me to his office.  "You'd better sit down," he said, "Steve has something to tell you."

I'll be home for Christmas

They tell me that I screamed for ten minutes straight - I hardly remember. Steve had found my mom in bed, dead.  No one was ever sure exactly when she had died or from what cause, but I think it was from a broken heart. She had lost her husband of 51 years nine months before, was living alone for the first time in her life and had told me, recently, that she was grieving all the lost time and opportunities with her children.  I think she just gave up. 

I hung up the phone, shaking and sobbing hysterically. Losing two parents in a nine month span is so painful there are just no words for it.

But, no words were needed. My precious friends and colleagues bundled me off to the doctor for a sedative, packed me and my 18 month old daughter up and drove us to San Rafael (a four hour trip in GOOD weather).  It wasn't an easy trip.  The roads were snowy and they had to turn around and drive right back to be in school the next day.  I remember staring blankly out the window; lost in my own private hell. I will be forever grateful for this and many other kindnesses which were extended to me in the following days.

Like many little girls in the 1950s, I got a doll for Christmas every year.  When my father passed out the gifts, he would always hold the package that contained the doll like a baby and cry, "MaaaMaaa." As I had gotten older, it had become a standing joke and even if there was no doll, there was always a package that sounded like one.  In my mother's closet the year she died, she had already stockpiled wrapped presents.  One was addressed to me.

It was a doll and I was the one who cried...

If only in my dreams

I have dreamed about entering that house many times since my parents' deaths.  I can smell the Christmas pudding steaming in the kitchen. I clearly see the stockings hung up over the fireplace and the Santa gifts arranged on the floor below.  The lopsided, bushy Christmas tree glows from the big, bright lights we used in those days and I can see the treasured ornaments I put on my own tree this past weekend in their original, shiny and undented states.  Three children wait with mounting excitement behind the closed hall door, just itching to dash into the living room and see what Santa has brought for us.  All the dross has burned away, leaving only the golden memories behind.

Wrapped in our plaid robes and slipper sox and moccasins, we are joyously preserved in that dream forever.  That's the best way to remember home, isn't it?

Before... 

And after...

The Family Band

Here I am trying my hardest to play with two gifts at the same time: a toy piano (I became a music major - must have started here) and a toy oven (well, you can guess about that one).