For those who don’t know me very well, I have given up living in
a travel trailer and my cross-country hauls are at an end. I’m living with a
woman who was my senior prom date 50 years ago. Her name is Emily, and this is
the first Christmas in a long time that I’ve lived in a house. Recent events, mainly the destruction of my trailer by a fallen tree, have also affected this decision.
I love to do things at Christmas. I believe in Norman Rockwell's view of it, though I've never experienced that world. This year I put up probably more than a thousand lights in the front of the house.
And there is an 8’ tree in the living room with a village and a train on the
bottom. In the dining room, I’ve placed a small fiber optic tree. It still
needs to be decorated.
Decorating the big tree was an experience. After putting it
up, Emily mentioned she didn’t bother decorating it last year, except for some
candy canes. I figured it would be a good start to decorating the tree so I picked
up three dozen at Wal-Mart. It took days to get started and I practically had
to shove the canes in her hand. I brought up decorations and waited more days
before trimming the tree by myself. The decorations were quite personal to
Emily. Like my former wife, she either bought or made personal decorations for
each of her children every year. And so I put up many decades of decorations involving the years of growing up with her three daughters
who, incidentally, are almost as beautiful as their mother.
Long ago and far away, when our high school days ended, in the summer of 1966, it was quite different than today. A high school diploma was good enough to get a
decent clerical or “blue collar” job. It was a time when being able to go to college meant your
parents were well-to-do or you were a great student who could earn a
scholarship. We were neither. And our post high-school days were for finding
work and getting on with our lives. While we went to the prom together, our
relationship wasn’t very serious. And we quickly lost track of one another.
The days of the junior college system began a couple of
years after we graduated and we both attended the same college. I ran into her
one day on the steps, but nothing lasted as I dropped out to go in the
Vietnam-era army and she continued to do clerical work.
Anyhow, after my marriage ended, our relationship began anew and
we finally are giving cohabitation a try to see where it goes.
Which gets us back to the tree. It was somewhat emotionally painful for me
to put up the decorations. There were dozens of the annual ornament for each of
her three girls. And every time I came across one, it reminded me that I don’t
have these memories from my children. I began to go through time passages where I remember the
Christmases with Rosemary, my former wife, and our children. Rosemary loved
Christmas, especially decorating the tree. Her father loved to make decorations
from things like the plastic “egg” packaging from L’eggs brand panty hose. And she had
many of them, eventually adding more of her own comparative ornaments each year. I was flooded with
warm memories of those days. When John was a year old, he was sick on Christmas
Day and running a fever. Rosemary was a pediatric nurse and knew how to bring
down a fever by simply putting John in a lukewarm bathtub. But both
grandmothers insisted that he be bathed in alcohol, the treatment from when
they were young mothers. We finally wound up taking the poor kid to Bellevue
Hospital in Manhattan. Rosemary worked there and had a good friend who was
working in the Pediatric emergency room that night. A couple of years later, I got an ornament that you
put a photo in, and the photo was of poor John looking half asleep by the tree.
I wonder if Rosemary or John still has it. I hope so.
I also thought about certain Christmas myths. John believed in Santa and we decorated the tree but left the tinsel off. We told John about the "Tinsel Angel" who came at night and put tinsel on the tree. It was a sign for Santa to come an place presents under the tree. He became so excited when he knew he had been good enough for a visit from Santa. I often think about my kids and Santa. Trapped in the "born again" Christian culture, Rosemary decided that Matthew, my other son, would know there was no such thing as Santa. John is very optimistic and a mainstay in his church in Oregon while Matthew wants nothing to do with church and tends to be pessimistic.
Those early Christmases were good years. We didn’t have much, but we had one
another and didn’t need much. We had the largest apartment and hosted our families for Christmas dinner each year. I wish to God I could
somehow have captured it again before the marriage fell apart.
Back to the tree. When Emily got home tonight, it was
finished after several days of work and she told me how much she appreciated my
putting it up. A window for about 15 years now, she told me she found it very difficult
to handle the memories. Hell, so did I. But she was happy that the tree was
filled with them for one of the few times since the loss of her husband to
cancer. It’s morel than that
though. Life with her daughters has been very complex since her husband’s
death. One of the girls had become involved with drugs and did much to hurt her
sisters. She has been clean and sober for about six years now. But the
bitterness still remains, complicated by other issues that are not appropriate
for this missive, but very painful just the same.
As we sat and talked about it, I began to remember the
Christmases of my childhood. For the first seven years of my life, they were
wonderful. Then after my mother walked out on me, they were hellish. Alcohol
destroyed many of them. Other times, we were very broke. I still have some
Christmas decorations from both those periods. There are a couple of
decorations that have been with me since I was born. The others were some cheap
plastic globes filled with angel hair we got in Woolworth. They look like hell
after nearly 60 years, but I cling to them because they are a symbol of
survival. As I write this, I am playing Christmas music that synchs with the
tree lights. “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” sung by Judy Garland has
come on. I hold that song dearly because every year I hoped that somehow the
next Christmas would be better. It never seemed to happen though.
In talking with Emily, I voiced something for the first time
ever: “My mother left me.” I have always used the term, “my parents
separated.” And I was filled with rage. Over more than six decades, the hurt and all that went with it still emerged. It refuses to remain buried. I can't get away from it and it has given birth to far too much of my life. I am perhaps writing this to
finally lay this to rest. It’s a season for forgiveness, and my mother has been
dead since the mid-1980s. I thought this had been let go of when we talked to
one another with great honesty for the first time in decades, if ever, when she
learned she had cancer. I told her what her drinking had done to me and she apologized. It was a long time coming.
But the rage continues to haunt me and I can’t seem to turn away from it.
I suddenly can understand why the holidays are a peak time for murders and
madness.
“Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat in this
distracted globe. Remember thee.
Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away the trivial
fond records, all saws of books, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there; and my commandment
all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain unmixed with baser
matter: yes, by heavens.
Oh most pernicous woman, Oh villain, villain, smiling damn villain. “
How ironic it is that finally I appreciate Shakespeare.
Perhaps I recognize the beginning of Hamlet's madness and I am drawn to it. The
rage he expresses is deep inside me. It is not so obsessive that it will end in murder as Hamlet's life did,. I am merely a wounded animal in constant pain and those who know me, know it. And I am
grateful for their concern and understanding.
Back to the tree. I have pounded it out on my keyboard. All that is
left is to check the spelling and put the words on my blog. I do not know how therapeutic
it is writing about it. All I know as I sit in the dark with my screen and
watch the tree lights dance, that I am grateful to be where I am and that I am
loved. I hope the same is true of my former wife and the boys. It has been a long and
difficult journey for us and I’m sure, dear reader, that you too have had
your ghosts from Christmas past.
I suppose part of my spirit is also dogged by my lukewarm faith. As I
continue to look at my own Christianity, I tend to become quite confused. I
often challenge the so-called “facts” of the Bible, which does not lend itself to the fundamentalist point of view that states every word of the Bible is absolute truth. One of my college
professors, a Jewish rabbi who taught a history course on the foundations of
our Judeo-Christian heritage, noted that the style of writing in those days was
often not literal. For example, the number “40” was indicative of a long period
of time, not a more precise meaning. So I wonder if the children of Israel
really did wander for forty years, or did Jesus fast for 40 days. I often think
of the tall tales written about our fictional American icons such as Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan
and others; and about tall tales the historical people of our time including Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, Calamity Jane and Buffalo Bill. Did Davy
Crockett really kill a bear at the age of three? Writers of this literature
were prone to great exaggeration. We recognize these tall tales as what they
are. But we really can’t conclude if what in the Bible is completely true. And we
also wonder what is what God wants of us. The Apostle Paul sets many conditions
of behavior for women. Can we think these are divinely inspired, or simply a
reflection of the mores of the time. Can “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise
authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet,” be acceptable in today’s
America?
And what about the many Biblical accounts of Christmas? Are we to believe there were three wise men, shepherds seeing and hearing angels in the field, the birth in a manger? There was a time in American politics that anyone who aspired to become President had to claim birth in a log cabin. And they lied about it.
I have read the entire Bible several
times. But one must have faith to believe. And so my faith is torn in several
directions. My former fundamentalist commitment to Christ has disappeared. I
see the hypocrisy of the right wing too much. Rosemary and I were perhaps the only
Democrats in our church. We were in favor of social legislation such as welfare. Yet while they opposed things like abortion, their
opposition never came close to their charity to unwed mothers to be. They did
not raise these children, but condemned them to live a life of emotional stress
and poverty. It says something when you oppose both birth control and abortion
at the same time.
But enough of my commentary on that. Back to the tree. It’s after midnight now. The
lights both inside the house and our neighbors’ outdoor adornments are off. The
only lights I see are those of the tree, dancing to “Silent Night,” and yet
another childhood memory comes to mind. I was somewhere around four years old and went to a
party for cub scouts, of which my cousin Red (Luke) was a member. I heard him
and the rest of the scouts sing the song and I remember to this day how “all is
calm, all is bright,” soothed my spirit. I sometimes compare our lives. I idolized Red as a child. He was like the big brother I never had. Red's life has been one of steadfastness. He remains with his lovely wife and worked for one company for most of his career. Mine has been chaotic, with two divorces and dozens of jobs. He knows what his life will be like in the future while I remain wandering. He is more Norman Rockwell while I am more Terry Redlin, looking at the closed homes and enjoying the beauty of nature that surrounds them.
I guess I have put enough words – more than 2000 – to finally free myself of the rage and sleep in heavenly
peace.
Oh reader, if you’re still here, thanks you for taking the ride and
may your Christmas be bright. Show those you care about some love and give even
more to those you don’t care about.
