I'm sitting here tonight feeling a little sad, a little lonely, a little tired of crocheting like a fiend. The kids are in bed; the hunky-hubby is gone; the end of a very hectic week has been reached, and I feel melancholy, for reasons I don't entirely understand. Anyway, in order to pass the time I went blog trolling and wound up being enchanted by blog after blog sharing their fondest Christmas memories and traditions. I couldn't resist. The next four days will be remembrances of some of the most life-altering events in my life. They are reminders that nothing, not even the most sacred of things, are untouched by change. But in the midst of change, traditions are the things we count on, the things we hold dear, the things we look forward to most, when all else fails us.
I have never in my life been away from home for Christmas. I believe my first Christmas was spent in company outside my Mom and Dad, and later, my brothers, but I have no memory of that Christmas. In the summer between my first and second years my parents moved 600 miles from their families, and from then on Christmas was spent with my family, in our home, every year. Presents from family were opened all together on Christmas Eve and then to bed so Santa could visit. He still visited, long after any of us really believed in him any longer.
Christmas ranged from lean to bountiful in my years growing up, though I couldn't look back and pin point now which year which was which. My parents always made it special, from boot prints and red yarn snagged in the fireplace, to carrots in the toe of a stocking, we knew we could always count on Christmas being special each and every year. Mom would cook, and eventually we would all gather around the tree and presents would be handed out to one and all to be opend, exclaimed over, passed around, shared, and admired or laughed at.
Eventually, as the oldest, I grew up, and it fell to me to be the first to leave home. I was married on December 22nd, but even marriage couldn't keep me from home. Our honeymoon was delayed, and I woke up Christmas morning in my childhood home with my new husband where we would receive presents beyond number outfitting us for our own move of 700 miles only a few days later.
Still, life as a school teacher enabled me to continue my tradition of returning home for Christmas. I can still see the grey sky and feel the excitement as I loaded my suitcase up in my truck late in the afternoon that last-day-of-school-for-the-year and began my journey home to be where I belonged at Christmas. The following year I would return home barely more than bald after the year of cancer. Then came the year I stepped off the plane with my ten-day old in my arms for her Grandma and Grandpa to see for the first time.
Christmas 1998 would prove the most bittersweet in my memory, with the death of my father only twelve days prior. This would be the year that I would wrap my mother's gifts from him to her. The year my daughter would become lost among the packages piled 2 and 3 feet deep. The year that would be the saddest and yet the most joyful as my oldest daughter understood Christmas for the first time in her young life.
Christmases since contain a sweet sadness, but not enough to keep me from anticipating the journey home once again each year. Barely has the Thanksgiving dinner digested, then my thoughts turn to the sights and sounds of Christmas at home. Even in the midst of holiday madness of parties and kids' shows, events and obligations, I am child inside when remember sitting in the living room lit only by the lights of the Christmas tree, when I hear the voices of my younger brothers, now grown men, arguing, discussing and laughing as we gather 'round the table once more.
My Mother often asks me when I am going to stop coming home and start traditions of my own. What she doesn't realize is that I already have. A rich tradition of friends and family, love and laughter made all the sweeter by the underlying spirit of those gone before. Having been given the most magical of Christmas experiences growing up, it would be a disservice to my own children to deprive them of that experience for themselves, and having known nothing else, they also would have it no other way.
I'll be home for Christmas. You can plan on me.
