All is Calm, All is Bright...Because We Chose it to Be

Christmas night and for us, it's still not over. As a matter of fact, it still hasn't really started. For reasons that aren't really important right now, the big meal will be tomorrow, when my kids turn up with two dogs and a blizzard on the way. Sue's niece may come over, depending on snow boarding conditions. Al lives in Cambridge, but it just might be easier for her to bed down for the night here. She'll have to flip her sister for the couch or the guest room. And yes, as crazy as life and our Christmases can be (with our families, Sue and I don't even attempt a Currier and Ives Christmas; we know, like Santa, world peace, and love at first sight, it's simply a wishful fabrication) we still are having a great Christmas because expectations are fluid and I think happiness in this world is dependent upon intelligence and experience.

All the makings of happiness are right there. It's your choice: Be happy, or stew in your own juices.

The other day Kathryn and I were booking it up the hill back to the apartment. She said, this hill seems to just keep getting steeper. For me, there's a little something in me now that, every time I have to run for the subway or I walk up and down stairs or walk uphills, I say a little thank you, because three months ago I literally couldn't walk. And today my back and leg show no sign of the damage done. So look at it this way: Think of all the opportunities I have in a day to be thankful, simply for being able to walk. All I have to do is walk up some stairs and I get to choose whether or not I'm going to feel happy.

Right now my truck is dead in the water--dead battery and in need of a tune up I can't afford because of a mixup earlier in the fall with BU about my loans. So I found myself walking to the grocery store instead of driving. I could have moaned about it, but instead it was a pretty day, and I thought to myself, I'm walking to the grocery store, for God's sake. I can afford food. And it's not like I'm walking to a hospital where Sue is lying sick. Be happy.

For many years I competed in road races and now because of my back, my running days are over. The doctor said I could do permanent damage if I continue. I guess I could get depressed about that, but instead of seeing it as my running days are over,  I see it as my biking days are beginning. Life is about change, and new opportunities coming while old ways go to the wayside. 

Years ago, whenever I raced, I always would reach a point where it because so painful because of how hard I'd push myself that I'd say, I'm never doing this again. Of course I would, and next race I'd come to that same point again. Until one time I was in a race, only this time my mother was at my apartment dying of cancer. And I thought to myself, what a jerk. You're healthy enough to be out here doing this. Stop your damn complaining. And I always enjoyed racing after that.

These thoughts come into my head because, for reasons that really aren't important right now, this Christmas has been trying. The only things traditional about this year have been the tree and the stockings hung by the chimney with care.  We've had our ups and downs. The economy. Family matters. Life in general, all like some insidious Grinch tried to foil us. But we haven't allowed anything or anyone stop us from enjoying the season and being in the spirit of the season because it was our choice to do that. And tomorrow I have faith that we will continue to enjoy it.

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve, a bit after 10:00, and I find myself engaged in my usual Christmas Eve ritual. I am the last one up (even Bob's in bed; he usually waits for the last one to slip under the covers before he flops down with a grunt on the old sleeping bag he uses for a bed and quickly starts snoring.)

Sue's on call, and wanted to get some sleep in case she has to get up in the middle of the night. The apartment is lit by the tree and some strands of Christmas lights we have strung about: over the kitchen window, across the front windows, and on the Japanese screen in the living room. My feet are propped up on a coffee table, and there's a glass of port next to them. A Christmas sugar cookie, just baked and half-eaten, lays next to me on the couch.

After all the craziness of what my buddy, Baxter, calls the Christian shopping season, it always turns into just about the most quiet night of the year, doesn't it? All I hear is the wind roaring outside, sounding just like the Red Line down the hill, and making me once again feel so appreciative of this apartment that is so safe and strong.

It's still pretty early. In other times it would be long past midnight and I'd be sitting next to a dying fire. Al was always a tough one to keep in bed on Christmas Eve, the excitement wiring her and bouncing her out of bed with every excuse in the book: she had to go to the bathroom, she was sleepy, she heard reindeer. You always had to be good and sure she was asleep before you could start filling stocking to make sure you wouldn't be accosted by a little Cindy Lou Who. Here we have a fireplace but it's gas, and Sue and I are so cheap we don't ever use it, feeling it's a waste of expensive fuel. The Native American Christmas stockings we bought in Arizona are hung there. Just this morning we were awaken by the doorbell, rung by the FedEx man who delivered the brass hooks from Amazon.com to hang them. With that, the last of the Christmas decoration was complete.

Tonight we had a simple dinner of stuffed shells Sue prepared last night. My old boss called and left voice mail, wishing me a merry Christmas, and to say he was thinking of me. I thought that was such a nice gesture.

We--well, I--made Christmas cookies. I've never made Christmas cookies in my life, but this really was Sue's first real Christmas in a long time, and she kept coming up with things she wanted to do, and baking cookies was one of them. Who could say, no? There are now three plates of Christmas cookies on the kitchen counter, and I'm not sure what we're going to do with them now. They're like the zucchini in the summer; who can use that many squash or cookies?

And tomorrow, if Sue isn't out on a case, we'll get up and have coffee and open our presents and then have pancakes, apple-cured bacon, and beer. Or I will. Sue's on duty, and can't drink. But I love a glass of beer for breakfast with a big stack of pancakes. You don't believe me? Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. And later, good buddy, John, will come by with what he said are a couple of pounds of fresh Cape Cod scallops, and the girls will arrive around 2:00 and there's a seven-plus-pound chicken marinating in soy sauce and honey and garlic right now in the 'fridge that will be stuffed with Chinese sausage and chestnuts and sticky rice. Some people have asked me how I'm doing being laid off. I try not to think about it, wanting to enjoy these holidays. I tend to take things one day at a time, and face what comes. And if it's something nice, like Christmas, well, I guess that's my good fortune, isn't it?

Happy Birthday, Alice...I miss you

If Mom had lived, she would have been 91 today. That's getting up there, but 68 was too young to go. Especially the way she went. Lung cancer that spread.

It's a hard day sometimes, even though it was 22 years ago she died (she died a couple of months short of her birthday.) It's just hot-wired into you that today was her day, and that Christmas was always extra special. For about the past eight years or so, the girls and I would go out to the Fatima Shrine in Medway and light a candle for her. I won't be doing that tonight, I know much to the girls' chagrin, but Medway is a long way to go and back on the roads the way they are now at night. Things change. Parents live and die. Parents break up. Dads move. Sometimes it's a hard life and a lot of tears are shed, but losing Mom was one of the toughest things I ever went through, and you look back and think, I got through this, I can get through this other thing.

So instead, I have her picture next to the Buddha by the fireplace, and I have a candle burning and I lit some incense in remembrance. I know she'd be shaking her head at that, staunch Catholic that she was. Years after her death I would talk to her. I mean, out-loud. I'd walk down the street just discussing things with her. Crazy? No, it isn't. We don't realize the dead are all around us.

We don't cry enough in this country. We always have to go around smiling and faking happiness, laughing all the time like hyenas. Nobody can be as happy as most people want you to be. You'd have to be a blithering, drooling idiot to be happy all the time in this society. No wonder we're a nation of Prozac. Most times you can face your sadness and get through it. It's the only way to get through it.

Merry Christmas, huh? Yeah, it is. Christmas is about family; not the fat man squeezing down the chimney. It's about family, living and dead and spread all over the world.

And one of these days, maybe it will really sink in that we're really all one big family, but that's a stretch. It is my Christmas wish, though. And maybe someday I'll get it. After all, one year I did get that Lionel train.

Why we have Christmas

This is more like it. This is more like Christmas should be. Christ—remember him?-came into this world poor and alone. He wasn’t surrounded by wealth. It was cold night, so we’re told, though no one’s ever been clear just what the date was...sometime in the springtime, I seem to remember.

I’ve said if I were one of the apostles I would have been the one stealing the keys to the donkey. And if I were at Christ’s birth, if I had had any role at all in this historic event, I would have been one of those shepherds, tending his flock, maybe in the rain, or huddled in his thin coat on a chilly night, his old dog the only thing to keep him company, pondering the stars and making music on a simple instrument.

It’s all gotten out of hand. Way out of hand. We all know this, but we don’t seem to care. It’s too much for us. Too much for us to fight. And frankly, it seems Christ has been more than a little absent for the world lately. It’ s like he said he was going to the corner to get a pack of cigarettes and that was twelve years ago. Damnit, he ain’t coming back, it seems, and we’re just going to have to deal.

But family and friends will still get together. Presents will be exchanged. Food will be shared. Some imbibing will occur. Why? Because we’re sheep and just do what we’re told? Because we don’t want to disappoint? Because we want to belong? Or is there some other deeper reason? A real one? Maybe for one time in the fucking year some yearning actually will get appeased? Given in to, and that in some form or another we actually behave in some semblance to the way we’re actually supposed to treat one another? I think that’s it.

Christmas, 2007

Something will happen, I know. I still don't have a tree, and I'll be running around this weekend, mostly on the Cape, so I'm hoping to pick one up then. I have Monday off, but I really don't want to get one then, when I could be hanging electrical lights on a wet tree.

I guess I have to get one, though now the thought of spending money I don't have for a tree and putting it and decorations around the house just so I have to immediately take it down again isn't a pleasant thought. Sue and I have so much to do and think about for our move; one more chore just seems like one more too many.

My kids will come over Monday night, we'll laugh, we'll play Christmas carols, we'll go out and light a candle in honor of my mother's birthday, drive around and look at the lights, and Bob and I will have a moment outside when I take him out to do his business before we go to bed. He's so old now that he always looks at me with either a wry or rueful expression, like he knows something I don't know. I bet he does, too.

Sue will drive up sometime Christmas day. J may show up, or not. A dinner will be cooked, probably a chicken. Rice in the cooker. We don't have a lot of money this year, so it won't be fancy, not that it ever is. Of course we will have lots of wine; we always seem to have money for that. That seems to get us through things.

It's so funny around work right now. Only one or two of us are here, the clicking of keyboards is all you can hear. Muffled conversations. The few of us here who, I guess, don't really have lives. Here everything is so wonderful and positive, or that's the facade. No one would ever let on to troubles here, at an agency where the product is image and that image is always sunny and happy and positive, where if there is a problem it's quickly alleviated by the product.

I don't really want anything for Christmas. I don't want any products. The troubles I have won't be solved by anything manufactured in the world economy. One of my daughters pumped me, insisting I had to get something under the tree. I told her to get me a set of decent guitar strings. I'm trying to get rid of stuff in my life, not acquire more. I'm giving stuff away to the poor, selling stuff for money and to lighten my load for the road. Ain't it nice that I've simplified things to where the one thing I could use is spare set of guitar strings, weighing a couple of ounces and costing maybe tops thirteen bucks? And I'll lighten it even less. I've learned to live with almost nothing. Not the right attitude for what my good buddy calls the Christian Shopping Season.

There's something complex and crazy about Christmas. Of course it's all the materialism, but there's something else, too. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it has something to do with age and experience, wisdom and a bit of cynicism.

Once more, I just don't fit in to all this. I've tried. Lord knows I've tried. And I really don't care anymore. Just happy to be who I am.

Today's commuter story

I had ten minutes to pay for parking, walk to the platform, and catch a train. You pay by shoving money--in this case, four dollars--into a slot in a big metal box that has slots that correspond to each parking space.

A man came up to me. I'm used to this. The parking and train situation is a bit confusing, and everyone from the town of Framingham to the MBTA haven't gone out of their way to explain it. So people are always stopping others to ask questions. But today this man wanted to know if I had jumper cables. His car wouldn't start.

"It's a new car," he said, "and I don't know why it won't start."

He pointed in a general direction, but I didn't see anything that looked like a new car. Maybe he bought it used, but it was new to him. I felt bad for him. I wish I could have helped him out. We've all been in tight spots, where things aren't going right, and a helpful hand is always a relief. I would have liked to have been that relief to that man.

I thought for a second, then said, "No, sorry." I could feel his letdown, so I said, "I know they open at 8:00," pointing to the gas station across street.

"They do?"

"Yeah. Good luck," I said, and headed to the train platform.

The thing is, I do have jumper cables. I just didn't have time to help him and catch my train at the same time. It's only later I wished I had just reached inside the truck and given him my cables. Are you thinking that that is going too far in helping a stranger?

No, you see, those cables were given to me by, well, I don't know who she was; she wasn't a girlfriend. I'm still not sure what she was, but she gave them to me for a Christmas present, and the moment she handed them to me I realized they were an obligation present. You know the kind: One not given from the heart, but given only out of a social obligation. Her manner, her faked concern that it was the wrong gift told everything. And I remember sitting on the floor of her living room feigning delight, but inside knowing she couldn't have cared less. Just one more way she lied. Some might say the cables were even Freudian, an attempt to jumpstart a dead relationship. Or a symbol of the dead relationship itself. But I don't think so. Frankly, I don't have use for symbols in my life any more, Freudian or otherwise.

I've thrown away everything she ever gave me. It's the most cleansing feeling in the world, so freeing to purge the things associated with a person who caused so much pain in your life and was cruel for no other reason except for her own selfishness. To destroy not all memory because that is impossible, but as much rememberance as I can. To strain and push back time to a point where she wasn't in my life. When these things didn't exist, when I did not own them, or they me.

But this morning I realized I still had one more thing she had given me: the jumper cables shoved and forgotten behind the seat of my truck. It would have meant nothing to me to give them to that stranded man this morning, no more than it meant to that woman on that Christmas morning. And my action might have changed a bad memory into a good one. My action could have made two people feel better--the stranger and me. But I wasn't thinking. Like that woman, I was too intent on my own selfishness to do anything good or kind. And I missed my chance.

A month after Christmas

A full month after Christmas, my tree is still up. It sits on the window seat in my kitchen, fading, dropping needles. It's like the backpack that sits out long after you've returned from a trip, getting in the way and getting moved from couch to floor back to couch again, and it would be the simplest thing to put it away but for some reason it never gets done. Then one day, inexplicitly, you pick it up like it's nothing and throw it up on the shelf in the closet and it's gone. That's when you realize the weight the backpack had on your mind, because now it's not the backpack that's gone, but the weight.

When someone remarked about it the other day, the fact that my Christmas tree is still up at this point in the year, I said, "Yeah? So?" The tree will come down when something inside me tells me to do it, and not until then.