Christmas Wishing

Well hey there, invisible audience! Merry Christmas to you.  How do you feel about the big day being on a Sunday?  Surely you're getting Monday off, too? You'll appreciate that even if you don't celebrate.  Or maybe you work in the service industry and have to work both days.  I hope there's at least some holiday pay in there for you.

This year my mind casts back to 1986 and the last Christmas I would spend with both my parents.  Their relationship had been coming apart for some time and a not quite a year after my high school graduation in '87 my mother walked away and never saw my father again.  It's a long, sad story I won't recount just now.  For this entry I choose to remember how warm things were in our house that December.  My mother once again decorated every room with cheer.  Baked cookies day and night.  Dad and I strung outside lights.  We had our (fake) seven foot tree in the living room with vintage ornaments and I had a five footer in my bedroom.  I loved having my own tree.  Maybe someday I'll pick that up again.

Christmas morning was another round of a wealth of gifts for this only child.  But in '86 I got one of the most coveted - a VCR. Finally! Many of my friends had had them for years.  They must have come down in price enough for my father to relent.  I recall them costing a grand or so in the 1970s.  The excitement I felt as I tore off the paper and saw the words "Video Cassette Recorder" was electric.  Overwhelming, especially for a movie mad teen.  I immediately began compiling mental lists of what I'd rent from "Pick-A-Flick" and what I'd record from HBO and Showtime.  Before I discovered what was in the big rectangular box I opened the flap of the gift tag: "We love you so much."   I can still see those words so vividly in my mind's eye. 

That is what gives me chills as I write this, thirty-six years later.  A longing to go back and hug my parents, to sit them down and try to make them stay together.  To communicate with them.  I really failed in that regard.  All three of us did.  Now they're gone. 

I don't mean to get all lachrymose or weepy.  As I said, I prefer to remember the joy and smiles of that time, and even before I furiously checked the cable guides to plan my tapings I had a real sense of peace and contentment in my home.  That Christmas would be one of the final times for my little family, it turned out.  I wish I could've bottled it. 

Maybe they were faking it.  I'd like to believe they really did still love and care for each other.  And me.  Of that, I'm sure.

Merry Christmas.