December 17, 2017 — This post is channeling my inner nine-year-old, I think the peak year for Christmas excitement. I could be politically and religiously correct and say Happy Holidays, but that’s what I’m not feeling. Mind you, I certainly and not one to try to offend, it’s just that this Christmas is so unbelievably unique for me.

The year, 1983. I honestly don’t remember now who called me to tell me my father was packing up various and sundry seventeenth century pepper mills and Staffordshire dogs (things my family collected) and leaving the family home. I had one test to go before finals concluded at University. It was the tail-end of what would be my college education, until I got the fortitude to go back to school on loans. Then it snowed, iced actually, a record storm. I left my car at University and came “home” to Dallas as they call it with my brother in his pickup. My mother had fallen on that ice, hit her head, and was laid up in bed. There was no tree. No presents. If I remember right, it was December 23.

I was not having it. I asked for the credit cards. We must have Christmas. It’s the one sense of normalcy in a what was a turbulent time for my family. One year and a half of selling off pretty much everything that my father had built, for pennies on the dollar. Drilling rigs … as scrap metal. But we all love cheap gas prices and major company dominance. I bought everyone’s present from and to everyone. I did it in a day. It was like Santa. For me? I bought myself a blender. You see, my favorite cheer-me-up thing is a milkshake. I believed then, not knowing you can just use a spoon to meld together ice cream and milk, that one needed a blender to make a milkshake. And a milkshake was totally in order in those times.

Christmas morning, my dad came over. We opened presents like everything was normal, but that year, the year that started an era of my life, the era I live in now, … well, I suppose that Christmas was the first day of … what I am now. I handed out all of the presents, brother this is your present to sister, sister this is your present to brother, brother your big present from our parents, sister your big present from our parents, and so forth. I watched everyone open their presents, nobody knowing what any of them were. It was really fun. My mother asked me if I had bought anything for myself. I told her I did. I got the wrapped box that contained my blender and opened it. The blender was much less in stature than anyone else’s presents, and there wasn’t any present from anyone else to me like I had for everyone else. I had only one day to pull this off, and … like I said I suppose this was my first day in this role. Others come first.

In years prior, the better-financial years, on Thanksgiving I would go shopping with my mother, window shopping we called it. My mother would note, mentally, the thing I really liked. I always got that. That Thanksgiving, I liked this one particular red dress, backless cashmere, very extravagant, especially for someone so young. During that shopping trip, my mother bought me the shoes to go with it, red. No black shoes for a red dress. My mother had very old-school rules of dressing. I had forgotten about it, the shopping trip, the dress. Giving you a framework of reality, the night I learned of my father’s departure, I was walking back from the engineering library, many, many books in my arms. Remember the snow? It was on it’s way. It was raining, and bitter cold. I was wearing my little walking booties, an 80’s staple. They had a slight hole in the sole by then. My socks were completely wet by the time I got to my apartment, a symptom of how things had turned out. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a surprise that I didn’t know was coming, the final auction happened, the sell-off of our family’s farm, and my beloved farm animals. The Thanksgiving shopping event was just silliness that I had forgotten about.

That Christmas morning in 1983, as my mother sat in her chair, my father sitting across the room, nobody much speaking, my mother asked me, again, after I opened my blender if that was it. I said yes. She told me to go look behind the tree, tucked behind something, the console radio, something, I can’t remember now, why I didn’t see the giant box. Giant boxes are dress boxes, for those who don’t know. I looked at her funny. I went over to the tree, picked out the box she had mentioned and brought it over to the place I had been sitting. I still can’t tell this part without crying. Perhaps it’s because of what had come before: the auctions for pennies on the dollar; the embarrassment; the loss of all my friends because of our loss of station; the whispers in stores; the lack of everything; the loss of the farm and those animals, that one so fresh; the loss of my family’s structure, also so fresh; the list was long and it didn’t seem to ever stop, but I didn’t open my wrapped dress box. I only took off the paper and pulled the box lid enough so I could feel inside. Soft, very soft. I didn’t want to see it. I said, take it back. With tears in my eyes, I said we can’t afford it. She said absolutely not. It’s the last nice thing you’ll ever have. You will keep it. Mind you, those words are exact. I’ll never forget them.

In 1987, I resumed school on borrowed money. My father moved to the same town. I like to say he went to school with me, but he had gone months before intending to help my uncle-his brother with some business. Work, that’s why he moved to Austin. Least you think my father doesn’t care for Christmas, that’s not it at all. Bad times mess with people’s heads. People can lose their way. Sometimes for a very long time. My father had his own place, and immediately upon moving there, had a girlfriend, the same one of my stories of this year, a girlfriend who would keep him from having me over, keep him from ever having Christmas with his children, ever again.

Still, my father would visit me at my apartment. On one of his visits that first year, I said I wanted a Christmas tree. He said he would get me one. He carries necessary tools. He’s like that. So we set off to go get the tree. I say it again: get the tree. Neither of us had any actual money for a tree, and Austin is surrounded by hills bearing small cedar trees. Cedar trees naturally look like Christmas trees. He went into the hills, and I walked around until I found a nice-shaped small tree. He cut it, with an axe mind you; then we went to the store, got a stand of white lights, and some blue Christmas ornaments. I think all of that was $10.00. I always liked the blue and white Christmas trees. They are “Jewish” Christmas trees, not that I knew that, so there you go… an homage to political correctness, unintendedly. And that was it; my last Christmas celebration with my dad.

And it has come full circle. My father has spent much of this year in my brother’s house; it’s the same house we lived in as a family. I’ve often thought it was a good thing we never got around to moving to some grand house as we wouldn’t have kept it, but that’s another story. The house has a large formal living room.On remodels of these ranch houses, people combine the living room and den to make a great room, but that house is almost fully original 1962, certainly the living room is, including its original wool carpet. In that living room, my brother has put up a very grand Christmas tree, the first in many years. He has lights outside, and by lights, I mean thousands. There is a full-wall-sized bay window through which the outside lights shine. My brother has presents for his almost-adult son, lots of presents. As for my dad, my brother tells me my dad sits in the living room, every night, just sitting with the tree. That’s what we all did, as a family… before 1983.

Christmas. Every story I’ve ever written was of some childhood memory. The reason was because of these stories; because of these stories, Christmas … ended. I’m not sure which one is the last. The cashmere dress? The cedar tree my dad cut from the Austin hills? Whatever it is, the last really normal one was 1982.

So back to my point, this Christmas means a lot to me. 2017. Thirty-five years is a really long time. Happy Christmas, indeed!

Now for the song. I feel so blessed, so blessed that I think a real Christmas song is in order because this kind of Christmas is one of a lifetime, one with something better than presents. We never get do-overs, but this is a do-over. I get my family back, so this one has to have come from above. And I am thankful!

To everyone else, as I prepare to travel, and then travel, may 2017 bring you, your family, friends and loved ones a Happy Christmas!