The warmth of your love Is like the warmth of the sun And this will be our year Took a long time to come
Don’t let go of my hand Now darkness has gone And this will be our year Took a long time to come
I know I’m not the only person who was more than ready to kick 2018 out the door, and welcome in the promise of a new year. Like a brand new pad of drawing paper, a brand new spiral notebook, a brand new computer with a virtually empty hard drive, a new year is a blank canvas, as yet untainted by politics or pain.
This last year, actually the year and change going all the way back to August 2017, has been a hard one for Fuzzy and me. We lost his mother, his father, and my stepfather. We also lost my last great-uncle, but that wasn’t a death that impacted me a great deal, except that I’m sad he was sick and suffering at the end.
And then there was my knee surgery.
While my mother was here, I was confronted with the fact that, as much as I’ve improved, I’m nowhere close to being completely healed. I found out earlier today that I did not make it into a writing residency I applied for, and my first reaction was not disappointment, but relief. I’m not ready, yet, to be traipsing around a walking city without Fuzzy’s help and support.
And I won’t forget The way you held me up when I was down And I won’t forget the way you said, “Darling I love you” You gave me faith to go on
And speaking of help and support, I want to thank all my friends and family who have been with me on the journey through PT, and on the expanded journey of this podcast. Five years ago, when Nuchtchas told me about the Dog Days of Podcasting, I thought no one would care what I wrote, or listen to what I had to say. I’d probably have more listeners than Nutty and my mom if I bothered to make regular episodes (goal for 2019 – one a month) or tell people about it (like many people, I’m great at pushing other people’s art, and really bad at sharing my own), but the act of creation is often its own reward.
So, I wanted to take a moment and say thank you to ALL the dog days participants – those who did only August, and those who did something in December as well. Your comments, your mentions, your willingness to participate when I ask for volunteers – those mean so much. And your own podcasts make me smile, laugh, think, and wish I were on the ocean. This includes you Michael Butler – I listen to every episode. Really. I’m not naming any other names because I don’t want to miss anyone.
But also thank you to my other friends – Debra, Becca, Clay, Jancis, Fran, Selena, KM, Stones, Katie, OC, the entire Klingon Marauders fleet on Timelines, my cousins, Michelle, Kerrin, David, and Shirley, and my husband’s aunt Kathy. My own aunties, Patricia and Dee, and my local friends Kathy, Scott, Ben, Ian, Kimberlyn, and Trenton. You’ve listened to me whine, laughed when I was funny, provided encouragement when I needed it, and generally just been there.
And a special shout-out to my Mom. Because even though we push each others buttons the way only a mother and daughter can, she’s still my hero.
To the people who read my stuff wherever it’s posted and published, to the people who listen, to the people who just ARE.
Thank you.
Now we’re there and we’ve only just begun This will be our year Took a long time to come
In the poem “Story Water” Rumi wrote:
Water, stories, the body,
all the things we do, are mediums
that hide and show what’s hidden.
Study them,
and enjoy this being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.
Thank you for sharing your stories, both fiction and not. I hope to hear more from you in 2019.
Thank you for listening to mine. I hope to share more in 2019.
This will be our year – all of us.
This will be our year Took a long time to come
“This Will Be Our Year” was originally by The Zombies.
The eighth day after Christmas, before they could suspect I bundled up the… Eight maids a-milking Nine ladies dancing Ten lords a-leaping Eleven pipers piping Twelve drummers drumming
(Well, actually, I kept one of the drummers) And sent them back collect
I wrote my true love we are through love And I said in so many words Furthermore your Christmas gifts were for the birds
– The Twelve Days After Christmas, by Frederick Silver
My earliest memories revolve around my grandmother’s dining table. Laughing aunts and uncles and cousins would sit around the table talking as loudly with their hands as they did with their voices. Some nights the Canasta cards were brought out, other nights the game was Pinochle or for us non-cardplayers, Scrabble was the game of choice. Inevitably though, whether there were two people at that table or twelve, my grandmother would announce that she wanted a ‘little something.’
Invariably that ‘little something’ would be dessert.
And more often than not, the dessert would be an Entenmann’s coffeecake. The kind with a crumb topping and pastry cheese filling. That taste, slightly metallic from the foil tray, but always just enough sweetness to temper the strongest of coffees (or the brattiest of little girls) was the taste of my childhood. I remember it as strongly as I do my grandfather’s raisin bread or my grandmother’s meatballs or her recipe for pasta e fagiolli, which, by the way, is nothing like the swill they serve at the Olive Garden.
For Christmas this year, my friend Fran in Massachusetts sent me not one, not two, but three Entenmann’s Cheese-filled Crumb Coffee Cakes. Two immediately went into the freezer, to be saved until I just can’t stand it anymore. The third, we cut into almost immediately. Even my mother, who doesn’t eat carbs (she says), couldn’t resist the siren call of this coffee cake.
You see, they don’t sell it in my part of Texas. Believe me, I’ve looked. And even in California, it was a rare thing to find.
They say you can’t go home again, but sometimes, home can come to you, and when it does, it’s packaged in a white and blue box.
The sixth day after Christmas, the six laying geese wouldn’t lay I gave the whole darn gaggle to the A.S.P.C.A On the seventh day, what a mess I found all seven of the swimming swans had drowned My true love, my true love, my true love gave to me
– The Twelve Days After Christmas, by Frederick Silver
Last night, lying in the too-hard bed in the Bossier City Hilton I heard two recurring sounds: my husband’s snoring (like many men, Fuzzy can fall asleep anywhere, even if he’s not actually tired), and train whistles.
After nudging my husband to make him roll over (and therefore stop snoring), I listened to the trains a while longer.
Train whistles never sound anything but mournful. My friend Stonefish says it’s just the physics of sound, but I think it’s more. I think there’s a romanticism associated with trains that never quite leaves us.
At least, that’s true in my family.
Some of my earliest memories involve setting up model trains – HO scale – with my grandfather, creating circuits of track on the sculptured red carpet of the living room, and using the controls to make them go forward and backward. Later, I would have access to a train room, with a high trestle and a low trestle and tiny towns made of cardboard and paint, and even a fake river to cross over via a swinging bridge.
As I grew older I began to appreciate real trains. I remember a really old train I rode with my grandparents, somewhere in rural Massachusetts one summer, when we were visiting my aunt – the seats were reversible, and there was a water fountain in the back of each car with a dispenser of paper drinking cones, and we were practically the only people on it. I was under ten, and to my young self, that ride was as magical as the Hogwarts Express.
And then there was the Georgetown Loop – a narrow gauge railroad in Colorado. We lived there when it opened as a tourist attraction in the 70’s and I loved to sit in the top of the caboose with my legs dangling over the side. (There’s a name for that seat, but I don’t remember it.)
Trains remain part of my life. I have some antique toy train cars in my writing room, and I have a model of the Hogwarts Express that is meant to go around my Christmas tree, but somehow never manages to do so (well, not in years). I’m not sure I’ll ever fall out of love with trains, but I’m equally certain I’ll always think their whistles sound like someone crying in the night.
The third day after Christmas, my Mother caught the croup I had to use the three French Hens to make some chicken soup The four calling birds were a big mistake for their language was obscene The five golden rings were completely fake and they turned my fingers green.
– The Twelve Days After Christmas, by Frederick Silver
I’m writing this tonight from the Hilton Garden Inn in Bossier City, Louisiana. We drove here earlier today so Mom could see her older sister for the first time since last October, and I got a suite for us plus a room for my mother (because none of us were willing to sleep on a sofa bed), but since we’re not staying in a casino, the rooms were really reasonable, and it’s only for one night. Why a suite? Because Mom is allergic to cats, and my aunt has cats, so having a suite meant after we left the restaurant (Gibbons – great food; reasonable prices) we had an allergen-free place to hang out and visit for a bit.
I had a pot of coffee sent to the room (literally, they sent an urn) and we shared one enormous slice of cheesecake, and it was a nice way to catch up without anyone having to wash a dish. I gave my aunt and uncle and cousin some Dude, Sweet Chocolate, which is possibly the best chocolate on Earth, and they gave us local coffee and biscotti, made by the people in the care home where my cousin is a nurse.
We’re meeting for brunch tomorrow, at a place we went to twice when we were here last year, and then heading home. Mom leaves for her home in La Paz, BCS, Mexico on Sunday morning, and I plan to spend Sunday sleeping and cuddling dogs.
For now, though, we’re in Louisiana, and we’re such wild people at at 10:30 at night on a weekend, all I want to do is shower and sleep.
The first day after Christmas
My true love and I had a fight.
And so I chopped the pear tree down
And burned it just for spite.
Then with a single cartridge
I shot that blasted partridge
My true love
My true love
My true love gave to me.
– The Twelve Days After Christmas, by Frederick Silver
It’s December 26th – the first day after Christmas – and I’ll be sharing a few things I didn’t get to during advent. Tonight, at the behest of my friend Nuchtchas of Nutty Bites, the subject is tree toppers.
I have two Christmas trees this year, and I still have a good portion of my ornaments in a box. My mother started my ornament collection before I was born, and we’ve added to it every year. Some of the ornaments represent places I visited or experiences I had during childhood, and some represent my interests and those of my husband, and some are just pretty or cool. Mom once told me that one of the saddest days she experienced – before the loss of her husband, anyway – was when she packed up my ornaments separately from hers for the first time, so I could have a tree of my own, after I married Fuzzy.
Two trees means two tree toppers. The main tree, which is seven-and-a-half feet tall and is in the dining room, has a traditional angel on top. For the longest time, when Fuzzy and I both worked nights doing tech support for Gateway, we had a gold moon as the topper, but as our marriage matured our trees grew in stature (well, we kept upgrading to larger ones) and the moon was soon relegated to normal ornament status. I bought the angel a few years ago because she seemed serene, and she reminded me of a Renaissance painting I’d seen once.
The auxiliary tree is in the part of my house that is technically the living room, but is really part of the space between the dining room doors, the front door, and the stairs, as the living room really begins beyond the door into the kitchen, and this all sounds more complicated than it is. Anyway, the living room tree is about three feet tall but it’s in a pot, on a table, so it feels taller. We put all the aquatic-themed ornaments on that. Mermaids, fish, shells, and also ducks, dragonflies, a crocodile, and an alligator in pink pumps with Christmas trees on her back.
The topper for that tree is a silver metallic butterfly, and it was the topper of the first tree Mom and I had together, so it’s as old as I am, and it looks surprisingly good for a forty-eight-year-old creation made of paper and pipe cleaners. Mom started downsizing her own ornament collection a few years ago, and sent that to me.
I have to admit, I resisted using it, because it felt like doing so meant she was dead, when in fact she’s very much alive, and sleeping in my guest room as I write this. I do use it though, because I love it, and because it catches the light really well, which our angel does not.
“Basil. The next time I decide I want pie at midnight, you’re getting it.” Zoe said to her fiancé as she returned to their bedroom with a slice of pumpkin and a stricken expression.
“What is wrong, dearest?”
“Apparently, Mom and Ed polished off the champagne from our engagement party.”
“Is that unusual? Is it not tradition that one must never leave a bottle unfinished.”
“Well, yes, that is the tradition, but typically you don’t do that and then get naked in the middle of the living room when you have guests in the house.”
“Your mother insisted just yesterday that we were not guests, but family.”
“Okay, but that was when she wanted me to set the table and you to help hang garland from all the arches.”
“I do not understand.”
“Let me put it this way… you know the song ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus?'” Zoe waited for partner to nod. Then she continued. “Well, Mom wasn’t tickling Ed underneath his beard. She was… let’s just say I got a full-frontal view of Ed’s wedding tackle and I’m suddenly grateful to be committed to a man who doesn’t age.”
“Was there something about seeing your stepfather’s genitals that alarmed you, dearest?”
“Snow,” she answered, shuddering. “It was like… his… nether… hair was like barbarian snow at the bottom of his… oh, god, I can’t believe I’m even talking about this. You asked if I was alarmed? More like scarred for life!”
Basil had always found humor a bit difficult to navigate. It was such a subjective condition. What made someone laugh might offend another. Still, his partner’s flustered state made him chuckle, at first, and then laugh outright.
“It’s not funny!” Zoe protested.
“Dearest, you are judging your parents unfairly. While it is true that their behavior is a bit questionable while we are in the house, if they truly imbibed as much champagne as you implied it is likely that they simply got caught in the moment.” He gave her a few seconds to process. “And I might remind you that just last week you used the color of my skin to inspire a song while we were… similarly engaged. Or must I refresh your memory with a chorus of ‘Silver Balls?'”
Zoe stared at Basil for a long moment. Then she burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I just… I never expected to be the one who caught my mother in a compromising position. It’s more normal for a parent to walk in on their child.”
“Dearest,” Basil said in a reproachful tone. “As you have frequently observed, very little about our relationship is ‘normal.'”
“There you go being right again,” Zoe grumbled good-naturedly. “Well, at least I got pie.”
“Indeed.”
Much later that evening, Zoe nudged her partner. “Basil, promise me something?”
“Tell me.”
“Even if you decide to write an aging subroutine someday, swear to me you will never allow yourself to have a saggy old-man ass.”
For the second time that night, Basil was amused, but he managed to stifle the laughter, and all he said was, “I promise to try.”
We’ll fly to the sky on champagne
And shout to everyone in sight
That since the world began
No woman or a man
Has ever been as happy as we are tonight.
“The Night They Invented Champagne” is from the musical Gigi, and was written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.
Harmony surveyed her underwater domain and used her tailfin to push herself backward so she could see the very top of her tree.
Oh, it wasn’t a decorated pine, like the dry-landers had. She’d always thought pine was what you did when you missed someone so much that your heart hurt, the way she did when Oskar wasn’t able to visit her for long stretches of time.
Rather, her Christmas tree was a living kelp plant she’d coaxed into the shape of a tall triangle, then adorned with shells and sea glass, and – with a bit of bribery – even a sea star at the top (actually a family of them that she fed well with krill and brine shrimp.)
Studying her work, Harmony moved a shell one level higher and replaced it with a piece of blue sea glass. Blue and red were her favorites, and they were also the rarest colors. She’d heard the humans on the beach make similar comments, which is why she was certain Oskar would appreciate her gift to him.
Oh, the thunder god she’d been in love with for half of forever didn’t really celebrate Christmas the way her kind did. Rather, he observed the winter solstice and the way it marked the end of the increasing darkness in his world. But he brought her gifts every time they met, and she was all too aware that she had little to offer.
A great boom that was more a feeling than a sound rocked Harmony’s cave, and she grinned. Gathering the woven bag that held the gift, she swam out of her home, and up to the surface.
Her lover, her Oskar, was waiting for her on an ice floe just big enough for two, and he was smiling. “Here you are, my breath-and-blood. Here you are. Here I am. Is full moon. Is solstice. You ask. I come.”
Harmony reached up and allowed the burly rainmaker to hoist her from the water. As always, their floating meeting place was covered in thick furs, and as her tail split into legs, he wrapped her in the warm pelts. “It’s a special day in my world,” she told him. “I brought you a gift.”
“You are gift,” he countered.
“That’s sweet, but I have a different gift, something to share with your loved ones. Hold out your hands.”
He did as she bade, and she poured out the contents of her bag – red and blue sea glass – letting the pieces flow over his fingers. “We decorate with this,” she explained. “I thought…”
But she never finished her thought because Oskar was laughing. “Red and blue…” he said. “My favorite. Red for the lightning fire and blue for the water. Is brilliant. Is us.”
Harmony smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is.” Then she tickled Oskar under his beard. “You always sing for me. This time, it’s my turn.” And she launched into another chorus of her favorite holiday song: Jingle Shells.
My friend Nuchtchas has been talking about her holiday traditions as part of her audio advent project, and one of her recent topics was stockings. She asked the rest of us to share pictures of our Christmas stockings, but we haven’t even begun to decorate this year. Partly that’s because I’m just not feeling terribly Christmassy, but mostly it’s because we’re waiting til my mother is here with us, so she can participate.
So, the picture I’ve provided is of last year’s Christmas stockings. Two fuzzy stockings we bought at Target several years ago and decorated (badly) ourselves. These are the stockings that Fuzzy and I have used throughout our time in Texas – about fourteen years – but I can’t remember exactly when we got them.
I don’t remember my earliest Christmas stockings. I remember getting gum and small toys, and from about the age of nine on, a small wheel of brie. But I don’t remember the stockings themselves, except that my mother’s first husband’s mother knitted them for the three of us right after mom got married, but misspelled my name, so for years I had a love-hate relationship with it.
More recently, okay, more like ten years ago, we bought three or four stockings at Cracker Barrel when I knew I’d be hosting Christmas for my parents and my aunt. These are brightly colored with penguins, snowmen and a Santa Claus figure on them. These are our guest stockings, the ones we fill for whomever is spending Christmas with us in any given year.
But this year is different.
This year I bought new stockings.
This year, I’m trying to retain our most important family traditions, but alter them enough that the absence of my stepfather isn’t felt so keenly. The penguin stocking was always his when he visited. I can’t bear to see it right now.
Instead, I have three red and white knitted stockings waiting to be hung. They’re all slightly different, but they came in a set, and I think they’ll work nicely.
As for the not-decorating thing… when I was a kid we almost never decorated until around this part of December, after school was out for the holidays. While I have decorated as early as Thanksgiving once in a while, I typically prefer to wait a week or two into the month. We leave our tree and lights up until Epiphany, and I’d get sick of it all if I had it around for five or six weeks instead of two or three.
In the years we went to Mexico, I’d still decorate, partly because we’d be home and entertaining friends for part of the season, and partly because coming home a few days before New Year’s to an undecorated house is pretty depressing.
In Mexico, as I’ve already talked about this year, we also have furry stockings that we decorated on a visit many years ago.
And aside from that, my only real memory of stockings is one time when I was seven or eight that I was delighted by the fact that I had so much stuff in my stocking that it had fallen from where it was hanging. (I’m pretty sure I commented that my mother’s was kind of limp. As kids do.)
“Tell me a story, Daddy?” Eleven-year-old Elizabeth was sprawled on the carpeted floor beneath the Christmas tree. When the family lived aboard her father’s spaceship, the Cousteau, they had a holographic tree that held virtual copies of all the real ornaments. But now they were in their house on Centaurus, so the whole tree was real, and she loved to lie beneath it and breath in the piney scent.
Basil glanced across the room at his wife, and the pair shared a look. They knew their daughter would soon be too old to ask for stories, but it was Christmas Eve, and even a synthetic lifeform was willing to indulge his daughter during the holidays.
Still, he hesitated. Seasonal tales were not really in his oeuvre, and he knew the night was special to the organic members of his family.
“Do you mind if the story comes from me?” his wife asked, saving the night for all of them. “I have a family story that might appeal to you, Lizzie-Bee.”
The little girl rolled over and sat up, smoothing out her brand-new dress as she did so. “That would be acceptable,” she said, sounding uncannily like her father.
“Alright then.” Zoe put down the tablet she’d been reading from and centered herself by taking a sip from her mug of tea. “This story takes place many years before you were born, or before I was born, or before Gramma Emily was born. It’s older than Grampere. It’s even older than Nonna. In fact, it’s from Nonna’s, Nonna’s, Nonna’s Nonna. Or even a few generations before that.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about family, and Christmas, and space.”
“I wanna hear that story.”
Zoe smiled at her daughter. “Alright then, let’s take a deep breath—” and she drew in an exaggerated one “—and begin.”
December 24th, 1968 –
They could have gone to mass at the local church, as they always did. St. Agnes had been the family’s parish of choice for decades. It was an old building, formidable gray stone on the outside, but once you were inside the vestibule it was all wood and warmth, and the bulletin boards were hilarious, reminding you that there was still time for a turkey raffle, or that the scout troops earned money if you ate at Burger King through the first of the year.
But Uncle Giovanni – Nonna’s brother – also known as Father Pescatore – had been back in town after being sent to serve elsewhere, and a private family mass seemed appropriate. So, they’d set up an altar on the ironing board, and prayed for the people, and the world leaders, and the pope, and the world, and then they’d said a special prayer for the astronauts in space.
We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”
They watched the newscast and heard these men of science read words of faith, and they saw the camera feed of the men in the giant aluminum can hurtling toward the gray surface of the moon.
And maybe they thought about the way God exists in each of us as a spark of divine self-gift, or maybe they just went through the ritual out of habit. But no matter what they thought, their eyes were riveted on their tiny television screen, and their thoughts were in the stars.
Christmas Eve – 2269
The family continued to grow and change, but the one thing they all shared was a fascination with space. They watched as the first lunar orbit became the first lunar landing. They watched as Mars became the first planet to be populated entirely by robots, and then the first to host human colonists.
As space travel became something accessible to everyone, part of the family embraced the unknown, and joined the first colonization missions to Betelgeuse and Centaurus.
The latter planet was destined to become the family’s new home. They were Harrises now, instead of Morellis, having married and bred and married and bred through the ages, and their faith was not so formal as it had been a century before on Earth, but when the first church was planted in Beach Haven, they joined their community for Christmas Eve services.
“And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”
Christmas Eve – 2368
“I don’t think that’s much of a story,” Elizabeth said.
“That’s because it’s not finished yet,” Zoe explained. “We’re going out, sweetie.”
Basil had left his chair while she’d been speaking, and now he offered his daughter her coat. “It is cold out tonight. You must dress warmly.” He assisted the child in putting on her winter gear, then repeated the process with his wife.
Together, Basil and Zoe guided the young girl through the front door. “We’re not taking the flitter?”
“Nope. We’re walking.”
The night air was cold, but it was also clear, and each star seemed to shimmer more brightly than the last. As they walked toward the center of town, first along the coast road, then turning east, away from the water, the small family was joined by friends and neighbors, all making the same short journey.
Our Lady of the Sea and Stars was as gray as the old stone church on Earth, but it was built of titanium from the hulls of the first colony ship, and its surface shimmered like a more delicate version of the starlight.
Almost the entire community gathered inside, and there were many greetings exchanged with Captain Harris and Ambassador Harris and all the oldest relatives gushed over Elizabeth, cooing over her advanced age – “Eleven? Wow! Who said you could get so old?”
As they took their seats, the little girl nudged her mother. “Church? Seriously? The end of the story is church?”
“Not quite.”
The congregation hushed as Mother Celeste entered with the processional and took her place on the altar. “Welcome friends,” she began. “About a hundred years ago, the members of this community came together in this building for our first Christmas Eve. We were blessed, then, to be in a new home. Since that time, our community has grown. The founding families have been joined by newer additions. But we still gather here, to share the same words, and sing the same songs, that people of Earth have been sharing and singing for generations.”
She paused and scanned the rows of pews, apparently meeting the eyes of each person seated there. “Before we begin, I’d like to share with you some other words. Words that aren’t part of the Christmas tradition, but are attached to it. They were read four hundred years ago by a group of men who were on one of the first journeys to Earth’s moon, and they’re from the Book of Genesis.”
She nodded to an unseen media technician, and after a moment, scratchy audio filled the green-garlanded and candle-scented space.
“And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called the Seas: and God saw that it was good.”
Elizabeth listened to the ages-old recording, and – at least for that moment in time – understood her mother’s message, and her father’s dedication to the Star Navy.
Later that night, with bedtime cocoa still staining her lips, she kissed each of her parents goodnight. “Merry Christmas,” she said. “I love you.”
Basil and Zoe replied that they loved her too, and would see her in the morning when they would discover what Santa might have brought.
“Did you know,” Basil asked, once he and Zoe were alone in front of their own crackling fire, “that the Apollo Eight recording would be shared?”
“I did,” Zoe admitted. “Mother Celeste is descended from one of the astronauts. She’s been waiting to share that audio clip since she moved here. She thinks her ancestor would have approved, and I think she’s right.”
“And the ironing board story?”
“Totally true,” she said, “I’ve heard Mom tell me about it only a thousand or so times.”
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.
Notes: The audio clip from the Apollo 8 mission features the voices of William Anders, James Lovell, and Frank Borman. The mass on the ironing board was a memory shared by my mother earlier tonight. You see, my great-uncle Eugene died last night. He was a Franciscan priest, and he was old and sick, so his death is a release in many ways. I don’t have any specific memories of him, except that he was kind and funny, but I wanted to mark his passing and mom’s story gave me the idea.
Out of habit, Jane tossed her keys onto the small table in the entry of her house, forgetting that they might mar the antique surface as they slid across the top. This table, new to her, had been salvaged from her grandmother’s house just before her aunts and cousins had arrived to haggle over the remnants of the old woman’s life.
Grams, as she had called her grandmother for as long as she’d known how to talk, had called the piece of blonde furniture a telephone table, and indeed, it did have a small drawer just large enough to hold a few pencils, an address book, and a scratch pad, even though it hadn’t played host to an actual telephone in more years than Jane cared to count.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Jane moved through her customary evening routine. Coat on the hook by the door, shoes at the edge of the bench, purse slung over its arm. She didn’t bother turning on any lights, but as she padded in stockinged feet across the cold tile floor, she did pause to plug the Christmas tree.
Barely five feet tall, the tree stood in the center of the bay window that gave Jane’s living room much of its charm. She’d meant to hire someone to hang outside lights on the window, but had never gotten around to it, so the tree was the lone representative of Christmas, save for the four empty stockings hanging from the mantle. One was hers, of course, and one would hold the dog’s annual treat, but the other two were for her parents, even though they had made it clear they weren’t doing Christmas that year.
“We can finally afford to bask on the beach in Mexico, Janie,” her mother had said. “You’re almost forty. You don’t need us to have a good holiday.”
Except she did.
Resisting the urge to curl up on the couch and call it a night, Jane went to put sneakers on and release her dog from his crate, accepting the happy sloppy kisses the aging Airedale offered. “Walkies?” she asked the curly-haired canine, who was absolutely on board with that suggestion. He cooperated while she put his harness on, but once the final snap had been clicked into place, he was a blur of frenetic energy once again. “Hang on, Winston,” she coaxed, but it was useless.
Just at the bottom of the porch stairs, Jane and Winston came to a sudden halt. “Sorry,” she said to the man she’d nearly crashed into. “Are you looking for an address?”
“Sort of,” he said. “I just moved into the house across the street, and my daughter – she’s ten – says I have to introduce myself to all the neighbors.”
Jane grinned. “Well, tell your daughter she’s very wise. I’m Jane, by the way, and this is Winston.”
“Oh, I’m Vince. Vincent really, but…”
“Welcome to the neighborhood, Vince.” She scanned the block. “Your daughter isn’t with you?”
“Ah, no,” he said. “She’s with her Mom, actually, until after the holiday. It’s just me this year.”
Something in his expression, in his posture, resonated with Jane. “Listen,” she said. “I’m alone this year, too, but I have a turkey breast I was going to heat. Why don’t you join me?”
“Seriously?” Vince seemed surprised by the offer.
“Well, my dog seems to like you, and Winston is an excellent judge of character.” It was true. The dog had plotzed on the sidewalk and was laying across both humans’ feet.
Vince reached down to give head fusses to the dog. “Well, who am I to argue with such a wise creature. What can I bring?”
“Salad? Cranberries? Whatever you like.”
“I can do that,” he said. “Around two on Christmas Day?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Jane agreed.
She continued on her walk and didn’t even complain when Winston had to pee on every signpost and fire hydrant, instead of just some of them. Maybe Vince would become a friend, and maybe he would just be a good neighbor, but either way, she’d have company for the holiday, and who knew? Maybe in a year or two she’d be hosting an annual gathering of Holiday Orphans.
After the walkies and dinner for both herself and Winston, Jane curled up on her couch with a book and a mug of tea. The lights on the other houses were reflected in her window, and for a change the silence of her house – punctuated only by the soothing sounds of her sleeping dog – felt cozy instead of constricting.
