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Posted December 26, 2023: My first home. Before the log and plaster addition, before fruit trees and spruce trees and willow trees grew into place. Before gardens.
Then it lived as a home for a very long time. But eventually after 80 or so years and many many summers and winters and Christmases, it nearly died. But with living trees growing through the walls and roof, it surely would not ever die until the last vestiges of the happy house returned to the soil.
Here’s the thing. For some time now, I’ve been tired of or depressed by holidays. How to explain since even growing up in a family with limited funds, holidays were special. Fourth of July trips to Lake Bemidji to picnic with Paul Bunyan or up to the Red Lake Indian Reservation to watch the dancing. Easter, with possibly a new dress for church and a big dinner with neighbors or family. Thanksgiving ditto (except for the new dress).
And Christmas. I loved Christmas. I’ve described our Christmases often so will simply say: large green balsam tree, elegantly decorated—I say elegantly because we didn’t have an overload of glittery things and my mother was not a fan of tinsel. When I was very young we had real candles: fat stubby white candles in ancient tin candle holders that were lit—with actual tiny flames to flicker magically and enhance ever so delicately the scent of balsam sap and needles. Christmas eve afternoon decorating the tree, mom’s starting the lefse to be devoured later as we open presents, and preparing the ham/pineapple/sweet potato/sausage/brown sugar stacks that have become our traditional Christmas eve supper. We read the Christmas story (Luke 2: 1-20), open presents, gaze happily at our glorious tree.
I have no photos from my revered childhood Christmases so here are a few of my kids at theirs. Scott,the small boy, all three of us some years later, and finally Steven in a fashionable new outfit I picked up for him at a meeting in Montreal just before the holidays. He hated it.
There were the years when my kids were young and I tried to replicate my childhood version of Christmas—never completely successfully. There were more presents and, for a time, a husband to assemble and help cook…but it would never feel quite the same.
Then there were grandchildren, when I spent alternating years with my sons’ families: so many presents, so much food. Happy times and not dependent on my holiday chops. That was an improvement since my zest for jingling bells had been waning.
It wasn’t easy finding old photos of grandchildren with a Christmas tree somewhere in the background on a hard drive with hundreds of disorganized photo files. (It’s one I carry with me in case I feel the need to create a post wherever I am. I managed to find everyone except Patricia in a Christmas photo, so she and sister Sara are featured at a restaurant where the three of us convened for a holiday supper (and shopping perhaps).
Teresa and Steven, Grand Rapids, Minnesota, early 90s.
Lace (Teresa) and me at a fancy San Francisco hotel for our first high tea. Year ?
Sara. Probably Albuquerque. Happy.
Sara and Patricia. Definitely Albuquerque. Patricia old enough for a wine.
***
The Christmases with mom in the nursing home were, in some ways, the best of my “late” middle-age. Quiet, nothing exciting in the way of gifts or food, but we read and talked and ate our few favorite things like stuffing and sweet potatoes.
Now. Actually, my overall melancholy, bordering sometimes on depression, concerning the holidays is not only the rejection of the ever-increasing hype that capitalism requires to keep over-spending at a fever pitch; it is the sense I can never meet my own expectations of what each holiday, especially Christmas, should be. Of all the holidays, it is only Christmas, in my mind, that that calls for a bit of quiet, at least a few minutes of contemplation, an undefined specialness. Not because it has a religious veneer overlaying its commercial importance, but because it’s family-oriented. It will never be the same though, will it? Because for me an authentic Christmas can only take place in Minnesota with lefse and a fat green balsam from our very own woods…and Mom and Dad and Robert. Spoken like an ancient, I know. But it is how I increasingly feel.
I tried to recreate that scene for a while but I couldn’t. Which makes me sad every single year. But then I read and write, sometimes hanging out on the fringes of family activity because I choose to be moody and lonesome for Christmases Past. But not always. This Christmas has been just fine. Phone calls from sons and grandchildren; scrumptious ham dinner with Robert and Marsha; a good book (Derek Miller’s Radio Life full of post-apocalyptic adventures—uplifting in its own strange way); drives through grand high desert scenery of border country; perhaps a new-tradition of holiday movies begun with RRR, a Bollywood creation of dance, death, and handsome heros, solidifying my long-held conviction that people of East Indian origins and/or citizenship are going to rule the world sometime soon.
I had intended to post more photos of this Christmas, but came upon a file from my last Christmas in Minnesota, about 2009. Usually I visit in summer or fall but would actually rather do winter to escape from the same old sunny chill of New Mexico day after day. Unfortunately, these days, my wimpy brother and sister-in-law spend their winters in warmer climes so I have nowhere to stay for any length of time.
Here, back in the day, are Robert and Marsha; Marsha’s mom, Lydia; old family friends and SNOW…glorious snow.
A cloudy snow-filled visit out to the ‘old place’ so long abandoned but still treasured. It was nice to visit in the winter when its at its loneliest.
Lydia, with a typical Christmas “tree” for adults a little tired of the flim-flam of it all.
Cousin Audrey and Otis.
Barb and Helen. Our friends for our whole lives.
