‘Tis the Season
I remember looking out my window late one night some 45 years ago. It was after midnight. I should have been asleep, but I had spent the last few hours listening to my AM clock radio turned low and reading another Tarzan adventure.
It was the first snow of winter.
A streetlamp stood silent vigil on the corner half a block from my house. My breath fogged the window as I watched fat snowflakes flutter in and out of the yellow light on their way to the ground. The pristine snow quilted the earth in a white robe of silence. For a time, the world would be coated in a veneer of calm. It would wake up soon. The soft blanket of soft powder would become brown frozen sludge, turning the winter wonderland grey and depressing.
But for the moment, the predawn silence held the magic that has enthralled children since time began. Before the mundane practicality of shoveling the walk or scraping the windshield, before work and school and divorces and war, before Santa Claus died, before the world became dark and the bills needed paying, there were twinkling lights and the mystical preternatural silence of newly fallen snow and the hope and joy in things unseen and yet to be.
Christmas was on the way. There were a few more days of school, and then the blessed two-week break would be upon us. The holiday tree stood in the corner of the living room. A tsunami of tinsel hung off every branch, sure to clog the vacuum cleaner sometime after the new year. Red and green lights twinkled softly among silver and red Christmas ornaments. Presents were stacked underneath, full of mystery and smelling of cellophane tape and pine.
Danny, our stepdad, was a dark and brooding alcoholic pedophile prone to random outbursts of violence, both verbal and physical. One would expect the holidays to be full of sadness and worry, endlessly walking on eggshells like the rest of the year.
But we were kids.
Danny be damned, we were still kids.
We eagerly anticipated all the Christmas cartoons—Frosty, Charlie Brown, and Santa Claus. We knew all the words to the Heat Miser/Snow Miser show tune from The Year Without a Santa Claus. UPS dropped off a massive box from Grandma and Grandpa, adding to the pile of presents under the tree.
Of course, we were still wary. Danny was in his early thirties but had the impulse control and mood swings of a teenager. The spirit of Christmas lightened his mood, making him seem almost happy. He took us all Christmas shopping and played Christmas songs on the record player. We had seen all this before, so we knew this holiday giddiness was temporary.
But we were kids, and we went with it.
For a brief time, there was warmth in the house. It was the only time we looked forward to coming home from school or anywhere else. It felt like home should feel—like a refuge, like hope.
Mom even looked happy. She watched Danny get in the season's spirit and once again hoped that he would somehow turn into the man she wanted him to be and stop being the monster he was. She laughed along with him and us kids, but the sadness in her eyes never truly went away.
All these years later, I lay awake sometimes. That age-old frustration of time and loss and what could and should have been compresses my heart and reignites old defenses best left on battlefields covered in snow. I see her wearing that melancholy smile, and I desperately wish that I could go back in time and take that pain away from her. I would look at her with my old man’s eyes, recognizing the mask she wore because I had worn the same one at one time or another.
I would hug her tight and squeeze all the pain and shame from her soul and replace it with peace.
Oh, that I could.
But we are kids, dammit.
No matter what we believe or don’t believe, the hope of the season blankets each of us like newly fallen snow, calming the noise in our hearts and allowing us to believe that peace is not only possible but is our birthright.
We will wake on Christmas day, eyes bleary with sleep, coffee in our hands, and embrace the joy we all deserve.