A Christmas Tale

A lot of people never really understood the depth of love Mom and Dad had for each other. These people are those who think love is just a shallow emotion or something that must be verbally expressed in the formulaic "I love you" verbiage. Sure, those things are nice trappings...but they are hardly deep. Numerous people who make a point of saying "I love you" dozens of times a day and "feel" so much for their partner end up divorced when problems, often quite manageable ones, arise. Conversely, even when Mom was fighting breast cancer, was spending her time in chemotherapy, etc., there was never even a thought of divorce or anything other than providing mutual support and nurturing.

Not that it was some fairy-tale relationship where the biggest difficulty was figuring out whether to wear the rose-colored gown or the white gown to the ball. No, they had problems...there were money problems, time problems, health problems, family problems...but they dealt with them. They worked together to figure out solutions. I cannot stress enough how they worked together on these things. There was no, "This is how it should be so that is how it is" type stuff...there was a meeting of the minds, a discussion, a comparison of possible solutions with probable effects on the family and their long term goals...and then they tried stuff.

But there were some really, really good times, too. And there was a lot of thoughtfulness, care for each other, and demonstrations of such. And this is the story of one of those times...and how it almost went horribly, horribly wrong.

We had a tradition of decorating the tree where Mom would put on the tree topper, then each kid got a turn putting on their favorite ornament, then their second favorite and so on until the tree was decorated. It was really a family affair. A lot of times Dad would sit there watching and playing Christmas Carols on his guitar.

One year he gave me a special ornament to hang on the tree. I put it on the back, kind of hidden against the wall. It was a gift for Mom of something he knew she really, really wanted, but it was nothing you could really wrap...it was banjo lessons.

No, I do not have any idea why she wanted them. But I do know how much she wanted them. And she knew there was no way we could afford them. I think it really shows how much Dad thought of her, because guitar lessons were something he only ever did for people in the church or as a way of talking to people about God. But he also knew this lady Jan who taught the banjo really wanted to learn guitar, so he traded guitar lessons for banjo lessons. Some of his precious time being devoted to something he did not really want to do so he could get something Mom really wanted. That said a lot to me and it had...and continues to have...an effect on how I deal with people...not just Emily, but also other people.

Anyway, Christmas came and went. We had fun with stuff, had fun eating magnificent food...oh, I wish I could make fudge and peanut brittle sans peanuts like Mom did...the house smelled great, the food tasted great, we had a great family time. We kids, being kids, were pretty interested in what we got, not so much in what Mom & Dad got.

New Years rolled around and out went the tree. One day it was time to really get rid of the tree, so we were going to burn it. And here comes the portion of the story that will drive a large percentage of the population nuts. I wanted to burn it because I had been saving up plastic milk jugs. I know, I know...non-sequiter.

Not really. See, we had a burn barrel that concentrated the fire. So while burning stuff, I liked to put milk jugs on the end of a stick and hold them over the fire. The jugs would melt in the most interesting shapes...I know, I know, a horrible, stupid idea for the environment, and frankly pretty stupid and dangerous. And when I got caught doing it, I would get in trouble. Being stubborn...I still did it.

Anyway, come time to burn the tree and the wrapping paper and whatever...and I am old enough that this was prior to the recycling paradigm to have hit, so we thought we were doing well to keep garbage out of landfills...and there I was, milk jugs ready. I started pulling limbs off the tree and feeding them to the fire when lo and behold...there was Mom's special gift. I had forgotten about it. I don't know if Sue even knew about it. Dad had forgotten it...he and Mom pretty much got each other something small, had each of us kids get them each something small, and the bulk of their efforts went into us kids, so that is not as surprising as it might sound.

Well, I was very excited, grabbed the hand-written little tag telling her she had banjo lessons. Mom was pretty excited too...she cried a little bit. It was a great gift and a great moment. And it showed a lot about their relationship, too, because Dad was almost as excited to give that gift as Mom was to receive it.

Indirectly, it led to my chess career. But that is another story for a different time. This one is just a nice little Christmas story about possibly the coolest Christmas gift Dad ever gave Mom and how it showed how he felt about her.