My grandfather, Rudy, was flying in from New York on Christmas Eve, and Hank (my stepdad) and I were at the airport to collect him. As we waited I thought about how Rudy and Hank loved signing Christmas carols; Rudy would play on my mom’s (his daughter’s) big black piano, and the room was too small to contain Rudy and Hank’s deep voices and the grand piano. Dressed up in a fancy shirt and ascot, I’d stand between them and feel, more than hear, “Good King Wenceslas” — still a favorite, and I still know all the words even though I never carried the tune.
I longed to sing like them and affected a faux baritone completely out of range for my breaking voice. I remember the feeling of hot candle wax dripping on the tin-foil holder as a dozen of us strolled the neighborhood singing, and I remember a heady sense of being part of the fabric of some mysterious tapestry.
That Christmas eve, Rudy’s plane was late, so Hank and I decided to do a little extra shopping, a plan foiled by the lack of shops open at 10 pm the night before Christmas. We ended up at some big drugstore — and went up and down the aisles filling a cart to overflowing with pencils and toothpaste and flashlights and bandaids. Then when we finally got home we stayed up well past midnight and wrapped them pencil by pencil.
I don’t remember how it happened, but the next year we decided that since it had been so fun, we’d go shopping again on Christmas Eve, and so late that night Hank and I again patrolled the aisles of some big drugstore. Again stockings were filled with an array of abundant practicality.
So it continued for 25 years. And now I’m sitting at his place at the dining room table, and feeling his absence, and tears just keep coming up.
Our tradition changed over the years. The times after he and my mom divorced were spare and confusing, but we continued. I think for teen-aged-me our holiday rituals were a kind of prop, something I could use to try and hold him up. Hank was out of work then too, so the cart wasn’t overflowing, but it was something we knew to do, our own bulwark against depression.
Then my baby brother grew to be a man, and my partner became like his big sister, the Christmas Eve tradition morphed into the four of us having lunch then splitting into pairs to shop. Over the years aunts and cousins started to join the Swan Christmas Extravaganza, along with new partners for Hank, and then my brother’s wife. In the last few years we’d have 20 or more of us sprawled around the 14-foot tree. The cast changed but the heart of the play remained.
I think part of my sorrow now is thinking how we lost some of the magic of our spontaneous shopping ritual. While he and I both loved the hours of Christmas Eve shopping, in the last years it was sometimes rushed and a bit obligatory, loaded with unvoiced expectations and conversations that seemed just a bit too complex to start.
Hank was an intermittent gift giver. He’d often just forget one of us, or give us some huge book he wanted for himself — but other times he’d score the perfect 10 on the gift-o-meter. So our stocking frenzy morphed into double-checking his list to make sure he’d actually purchased something desired for each family member (rather than just endless lists of #2 pencils on yellow tablets). On the one one hand I felt impatient with his lack of preparation, but on the other flattered to be the chief elf, to be the reliable one.
Perhaps in a hopeless effort to maintain his own feeling of childhood-christmas-wonder, Hank tended to buy presents for himself. Not only that: He’d wrap them and on Christmas morning exclaim, “Oh, look was Santa brought for me….” and we’d all roll our eyes, and I guess I judged it as selfishness; now I wonder if it wasn’t longing for that feeling of being completely indulged. And now I wonder if that list-making wasn’t his was of treasuring us, if his great pleasure was in the planning, knowing we’d all be around him and connected again.
While he was alive I judged him as ineffective, and became increasingly impatient as all of us grew up, wondering why he wasn’t also. Now that he’s no longer alive I’m either glamorizing or forgiving, and wondering if part of the wonder of Christmas in his house was that he didn’t quite become that responsible adult. That he kept pursuing a dream of childhood.
In any case, no presents he bought himself ever seemed filled the void he felt, and somehow despite all our honest conversations we never really talked about this. So our hours of shopping sometimes had an unspoken tension of him wanting to choose something for himself, and my resenting it, and him knowing that — all unspoken.
Today Hank’s sister Edie mentioned that all her adult life she had a kind of craving for their childhood Christmases – until she started coming to Berkeley and participating in the invention of ritual for a new generation. I suspect that’s true of many of us; we wish for the magic that we experienced as children, but it’s elusive. We can’t receive it again, and we might know that, but we still long for fairyland. But we can give it, we can be part of the creation. When we reinvent tradition, when we take the best from our own childhood and share it, we become threads in the weaving. Edie said that she used to long for that childhood home, but now she brings these elements of ritual wherever she goes, and carrying the ritual makes her feel whole.
That subtle tension was all in the background, and in front was a deep pleasuring in continuing and unfolding the rituals, viewing that tapestry of tradition, and reveling in passing childhood wonder forward. So, through family splitting and joining, years where we couldn’t pay the bills, times of loss and even more of joy — through all these years our Christmas rituals became a kind of anchor. A solid hold in a world where we don’t have much that’s consistent. Christmas here became a declaration that this mixed up crew of people are, in fact, our family.
So this year Hank’s children and grandchildren and his sister and her family are all here in his house to celebrate and grieve. On the 24th we’ll go to our traditional restaurant for delicious Japanese noodles, and then we’ll split off to finish up shopping. I don’t have my usual partner, and thinking of him I’ll regret the times I wasn’t fully present, but mostly I’ll feel overwhelming gratitude for the gift of those 25 years. And the tradition will evolve again.
I think late tomorrow I’ll head out to Walgreens on and pick up some yellow #2 pencils. I’ll sit in the car and miss Hank, then I’ll wrap the pencils one by one and place them in each stocking — so we can all make lists and reflect on the treasure of being a family.
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I’m in Kuala Lumpur eating breakfast in Times Square looking out over the city. All week I’ve been eating spicy Asian food, and today I take some toast with apricot jam. Taking a bite, I’m swept into homesickness and longing for the green gold fields and laughing children of home. Amazing how our senses and emotions are so intertwined, so visceral, and so unexpected.
I could hardly wait to start school and to see if the long summer afternoons had transformed something in me, in us. I had this sense of discovery, of boldly going someplace new — and possibly wonderful.