I was in Pennsylvania this weekend. I went up to visit my children and grandchildren, with a special desire to see my newest grandson, Reece, who is two years old. He is a ball of energy. It is a joy to watch him having so much fun exploring the world around him. The interesting part of this is that he is the child of my daughter, Julie, who swore to me when she was first married, many years ago, that she would never have children.

Now she is mommy. Quite unplanned by her, three years ago she called and said, “Dad, guess what? I’m pregnant.”  Now she wishes she had listened to me and had children. She is over forty, which puts her in a class for high-risk pregnancy, and her husband does not wish her to take the risk, even though she would like very much to have another child. I think this a sad and unfortunate situation, but I have to accept that it is what it is.

Returning from Harrisburg, I took a detour from Route 15, winding my way down the Baltimore Pike to Evergreen Cemetery, where Julie’s mother is buried with her family. It is hard to believe that she has been gone now for twelve years. Somehow Christmas does not seem quite right without Karen being with me. Perhaps it is the joyful and expansive way in which we celebrated Christmas when she was with us. Not only does Christmas not seem right this year, but it has not seemed so for a long time, beginning with when Karen’s mom died.

After I left the cemetery, I drove to Granite Schoolhouse Road, making the familiar right hand turn I had made hundreds of times before when Mom Musser was alive and living  a  house near the corner of Granite Schoolhouse and Taneytown Road. I stopped in the middle of the country road – a very quiet road on which very few cars drive – and got out to look at a field now full with trees and grass.

                  

Once upon a time a small house rested on this land, beige aluminum siding with a single narrow carport. Martha sold the house to the federal government. In exchange for the money she was given the government was promised that they would take complete ownership of the house when she died. After she passed away, they did so – with a vengeance, not allowing her children to remove the kitchen cabinets. A bulldozer pushed in the walls, caved in the aluminum siding, and dropped the whole mess into the basement, where it was then covered over with dirt.  The family was left with a barren patch of ground which eventually became the lot full of trees in the pictures. You would not know that anyone had ever had a house there.

My mother-in-law never liked me. I made the mistake of one day in her presence spanking “The Golden Boy,” her first grandson. That immediately put me on her enemies list for the rest of her life. She didn’t treat me badly, but every so often she would just unload on me, telling me to my face what she thought of me by bringing up my faults. She didn’t have to look far to find them either. Yet I liked her, perhaps because she was at least honest enough to voice her dislike of me to my face instead of sniping at me behind my back to any ear willing to listen to her litany of complaints.

And I liked the way she celebrated Christmas. We would come down a day or two before Christmas, depending on my work and the location on the calendar of December 25th. The Christmas tree had been up for weeks, decorated with a multitude of ornaments, sitting one year in the corner near the fireplace, another year in the corner by the front door. We would make the forty-five minute trek down Route 15, turning onto Taneytown Road, and then to Granite Schoolhouse Lane where her driveway was the second turn to the left, just past the imposing white clapboard house where the Brown family lived. Sometimes, for various reasons, usually work, I would have to return home to come back later.  Driving down Granite Schoolhouse the long way, from Baltimore Pike, I would find myself looking forward to seeing the little house, sitting in a neat yard filled with birds that Martha always had in abundance at the bird feeder next to the road. There was a feeling, an intangible, that I couldn’t put my finger on but could sense. In retrospect I know it was love. The house would be filled with merriment, laughter, presents, and wonderful food – for Martha was a marvelous cook and went all out at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Somehow, even the occasional outbursts of animus she had towards me were mitigated in the happiness of the season.

I miss that. It was something that I didn’t have in my family as I grew up. It is hard being seventy and not having that anymore. Memories are wonderful, but they can also be quite painful because you can no longer experience that which was so pleasant. The children coming out in excitement to open their presents while Karen and her sister, Shatzie, began preparations for dinner, looking in from the kitchen to share in the excitement of the gifts. Once the turkey was in the oven, they would make space among all the detritus of wrapping paper, boxes, and bows, and take their turn to open their presents, to enjoy the morning, to go through the day in anticipation of the feast yet to come as the smell of roasting turkey filled the small house.

Extra tables would be set up in the living room once the debris of Christmas packaging was cleaned up. We had an awfully big family for Martha’s small house and kitchen table. Around four o’clock, a great feast ensued – turkey, ham, and roast beef, mashed and sweet potatoes, the ever-present green bean casserole -which I honestly can say I liked because it was done so well – and much desert at the end with steaming mugs of coffee.

After that, Jim and I would amble into the living room and turn on the TV, hoping that in the limited channels available at that time, a football game was available for our entertainment. What should have done was to go to the kitching and start helping the womenfolk clean up the mess in the kitchen. We could have said, “Let’s help with the dishes. Let’s help with the clean up.”  But we were pretty much typical men – we would go watch our sports while we left the women to do the dirty work. Then they would sit down around the kitchen table and talk and laugh.

A Christmas at Martha’s house was always a good day, a wonderful day, a day I always looked forward to, and I miss it and wish I could live it one more time. The Christmas memories this year have been bittersweet. When I walked up to Karen’s tombstone, I just stood there for a while before saying a prayer for the repose of her soul. And then, when I bent over to kiss the tombstone, I began to weep. You have to understand how unusual that is for me. I’ve never been a person to show much emotion, and especially not even crying over some incident terribly heart-rending. Crying has always come hard for me, even in times when I knew I should be crying. But at that moment, at that second, touching her tombstone, I missed her dreadfully. I missed the beauty of the season at Martha’s house, along with other days, such as the Fourth of July, when we would have great picnics and even more family members come to visit us from Karen’s large family. I missed everything good Karen made my life to be.

We are scattered now. I haven’t seen three of my children in years. They have estranged themselves from me.  Martha, Karen’s mom, is gone, and Karen not many years after, her lungs destroyed by the thirty-five years of cigarette smoking that gripped her and would not let her quit. And soon, because I am myself no longer young, I will join them. In the meanwhile, I have to live here, with a certain knowledge that is very sad to me – Christmas is gone. At least, the Christmas I have spoken of in these memories.

In looking back, while I did enjoy those Christmases a great deal, I wish I could have been even more in the moment with them. I wish everyone a Merry Christmas today, and I have a simple wish for you: Be in the moment. Stop. Draw every second out and experience it as fully as possible, for it will go and not return to you except in your memories. And may your memories in your old age be pleasant and kind to you.

Time is a cruel master. It pushes us relentlessly forward, not allowing us to remain for long in any happy moment. It is perhaps why the promise of an eternal heaven is so attractive to us. I read somewhere (I cannot locate the quote nor give proper attribution for it), “Heaven is that joyful kiss you wish would never end, never coming to an end. It is the sunset so beautiful that you wish you could stop time and become part of it forever, it is that ache in your heart to be part of never ending beauty.”  That is heaven.

And it is the heaven of a Christmas joy that never ends. Of family, friends, and love that never ends. Of joy that will be with us forever.

So a Merry Christmas to all this year of 2018. From what I wrote, you might think I had a terrible and depressing time this year. I did not. Despite what I wrote, my Christmas has not been bad. I spent time with my children and grandchildren, went to a lovely party filled with friends and laughter. I made some nice new memories, and it has been a good enough and pleasant time.

But overall, it will never again be Christmas on Granite Schoolhouse Lane.