Tag: tradition

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Up on the Roof

Parts of my childhood forever echo with the voice of Chaim Topol. 

If the name doesn’t ring a bell with you, look up a friend who’s into great musicals. Ask them who this Topol guy is. And then prepare to be listening for a long, long time. 

“You mean you’ve never seen ‘Fiddler on the Roof’??” 

Many actors have inhabited “Fiddler’s”: lead role of Tevye, the Russian Jew whose traditional world is beginning to pull apart. Many of them have been fantastic. But if you saw the movie, if you owned the soundtrack album like my parents did (or played it a zillion times like I did), then Topol is almost certainly the Tevye that lives in your mind and heart. A measured pace. A wry humor. An unmistakable voice. 

And now, like so many other greats, what we have left are the memories. 

It’s easy to get pigeonholed in television and film. Adam West became Batman to such an extent that he spent much of his remaining career playing Adam West. Leonard Nimoy wound up writing a book “I Am Not Spock” … and then later a sequel that embraced the inevitable, “I Am Spock.” 

Topol lived in an unusual variation of that world. He got to spend a career doing many other things, some of them light years away from his small-town milkman. (Literally, in the case of his role in “Flash Gordon.”) But he always came back to Tevye, a role he played on stage again and again. By the time he made his last bow in 2009, he estimated he’d played the role over 3,500 times and still loved it. 

An unusual case indeed. But then, “Fiddler” is a very unusual show. 

Spoiler alert for the newcomers- it’s not a happy-ending musical, except in the broadest sense. At its heart, it’s a story about the struggle between identity and change, in times when “the way it’s always been done” has to find ways to adapt. Tevye’s own daughters make choices that force him to reexamine who he is and what’s important to him time and again. And after all the choices and heartbreak, a change that’s bigger than anyone ends up shattering the community, erasing the village that’s endured so much for so long and forcing its former inhabitants to start again in a hundred different places.

It’s powerful. Heartwrenching. And oh, so familiar.

Old expectations turned upside down? A world that looks less and less familiar every day? Families trying to adapt to each other, either strengthening or shattering in the attempt? All of it resonates pretty strongly these days, and these last few years especially. As the internet joke goes, it’s a time when “normal” is just a dryer setting.

But if our change-filled world resonates with Tevye’s mythical village of Anatevka, maybe some of the lessons do as well.

Tevye’s best choices are always the ones that take someone in instead of shut them out. The one time he closes the door on someone asking for acceptance, it tears his family apart. And when he finds a way to re-open that door just a crack, it adds the smallest bit of hope even as his world is scattered to the winds.

Maybe that’s what kept Topol coming back to the story. It certainly keeps drawing me. And if enough of us can reach out with love to each other, even while we’re still trying to figure out who we are and where we belong … maybe that can be enough.

“I do what I can,” Topol once said of the children’s charity work he did in his later life, “otherwise it is a waste of fame.”

Do what you can. With what you have. With all the love you have in you. There are worse ways to spend a life.

And if you can make a little time in it to watch “Fiddler” as well, so much the better.

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Something Missing

Every so often, a quest becomes the thing of legends.  

Like Frodo Baggins and his journey to destroy the One Ring.

Or Luke Skywalker racing to the aid of a princess he’s never met.

Or Scott Rochat … searching for holiday magazines at the grocery store?

Somehow I don’t think I’ll have John Williams composing music for this one any time soon.

By now, Heather’s used to this. Over 22 years of marriage, she knows that the holidays are a magical time for us both. We enjoy it all: the message, the music, the lights, even my annual battles to the death against easily-torn wrapping paper. (“So we meet again, my old foe …”)

She also knows that each year, there will be one detail that threatens to make me crazy.

Sometimes my obsessive quest produces something wonderful, like when I uncovered the exact edition of “The Story of Holly and Ivy” that  Heather used to love as a child, the one with the red-and-green Adrienne Adams illustrations. But most of the time, it just gets me fixated on one minor brushstroke of a bigger picture.

One year, it was the always-around-since-childhood chocolate coins that seemed to have sold out at every store.

Another time, it was a hunt for a pre-lit tree with colored lights. On that holiday season, of course, 99% of plastic pines for sale had lights that were whiter than a Bing Crosby Christmas.

Last year, it became the magazines.

There are certain things I always stuff Christmas stockings with, from the tasty to the ridiculous.  And the collection has always included three magazines each, tailored to each person’s interests. For instance, our ward Missy might get one title with beautiful dresses, one on classic cars, and one about Star Wars or Harry Potter. (Yeah, life with her gets pretty interesting.)

But last year, the magazines went away.

Stores reduced their sections or removed them entirely. Some titles went out of business, others moved online. And a happy holiday task that normally took 30 minutes tops somehow became a sprawling journey to every business in town that might sell a periodical. My internal dialogue got taken over by Gollum: “Must find the precious …”

Why? Because I had a picture in my head of what the season should be. And this minor detail was blowing it up.

No surprise there. We’re good at that. This year, I suspect we’ll all experience it in spades, as we run into used-to-bes that can’t be because of pandemic safety. Tradition is powerful at this time of year, and disrupting any tradition, from the tall to the small, is unsettling.

But then, at its heart, Christmas is unsettling.

That sounds strange, I know. We think of the season as one of peace. But peace means more than just calm and contentment. It’s a restoration, pushing people out of familiar paths and opening their eyes to something larger.

And in almost every tale of the time, from the sacred to the secular, it’s about a missing piece.

It might be Ebenezer Scrooge, discovering he needs to let the world into his heart. Or Charlie Brown finding a quiet truth amidst the seasonal noise. It might be the girl Ivy and the doll Holly searching for each other without knowing why, or terrified shepherds who suddenly see something new and real burn in the skies overhead.

It’s an awakening. Often an uncomfortable one. Breaking the routine usually is.

But from that awakening comes wholeness. Awareness. Growth.

Peace.

Take the risk. Be unsettled. Don’t just look, but see.

That’s how hearts open. It’s how we find each other again, and find ourselves in the process.

That’s a quest worth achieving.

With or without magazines in hand.

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The Best of the Worst

Written Nov. 30, 2019

From one moment to the next, chaos reigned upon the stage. Maybe it was the panicked baby angels and intimidated shepherds. Or Joseph rallying the Wise Men to put a beatdown on Herod. Or Mary wanting to know why she couldn’t name her own baby, anyway.

Missy giggled. I guffawed. And the audience at the Longmont Performing Arts Center rang the rafters with laughter and applause.

The Herdmans had never been better.

If you haven’t yet met the rampaging Herdman children, I have some wonderful remedial reading for you. They first came to life in the children’s book “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” and have since stormed their way across stages and television screens around the country (including the current Longmont Theatre Company production). Whatever the adaptation, the core of the story remains the same – the worst kids in town invade the local church Nativity pageant and turn it upside down.

It’s been a favorite of mine since grade school, and not just because of the crazy antics. This is a story that gets the heart of the holiday absolutely right.

Maybe I’d better explain.

Few things are as powerful at Christmas as tradition. There are songs we always sing, decorations we always put up, fights that spring eternal from year to year. (“I told you, the stockings get emptied after the presents are opened, you weirdo!”) That can be a lot of fun – but it also risks changing a wonderful holiday into something routine.

Christmas was never meant to be a china Nativity set, standing peacefully in the corner, unchanging and undemanding.

It’s meant to be transformative.

Disruptive.

Even a little terrifying.

It’s a story of being cold and tired and needing the help of strangers.

It’s a story of having a calm night shattered by visions you don’t understand, and beings that have to remind you “Don’t be afraid.”

It’s a story of having friends you never expected and enemies who fear you without ever having met you.

Most of all, i’s a warning that routine doesn’t last. That the world – that our world – can be transformed in the most ordinary of places, at the least expected of times.

That’s hopeful for all of us.

On the surface, we get it. We see snow transform a familiar landscape into something new – and maybe a little unnerving if you have to drive it. We put out lights that turn cold darkness into beauty for anyone passing by.

But it goes deeper down. Or it should.

It’s not a season that demands perfection, like a pageant where the manger has to be exactly so. But it does demand perception. It calls on us to see that there’s more to the world than our expectations. It asks us to truly see the least of these, even when it’s uncomfortable, and to go where we’re needed, even when it’s inconvenient. It challenges us to see how the worst may be the root of the best.

Even if it’s kids like the Herdmans.

Maybe even especially then.

And if we miss that opportunity in favor of what we’ve always done, then we’ve treasured the wrapping paper and thrown away the present.

Be uncomfortable. Let go. Step out of the usual dance. It may mean that life is never the same. But that can be the most wonderful and hopeful possibility of all.

And if it comes with the chance to laugh your head off at a warm and hilarious story – well, call it an early present.

And then watch that present carefully. The Herdmans may still be around.

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You Can Set Your Clock By It

Health care can deadlock a Congress. Taxation can set pundits to wrangling. But if you really want to get a room full of people fighting at maximum intensity, there’s nothing quite like an arbitrary tradition.

You know the sort of thing I mean.

“No! We open presents before stockings, not after!”

“What do you mean you don’t use the Oxford comma?”

“I will defend to the death Pluto’s inalienable right to be called a planet.”

Majestic molehills, all of them, and I have summited each of their peaks with an unholy glee to do battle with the incorrigible heretics arrayed against me. But for the greatest level of intensity over the most arbitrary of traditions, it’s really hard to beat Daylight Saving Time.

Our twice-a-year clock fumbling has nothing behind it but history, and a venerable series of mythic justifications. No, it doesn’t help farmers – cows don’t care what time it is. No, it doesn’t save energy – in fact, some studies say it actually uses a little more. And Benjamin Franklin never boosted the concept except as a satire.

So it comes down to “We do it because we’ve always done it.” For some, this might be a sign that we don’t truly need it. But for the truly committed – social media fans, state politicians, and perhaps the hidden space aliens living in the Earth’s mantle – it’s a chance to start two fights: one over whether to stop the clock, and one over where to stop it.

PERSON ONE: “I want to walk my dog after work when it’s still light!”

PERSON TWO: “I don’t want to do my morning bike ride in the dark!”

PERSON ONE: “Oh, just man up and spring back!”

PERSON TWO: “It’s spring forward, you clock abuser!”

PERSON THREE: “Um, I work nights so I don’t really care …”

PERSONS ONE AND TWO: “You stay out of this!”

Each year, the time passes and the debate gets tabled for another few months. Once in a great while, a state will actually vote to freeze the clock (hi, Florida!), but usually it all winds down in muttering and sarcastic suggestions. (“Tell you what – you can have daylight saving as long as we get to move the clocks forward at 4 p.m. on a Friday.”) An opportunity lost, again.

And yet, this too may have its value, for two reasons.

First, if we can actually capture all the heat generated by daylight saving debates over the years, we may have discovered a valuable new energy source.

Second, and more serious, it means we inherently recognize that tradition itself has some value.

Traditions are the stories we tell ourselves. They’re the frame that we set around family experiences to make them our own. They’re the moments that bring people together, whether it’s applauding a fireworks show or singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” They set a rhythm that gives us just a small bit of control over the world around us.

Sure, not every tradition is equally valuable. Some can be outright harmful, especially when pushed on someone who doesn’t want to participate. (No one likes being forced to tell a story.) But the idea has power. And when done right, a tradition can connect people into something bigger than themselves, preparing them to face the world together, tied for a moment to each other and to those who came before.

That’s awe-inspiring.

And even if we all collectively come to our senses and stop the clocks once and for all – you know, actually agree on that great tradition called “time” – we needn’t worry about boredom. There will be other stories, on other days.
Speaking of which – did Pluto get the shaft, or what?

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Ghosts of Christmas Past

Each Christmas, the same lyrics echo on the speakers:

 

“Through the years, we all will be together,

If the fates allow … “

 

And each year, we get reminded of the ones that the fates aren’t allowing to return.

Don’t get me wrong. Christmas Day is my favorite day of the year. From childhood into my early teens, I would sit up all night on Christmas Eve, softly singing carols to stay awake until 6 a.m. That’s the magic moment when my sisters and I were allowed to sneak downstairs and ogle the tree and the presents beneath, though not to awaken Mom and Dad (who usually came down around 7 a.m. when Grandma Elsie started making coffee.).

To this day, it’s still a great day for us to bask in the presence of family, spending quiet moments in the morning with each other before taking off to Heather’s mom or dad or sister and the relatives that have gathered with them. But each time, for just a moment, our minds visit a few others as well.

Some are simply separated by distance, like my parents and sisters in Washington State, with their collection of the little nieces and nephews. Reachable in theory – and maybe someday in practice – but kept apart for now by time, money, and logistics.

Others are a little more final.

Folks like my English grandmother and Heather’s, who brought their own touch to the season, from teasing Christmas carols to full dinners (complete with burned carrots).

Or like Heather’s uncle Andy (the brother of our disabled ward Missy), a lighthearted soul who left the holidays too soon.

Or like Duchess the Wonder Dog, who we still half-expect to hear digging into the wrapping-paper trash and sneaking into the stockings. After all, it’s our first Christmas without her.

For many, the holidays can bring this back powerfully, even painfully. Our own church has a “Blue Christmas” service for when the memories weigh heavily, and I’m sure it’s not the only one. It’s not an easy thing to be reminded of the empty seats at the table, especially if they became vacant during the holidays or not long after.

And yet, as hard as it is, it’s also an odd source of comfort.

It’s a reminder that they’re not truly gone. Not entirely.

OK, so they’re not exactly going to walk through the door bearing a fruitcake in the next five minutes. But at this time of all times, they live on. In hearts. In memories. In a dozen stories that get retold. Gone, perhaps, but not forgotten.

And in that, as much as anything, the Christmas season shows its power.

It’s a time to remember those who showed you love – and to show it in return to those with you, while you can. To draw together those who are close, and remember those who are far. To carry on what you’ve been left, as best as you know how.

It’s not always easy. Sometimes it’s more than a little bittersweet. But it, too, is part of the beauty of the season.

Be open to the memories, whether they’re triggered by an old ornament, a stray song on the radio, or just a piece of wrapping paper that looks like a dog chewed it. If you can, let them lift you up rather than weigh you down. After all, this is the time for loving visitors.

Give a moment to the past. And then, when you’re ready, celebrate in the present.

And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

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It’s About Time

Time marches on. Except about now, when it decides to run an obstacle course instead.

This is when the Great Christmas Invasion continues the offensive it began about three weeks before Halloween, driving Pilgrims and turkeys into a distant corner to mutter and reflect.

This is when baseball peeks ever so briefly into November, long enough to confuse hardcore football fans, and add the sting of frozen skies to a world Series defeat. (Well, as frozen as it ever gets in Los Angeles, anyway.)

And of course, inevitably, this is the time of the Great Sleep Restoration. Of the Real Time Revolution. Of the End to All Clock Mockery.

Or, more simply, the end of Daylight Saving Time. Thank goodness.

I’ve never been a fan of the twice-a-year clock jumping. It saves no energy. It makes drivers a little more groggy and a little less safe. And it confuses dogs and cats across the country who have no idea what the silly clock says, they just know they’re hungry NOW. (Granted, our Big Blake is always hungry now. But go with me on this one.)

I used to offer my lifetime vote to any politician who succeeded in ending the madness … preferably (in my opinion) by falling back and staying back, so an hour of sleep wouldn’t fall permanently into the abyss. And slowly, the country seems to be getting the message. Over the last few years, bills to lock the clock have been seen in Utah, in Canada, even here in Colorado. The latest effort, out of New England, involves three states trying to coordinate a change, and maybe jumpstart a movement.

Granted, none of them have won yet, not counting longtime holdouts like Hawaii and Arizona. But Bill Murray didn’t get it right the first time in Groundhog Day either. Or the second time. Or the … all right, it took a while, OK?

In fact, if there is any value to Daylight Savings at all, it’s in reminding us that time is what we make of it.

As usual, Missy sets the example in our house. For most folks, the Christmas season starts after Thanksgiving (unless you run a superstore, of course). For our developmentally disabled ward, there is never a bad time to play Christmas music. Pop in a Pentatonix holiday album a week after Memorial Day? Why not?

For most folks, an evening activity at 6 p.m. means a certain amount of time on your hands until then. For Missy, it means keeping an eye on the door and the window in breathless excitement, even if it’s 2 in the afternoon, in case the world changes and it’s suddenly time to go.

And of course, the notion of the clock governing bedtime is approximate at best. We manage to hit roughly the same time each night, but the real deciding factors are things like: Is it dark? Have I listened to enough music? Have I had my story yet? Do I feel tired? Scared? Frustrated? Did I get my evening’s worth today?

It can be a little disorienting. But it’s also more than a little freeing, as you start to sort out what HAS to happen now and what can be displaced. Sure, the world goes around, the seasons go by, everything changes and ages. But how we greet it all, how we mark and measure it, how we fill the time and make it our own – that’s up to us. We can make it a mess or a joy. (And since Colorado can have four seasons in 24 hours, we may even get multiple opportunities.)

With that kind of freedom, why spend any of it in reprogramming car clocks and microwaves?

Think about it. Make your time what you want it to be.

And if you want it to be without a certain spring-forward-fall-back ritual – well, that’s clearly an idea whose time has come.

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“Conventional” Wisdom

OK, who else is ready for the pep rallies to be over with?

If you’re an unabashed fan of the Republican or Democratic national conventions, my apologies to the three of you. (Anything will have someone who cheers for it – I give you the Oakland Raiders as Exhibit A.) But I suspect I’m not alone on this one. Like most former reporters, I’m something of a political junkie, but when it comes to getting to the end of convention season, my inner 6-year-old starts to wake up, kick the back of the driver’s seat and ask repeatedly “Are we there yet?”

If the conventions served an actual purpose, I could probably forgive some tedium. Life isn’t french fries and ice cream, after all; not everything that’s necessary is going to be fun as well. But I’m having a hard time seeing what the reason could be, other than to demonstrate how a political party can blow through $64 million in a week.

“To choose a presidential candidate?” That ship sailed a long time ago. Thanks to the modern system of primaries and caucuses, the conventions are little more than an expensive rubber stamp for a choice that voters made long ago.

“To introduce the candidate to the nation?” Once upon a time, yes. But we’ve had folks campaigning for over 15 months. If someone has been avoiding the major players for that long, are they really going to tune into two weeks of infomercials now? (The RNC’s mediocre television ratings suggest otherwise.)

“To get a ‘bounce’ for our candidate?” Traditionally, the saturation coverage of a political convention has caused a candidate to gain in the polls as they get promoted and their opponent vilified. But as the political website FiveThirtyEight.com has noted, that effect has gotten smaller over the years and tends to be canceled out quickly now that the parties hold their events right after each other. These days, a bowling ball has more bounce than most national conventions.

“Because we’ve always done it this way?” Pretty much. Never underestimate the power of inertia, especially when it puts on its best clothes and calls itself “tradition” instead.

I’ll grant you, this is $64 million apiece that isn’t being spent on more annoying political ads – or rather, is being spent on one big multi-day commercial that’s announced in advance and easier to avoid. And asking a campaign to not spend money is like asking my dogs to not eat crayons; it’s a good idea, but it’s just not going to happen.  So unless we come up with an alternative, canceling the conventions simply means stuffing our mailboxes with more fuel for the fireplace and our phones with more requests for “Just a moment of your time.”’

It’s time for something … well, unconventional. And I have an idea.

A few years back, when Colorado seemed ready to burn itself to the ground, I suggested that both campaigns cancel their conventions and put the money they saved into disaster relief instead. That got a flood of support from readers and about as much attention as you’d expect from the campaigns. But if we revise the plan and give ourselves enough lead time, maybe we can save our sanity in 2020.

Let’s have the campaigns put their money where their mouths are.

You want to see America’s space program revive? Take the time and cash you would have normally spent on a convention and put it into a few school STEM programs instead.

Do you want more attention for Americas’s working poor? Pour your convention budget and volunteers into an area’s local utility relief efforts, or their housing assistance program.

Take that platform and make it more than just words. SHOW us what’s important to you for a week by your actions.

Will it be for the cameras? Of course. Will it be self-serving? Probably. But it’ll get something done and leave a mark in a way that no overhyped balloon drop ever could.

Pep rallies are fun for a little while. But every sports fan knows it’s all about the game.

Let’s get the players on the field and see what they can do.

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Do I Feel A Draft?

As a species, we humans are really good at hanging onto silly traditions.

For example, there’s the bizarre idea that groundhogs are expert meteorologists.

Or the concept that our lives are immeasurably improved by adding or subtracting an hour of sleep every year. (As always, I promise to give my vote for life to the politician who succeeds in killing Daylight Saving Time.)

But for sheer useless levels of why-the-heck-do-they-still-do-that, it’s hard to beat registering for a non-existent draft.

Most of you know what I’m talking about, especially my fellow male Americans who have turned 18 since 1973. We’re the group who at one time, under the dire penalty of law usually reserved for the destruction of mattress labels, have had to register for … well, essentially nothing. Once upon a time, that small piece of paper could have gotten you sent to a strange land with a deadly weapon. Today, your library card carries more potential to change your life (especially with my overdue fees).

For over 40 years, it’s been a ritual without meaning, sort of like discussing the chances of a Denver Nuggets NBA championship. So naturally, there’s a chance we may expand it.

Yes, really.

Starting this year, American women became eligible to serve in combat roles for the first time. So naturally, in February, someone in Congress decided that meant women should also be eligible for the draft. If, you know, there were a draft. Which there isn’t likely to ever be. But still – the piece of paper must be filled out, yes?

But there’s also a competing bill, drafted (my apologies) in part by two Colorado congressmen, Democrat Jared Polis and Republican Mike Coffman, and which got a hearing on the radio airwaves this week. This one would also make men and women equal in the eyes of Selective Service … by abolishing Selective Service altogether.

Staggering. I mean, think of all the pencils that would suddenly no longer have a use!

I suppose continuing the Selective Service registration for our 18-to-25-year-olds might make some sense if there were any realistic chance that this country might revive conscription again. And let’s face it – there’s a better chance of seeing Peyton Manning change his mind and come back for one more season with the Denver Broncos than there is of seeing Uncle Sam revert to a draft. (Given recent news, it looks like there’s a better chance of seeing Brock Osweiler come back, too, which is another story and requires paying attention to a different sort of draft altogether.)

Conscription is really good at putting together a really large army really fast. When your biggest threat is another nation-state with a big army of their own, it’s hard to beat for effectiveness. Think of Revolutionary France, surrounded by foes (and then deciding to do a little conquest themselves). Or the Union and Confederacy, locked in mortal combat. Or the 1940s U.S.A., needing to quickly bulk up its forces to take down Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

But warfare has changed. Society has changed. In an age of fighting terrorists, insurgents, and other irregular combatants, it’s not as useful a tool. The last time we put conscription to use, we not only generated a large army, we also generated protests, trips to Canada, and really bizarre stories of how so-and-so managed to avoid the draft. (My personal favorite involved a friend who was called for his draft physical during Vietnam, only to be marked 4-F when someone forgot to plug in the device that was supposed to give him his hearing test. “Raise your hand when you hear the tone.” “Uh … OK.”)

We have a volunteer force now, a highly-trained force of people who actually asked to be there. It’s worked pretty well. Barring a massive change in historical trends, it’s liable to keep doing so.

So why keep the pretty, useless (and pretty useless) cards?

Real bipartisan cooperation seems to be pretty rare these days. When we get it, maybe we should listen. By all means, make men and women equally eligible for Selective Service – as in, not eligible at all.

And then, once we’ve got that under our belt, let’s do something about that lost hour of sleep, OK?

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Christmas Presence

“He had eaten most, talked most and laughed most. But now he simply was not there at all!”

— J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Hobbit”

 

Every year, my sisters and I knew that to wake up Christmas, we had to wake up Grandma Elsie.

We planned it with the skill of a military operation. I would stay awake through the night on Christmas Eve, softly singing carols to myself in order to stay awake. At 6 a.m. – the earliest time we were allowed up, amidst warnings that would chill the blood of Jacob Marley – I would wake Leslie. She would wake Carey. And together, we would let our rambunctious dog into the basement where Grandma slept, so that she could make coffee and trade silly songs with us while waiting for the caffeinated odor to rouse Mom and Dad.

It was her English-accented voice that taught us the words to “Here We Come A-Wassailing.” It was her presents that always included a package of miniature chocolate Santas. She was often the one who invited us to Christmas Eve services and always the one who would have a margarita with Christmas Eve dinner at the Armadillo, our standby restaurant on Dec. 24th for over 30 years.

And this year, it’s her absence that’s felt most around the Christmas tree.

It’s our first Christmas without Grandma. It still feels strange to say or write it. It felt strange back on Thanksgiving, when my Dad’s voice quavered slightly as he remembered her while saying grace. It was an occasion with good food, good family and lots of squirming toddlers – just the sort of environment she loved most.

The place she would once have been at the heart of.

They say the holidays can be the hardest time. I had no idea how true that was until now. We’d had an empty place at the table before – once, when my new job in Kansas had me working on the night of the holiday, and a few times since after Leslie moved to Washington and couldn’t join us as frequently.

But those were small things by comparison, shadows that could be put to flight if needed. All of us knew that, if it were necessary to have the whole crew at the old house, we would find a way there.

Not so easy this time.

It may be most powerful now because of the ritual. Christmas is the time when traditions wake and walk again, when we do things the way we’ve done them for years upon years. Favorite movies, favorite meals, favorite memories. The weight of that habit can become mighty, as Heather and I discovered our first Christmas, when we debated whether stockings were emptied before presents or afterward. (I still think I was right.)

But when the time comes to walk that ages-old dance again, there’s suddenly a step missing. A skip in the music.

And it makes the absence, the presence, more noticeable than ever.

Perhaps that’s as it should be. I’ve always had a disdain for “getting over it” or “moving on.” Memories should remain, just as love remains. How horrible to even contemplate forgetting, how hideous the thought of putting that memory away, like an unneeded ornament in a taped-up cardboard box.

But memory doesn’t have to be joyless, either.

Grandma loved this time of year. She may have had mixed feelings about the snow – or even spectacularly unmixed feelings – but she never failed to take joy in the lights, the music and especially the gathered family. She would not have wanted that joy to end, nor should it.

Not even when it needs to live side-by-side with grief for a while.

It’s OK to cry. It’s OK to remember.

But it’s also OK to celebrate.

And so, as we scramble to gather presents, I’ll also stop to mind a Christmas presence. Maybe even sing an off-kilter carol or two.

I’ll wake up her memory yet again.

And with it, wake up Christmas one more time.

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A Light Matter

It still feels wrong.

It’s like the Grinch that stole Boxing Day. Or Ralphie getting a Nerf gun under the tree. Or Santa Claus taking to the skies in a B-52. (“We have chimney acquisition!”)

But there’s no avoiding it. This Christmas, after a years-long struggle, I’m running up the white flag – preferably with multicolored lights attached.

This year, for the first time, Casa Rochat is getting a pre-lit tree.

OK, I know, I’m a little late to this party. There’s probably enough pre-lit wattage in the world right now to make the words “THIS WAY TO BETHLEHEM” visible from space, along with the related GPS coordinates.

But to me, it always seemed like cheating. There’s a right way to do Christmas lights, and that’s to drag out a series of dented cardboard boxes, untangle 17 miles of electrical cord, and solemnly intone the Ritual Seasonal Words Of Profanity before finally invoking the phrase that makes everything perfect:

“Honey … do you have a minute?”

Heather, you see, was my ace in the hole. My wife is a past master of Christmas  light spacing, trained by her father in the arcane arts of making a tree “glow from within.” No gaps. No globs. And usually, no doubt about which way her blood pressure was going as she sought perfection.

By the end, this was a tree that knew it had been decorated. With love, attention and borderline insanity.

As Heather’s back began to develop problems, I became a larger part of the crew. Which usually meant that our tree got decorated twice – once by me, and once by Heather fixing the mistakes I had made.

“Honey, I really think it looks …”

“Scotty, there’s a huge gap right in the middle. It’s really obvious.”

“Uh … gap?”

“Here, let me do it …”

Well – it’s the thought that counts, right?

But this year, things came to a head. Repeated topplings by our canine companions Big Blake and Duchess the Wonder Dog meant that our old plastic pine had gotten a little ragged. Heather’s back hadn’t gotten any better since our last tree. Mine had gotten quite a bit worse.

So – surrender.

And not without regrets.

I can feel a few heads nodding here. We may be a minority these days, but I know there’s still a solid chunk of people that mistrusts making something too easy, who insist on doing things ourselves even when it no longer makes sense. Maybe it’s a leftover strain of Puritanism, a belief that if you haven’t suffered over it, it doesn’t really count.

And I still believe there’s a value in that, of putting something of yourself into what you do. That’s why I continue my long war with Scotch tape and wrapping paper, producing the most awkwardly-wrapped presents in the Western Hemisphere, rather than simply buying a gift bag. No one can doubt that time, effort and love were spent. (Notice I did not say skill.)

But when the time comes – so be it. There’s no shame in bowing to necessity. And while my stubbornness may be a bit ridiculous, at least it’s also ensured that it wasn’t done … er, lightly. That there was a reason beyond simple convenience.

That sort of close examination isn’t a bad thing. At any time of year.

So bring on that glowing tree. I’m sure it’ll be as tall and welcoming as anything we’ve raised before.

Especially once Heather gets through fixing it.