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| Power Style Wellness Connections |
Holiday Magic
By Mary Cartledgehayes
There is a magic that will transport you “home.
”WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR THE HOLIDAYS?
I used to know the answer to this question without
thinking. For 32 years, I was at home on
Christmas Day. Many of those years included my
husband, Fred, and his three children as well as my daughters and
assorted grandchildren as they arrived. Like all families with imagination,
we invented our own ceremonies. For instance, we always had a moment
of silence in honor of the jar-cap-with-colored-feathers ornament Tara
made in fourth grade. I would prepare more deviled eggs than we could
possibly eat, and then we’d eat them all. Later in the day, the five adult
children would crowd together to block my view of the refrigerator and
compete to see who could devise the most obscene haiku with the
Magnetic Poetry Kit.
After Fred’s death, everything had to be re-invented from scratch. That
first Christmas, in 2000, I replaced our usual graceful blue spruce with a
scrawny white tree decked with blue lights that I grabbed up on sale at a
discount store. In the years that followed, I’d drive to one of my daughter’s
houses on Christmas Eve, and we’d open our gifts to each other. I’d spend
the night there, arise with the family before daybreak to see Santa’s
largesse and then drive the few minutes to my other daughter’s house to
do the same with her family.
I moved to Louisville in 2004. Get-togethers looked a bit dicey that year
because of the blizzard that shut down western Kentucky and eastern
Indiana just before Christmas. Luckily, I’d met my compadre by then, and
his driving skills were a match for the weather. We did our celebrating with
my family, and then we drove on to his hometown. His parents and siblings
were kind and welcoming toward me. The only difficulty was that, after 30
years of being an official grown-up at holiday gatherings, I was suddenly
one of the kids. Nevertheless, I had a lovely, albeit peculiar, time.
The next year, work schedules precluded the drive to South Carolina. I
took a deep breath and more or less accepted the reality. At least I
thought I had, until Christmas Eve. I’d sent flannel jammies for everybody
back home, and late that evening was musing over how cute they’d surely
look the next morning. Then the phone rang. It was Jennifer, my younger
daughter.
“Mama?”
“Hi, Jennifer. Where are you?”
“We just got home from Tara’s, and I’m calling to tell you how weird it was
that you weren’t there with us.”
“Uh huh,” I agreed.
“I’ve never spent
a Christmas without you, and I hate it.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Tara does, too. She kept saying, ‘In my whole life, I’ve never not seen
Mama at Christmas.’ I kept saying, ‘Me, too.’”
“But did y’all like your new jammies?” I asked and marveled at my own calm.
My surprise fizzled out an hour or so later when I figured out the reason I
wasn’t upset. Oddly enough, I found myself expecting to be transported in
my sleep from Kentucky to South Carolina.
“How is that supposed to work?” my compadre asked.
“By magic,” I assured him.
“It’s not going to happen,” he said, delicately.
“I know,” I agreed, “but that doesn’t change the way I feel.” Apparently my
psyche found a suspension of the rules of time and space more likely than
the prospect of not seeing my sweet girls.
No magic carpet appeared that night, not even in my dreams, nor did
Santa offer me a ride in his sleigh. As you no doubt expected, I woke up
Christmas morning in Kentucky. But here’s something odd: I woke up far
from home, yet content.
How strange.
Did I miss seeing my grandchildren? Heartily. Did I miss laughing with my
daughters? Absolutely. So why was I not disconsolate?
To begin with, as I’ve learned slowly, over time, different doesn’t always
mean worse. Sometimes it just means different. But there’s more to the
explanation.
Home: what does the word mean, anyhow? Is it a place? A person? A state
of mind? For me, it’s all of the above. Home is my apartment in Kentucky,
my parents’ house in Ohio, and my daughters’ houses in the Carolinas.
Home is my compadre, my folks, my children. And in some ordinary,
wondrous moments, it’s familiar handwriting on an envelope, a voice on
the phone, a memory.
What am I doing for the holidays?
I don’t know yet, but I do know that magic will happen, and I will be home.
By Mary Cartledgehayes
There is a magic that will transport you “home.
”WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR THE HOLIDAYS?
I used to know the answer to this question without
thinking. For 32 years, I was at home on
Christmas Day. Many of those years included my
husband, Fred, and his three children as well as my daughters and
assorted grandchildren as they arrived. Like all families with imagination,
we invented our own ceremonies. For instance, we always had a moment
of silence in honor of the jar-cap-with-colored-feathers ornament Tara
made in fourth grade. I would prepare more deviled eggs than we could
possibly eat, and then we’d eat them all. Later in the day, the five adult
children would crowd together to block my view of the refrigerator and
compete to see who could devise the most obscene haiku with the
Magnetic Poetry Kit.
After Fred’s death, everything had to be re-invented from scratch. That
first Christmas, in 2000, I replaced our usual graceful blue spruce with a
scrawny white tree decked with blue lights that I grabbed up on sale at a
discount store. In the years that followed, I’d drive to one of my daughter’s
houses on Christmas Eve, and we’d open our gifts to each other. I’d spend
the night there, arise with the family before daybreak to see Santa’s
largesse and then drive the few minutes to my other daughter’s house to
do the same with her family.
I moved to Louisville in 2004. Get-togethers looked a bit dicey that year
because of the blizzard that shut down western Kentucky and eastern
Indiana just before Christmas. Luckily, I’d met my compadre by then, and
his driving skills were a match for the weather. We did our celebrating with
my family, and then we drove on to his hometown. His parents and siblings
were kind and welcoming toward me. The only difficulty was that, after 30
years of being an official grown-up at holiday gatherings, I was suddenly
one of the kids. Nevertheless, I had a lovely, albeit peculiar, time.
The next year, work schedules precluded the drive to South Carolina. I
took a deep breath and more or less accepted the reality. At least I
thought I had, until Christmas Eve. I’d sent flannel jammies for everybody
back home, and late that evening was musing over how cute they’d surely
look the next morning. Then the phone rang. It was Jennifer, my younger
daughter.
“Mama?”
“Hi, Jennifer. Where are you?”
“We just got home from Tara’s, and I’m calling to tell you how weird it was
that you weren’t there with us.”
“Uh huh,” I agreed.
“I’ve never spent
a Christmas without you, and I hate it.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Tara does, too. She kept saying, ‘In my whole life, I’ve never not seen
Mama at Christmas.’ I kept saying, ‘Me, too.’”
“But did y’all like your new jammies?” I asked and marveled at my own calm.
My surprise fizzled out an hour or so later when I figured out the reason I
wasn’t upset. Oddly enough, I found myself expecting to be transported in
my sleep from Kentucky to South Carolina.
“How is that supposed to work?” my compadre asked.
“By magic,” I assured him.
“It’s not going to happen,” he said, delicately.
“I know,” I agreed, “but that doesn’t change the way I feel.” Apparently my
psyche found a suspension of the rules of time and space more likely than
the prospect of not seeing my sweet girls.
No magic carpet appeared that night, not even in my dreams, nor did
Santa offer me a ride in his sleigh. As you no doubt expected, I woke up
Christmas morning in Kentucky. But here’s something odd: I woke up far
from home, yet content.
How strange.
Did I miss seeing my grandchildren? Heartily. Did I miss laughing with my
daughters? Absolutely. So why was I not disconsolate?
To begin with, as I’ve learned slowly, over time, different doesn’t always
mean worse. Sometimes it just means different. But there’s more to the
explanation.
Home: what does the word mean, anyhow? Is it a place? A person? A state
of mind? For me, it’s all of the above. Home is my apartment in Kentucky,
my parents’ house in Ohio, and my daughters’ houses in the Carolinas.
Home is my compadre, my folks, my children. And in some ordinary,
wondrous moments, it’s familiar handwriting on an envelope, a voice on
the phone, a memory.
What am I doing for the holidays?
I don’t know yet, but I do know that magic will happen, and I will be home.
