Of the Christmas gene

Sunday our church goes out to care homes and sings Christmas carols to people like Nora, who manuever hallways in wheelchairs and walkers as they live out their last days in, too often, loneliness and isolation.  I’m glad–and proud– that Nora had a constant stream of visitors in her last months and weeks.  No doubt she knew she was loved very dearly.

But on Sunday, as we moved from place to place, I remember most the hands of these eldest among us.  Resting on the arms of worn chairs and the cold metal of various wheeled contraptions, they were gnarled and spotted and ancient.  Some trembled.  Others were twisted together like roots.

We sang with joy and gusto, even if not so much on key.  Sometimes the songs started too high and we were left squeaking our way through “Gloria” and “Rumpa-pum-pum.”  Some songs we sang two or three times to requests that often had no releationship to the song sung just a moment before.  Reality just a winter house of mirrors inside some minds.

One woman, Francis, was delighted to tears and asked each and every one of us our names, pausing and considering each one carefully.  As we sang her bright eyes swept over and met each one of ours.  For just one poignant second she allowed us through those crinkled windows a glimpse of delight.  The words and the tunes carried her to many places in that short time.  She took us there with her and it was almost enough for any Christmas.

This morning I opened my email and pictures from Gary streamed from Holland to Portland.  One was of a dorky Santa with a wig askew and a Bucholtz smile.  I laughed so hard, but there was a catch in my throat.  He will be home for Christmas soon.  And he has my Christmas gene.

Jenny and Pat and I watched “It’s a Charlie Brown Christmas” and “the Santa Claus 2” last night.   When Snoopy laughs and Linus says, “…and the angel of the Lord…” there is another catch in my throat.  My daughter has that Christmas gene, too.

Somehow all my children will be “home” for Christmas.  With all the terrible losses that have pile up these last weeks, the funerals and memorials, the going through belongings, the collecting of music and pictures…well, how is it that I find myself singing with these new friends to people who reflect so powerfully the last months of Leo and Nora’s lives?  And here gathers my own for this odd Christmas, sandwiched as it is between memorials and life-risking surgery.  A picture of my son arrives through the wires from across the world and brings tears of joy to my eyes.

And I sit by the fire watching Charlie Brown for the third time this Christmas and still I am caught by the history of my daughter sitting just feet away from me, only a blink away from her in Strawberry Shortcake pajamas with Honey Buns and hot chocolate.

I hope that our caroling brought moments like that to our aged and withering audience.  That for just a moment they were transported to their own living rooms and fireplaces and Charlie Brown and hopeful, dreaming, innocent children.   That they will recall laying on the floor outside their children’s door listening to the hushed discussion of Santa and toys and presents, eyes and heart welling with that miracle of being a parent.

That is enough for Christmas for me, no matter what the future brings.

Now go out.  Go out and sing.