The Ghosts of Christmases Past & Present

11 p.m. on Friday and my first dinner for Christmas is done, put on for friends.  We had a large stuffed chicken and honeyed carrots, with nog, wine, 12-year-old rye and very little conversation about politics.  Mostly, talked about music and writing, philosophy and here and there, family and stories from the past.  Good times.

I haven't much energy left but I felt compelled to write a moment about this strange series I'm writing.  I understand perfectly the absurdity of it all — and I certainly appreciate how much opportunity it gives me to talk about myself, my early life, my troubles and strife, and all the good things that make for a good old-fashioned inflated ego.  I can only say that it's what's on my mind at present.  I hope that it rings clear that these are not times I'd ever want to relive, nor are they things I feel nostalgic about.  I'd enjoy seeing Mr. Leavitt or Mr. Mullen again, certainly; but given the premise, it would be impossible to relate to, or be friends with, any of those friends I had at that time.  I cannot, as some writers imagine is possible, believe that I could simply forget every lesson I've received over the last fifty years so I could "play" with a bunch of children that, at best, I have few memories about.

Though perhaps that's an element in this investigation that spoils the reader's pleasure ... that I refuse to play blind man when describing with my parents were like, or the rest of my teachers, or the world at large.  For the record, my parents weren't monsters.  Later, my father would knock me around with his fists once he'd lost all ability to intimidate me with his voice, and my mother would retreat into her shell whenever faced with a moment of stress ... but they did not drink, or gamble, or fail to pay the rent or set out to maliciously humiliate myself or my siblings.  Their version of "love" was fully based on the principle that their responsibility towards their children was to ensure they had a good life ... and therefore my parents pounded the drum of school and church and work for work's sake, all-fired certain that the best way to drive children towards a university, a professional career, a house and a family was to give no other options to that plan, and to ground us, intimidate us, and restate their position hundreds of times until our growing old enough to understand how much of it was really bullshit that had been taught to them, which they had failed to recognise as such.  Or maybe they always knew, but hoped and prayed they were wrong.

Much they tried to teach me stuck — but nearly always in ways they didn't intend.  My father repeated constantly that I "needed to take responsibility" for things, but he meant school and my grades and the respect I had for teachers.  I interpreted it as taking responsibility for what I believed, for helping others who could not help themselves, that I was responsible to the truth about the cruelties and misery in the world ... these being all sorts of esoteric things my father didn't give a damn about.  I'm not nostalgic about my father; I'm not in love with my father as a man, or as my progenitor; because after all this time I still think he was wrong.  I think that, in the end, he was a very selfish man, someone who worked hard and got his, and had very little time to spare for others unless that sparing in some way helped himself.

They had a very comfortable and contented life.  They never lost their home, they were never broke, they never lacked for the money to do the things they wanted ... and despite heart troubles in my mother, who did suffer on account of that, after being given 3 years to live in 1977 she went ahead and lived 35 years instead.  As much trouble as she had, medical science kept pace and kept her alive year after year.  She saw her children grow up and marry, and she was given six grandchildren.  Her house was full every Christmas; her children lived in the same city with her and neither she nor my father ever had to live out the lyrics of Cat's in the Cradle.  They'd been married for 54 years when she died; as far as I know, neither ever had an affair on the other; and though they quarrelled, they were there for each other, through good times and bad.

It is a sin for many people not to speak of one's parents with reverent tones.  It's a sin not to want to return to the foolhardy dimwittedness of childhood, when we were mesmerised by shiny objects and remarkably simple things.  It's a sin not to pay lip service to the glories of some past decade in which we were children, as if any decade in human history — ever — has been worth speaking about in glowing terms.  Nostagia is bunk.  For those readers out there who had great and wonderful parents, who have their backs up reading this for the sin I've committed in no longer loving mine, wake up please and realise that there are untold hundreds of millions of children in the world who have terrible parents.  I was not treated well, kindly, generously, patiently or lovingly by mine, for all their abundance.

I have no desire to be as ignorant as a child again; I don't yearn for the shallowness of childhood games and dreams.  I like being educated and aware.  I am enormously grateful for the wisdom I've acquired.  I hold dear every soul who's taken the trouble to teach me, help me, be gracious onto me and give me reason to believe in the goodness in the world — a goodness I can experience and enjoy, right now, without the need for blinders nor wistful fantasies about a time that never actually existed.  I don't need or want the memory of friends long gone away ... I can walk ten paces from where I sit at this moment and seize hold of my Tamara, squeezing her with love and asking if there's anything she wants or needs, which I am pleased and honored to provide, if she's ready to name something.  It is in this now that I'm happy; and it's with that happiness in hand, that I've built over the course of my life stone by stone and hug by hug, that I can comfortably stab and maim a past I have no special love for.

To me, it's a problem to solve.  If it were such-and-such a time, and this were my goal, these would be my obstacles and these would be my assets.  I am deconstructing.  And because I am, I am happy.

Forgive me, dear reader.  Let me finish, since I don't know if I'll write again before the 25th, by wishing you all a Merry Christmas.  May you all spend it as you wish, with people you love, who love you, and may this year be memorable for you in all the years hence that you have to spend.