Bringing Christmas Home - connie

This is the Christmas story I started but never finished, it's the story that needed to be told (as Amy would say).

Bringing Christmas Home
“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” ~Dr Seuss

The Grinch was on to something, Christmas always comes, in times of plenty and in times of want, with bells and whistles or in the most silent of nights, Christmas comes. This is a truth I learned on Christmas Eve, 1976.

It was my first Christmas as a single parent and oh how I wished that Christmas wouldn’t come. It just couldn’t come, there was no money for gifts, my family all lived out of state, and I had no idea how I was going to get the lights on the roof top or buy and haul a Christmas tree. Scared, lonely and the mother of a seven year old girl, it just wasn’t going to happen. But, of course, it did happen.

Erin’s “big gift” that year was a used stereo bought from a co-worker. A girl friend helped me drag a small Douglas fir home from the market and we twirled lights around the porch posts, skipping the perilous climb to the roof. My parents sent me $20.00 to use for goodies for Erin’s stocking and another $20.00 for her to shop for me. I drove her to the local dime store and waited in the car while she shopped. I think she bought at least 35 gifts with that $20.00. It was enough to fill the bottom of our tree with awkwardly wrapped packages, each topped with a stick-on bow.

I bought a steak to broil for our Christmas dinner, just one to share and we baked and decorated sugar cookies. Our little house was decorated, the fragrance of cookies filled the air, and the presto log was ready to light in the fireplace.

On Christmas Eve her father picked her up to take her to his family’s home, the place I spent my last ten Christmas Eves. This year he had his new fiancée with him and she was bringing the dessert. The dessert had always been my responsibility, my contribution to the family dinner. I was glad Erin would be with the family, her Grandparents, her Aunt and Uncle, her cousins but I felt discarded and replaced and terribly, terribly alone. I volunteered to drive an extra shift that night; I drove the Airport Shuttle bringing passengers home from the airport. I wore a funny Christmas hat and a smile was pasted on my face. Truth be told, my stiff upper lip was starting to tremble by the time I left the bus in the transit yard and headed for home.

I remember pulling into the drive way of my dark lonely little house and looking around our usually quiet little cul-de-sac. I could see that every house was lit up and my neighbor’s guests were parked along every square inch of curb. As I opened my screen door to insert my house key, a bottle of cheap red wine fell to the porch shattering upon contact with the concrete. An eager real estate agent that had been after me to list my house had put it between the door and the screen, where I saw a crumbled life and a ruined marriage, he saw dollar signs. The shattered bottle was my proverbial last straw. As I swept and hosed my porch I cried, not silent tears but great gulping sobs as I loudly repeated, “HO, HO, HO, Merry Christmas”. Looking back, I think I’m fortunate that none of the neighbors called the police.

I got the porch cleaned up just in time for my daughter to come home. She came through the front door and into my arms, hugging my neck and saying “I missed you Mommy” and Papa and Nah whispered and told me that they missed you too”. In that moment Christmas came, without ribbons and bows, cookies or carols, Christmas for me was my little girl walking through that door. She brought Christmas home.