Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Christmas Memories 2018


Pondering ... remembering ... thanking God for the people represented by the things we used to celebrate this Christmas. 

The soup pot … was my mother’s. Always thrifty to the extreme, Mother did not scrimp on her cookware, and that soup pot, which may be fifty years old, serves me well. 

The dishes I set the table with … were a gift from my dad after mother passed away. Our family often vacationed at Lake of the Ozarks, taking over every small cottage in a retired truck driver’s resort, and enjoying blackberry cobbler at almost every meal … thanks to the wild blackberries that grew along the roadside. The dishes reminded me of those happy times, and when Daddy heard the story, he handed me a check. “You buy those dishes.”

The water gobletsMother saw them in an antique store and loved them, but “could not afford them.” My siblings and I went together and bought them for her. The stems are tree trunks and oak leaves sprout upwards from the trunks. I don’t particularly like them, but I love the attached memory. Documentation in Mother’s papers claims these goblets were offered as store premiums back in the late 1800s.

The silver-plate knives, forks, soup spoons, etc. … my husband’s grandmothers—a set with three different sizes of forks, three different sizes of spoons, olive forks, sugar spoon, etc. Clearly created for a family far more refined than mine.

The crystal candlesticks … my children’s great-grandmother’s. More than one of the grown children in the family wanted them, but my mother-in-love gave them to her son and me.

The napkinsmy best friend’s … who was also my current husband’s first wife, and mother to my step-son. She’s been in heaven since 1996, and remembering her is a joy.

The Christmas tree … my husband’s and his first wife’s. She was also my best friend and my step-son’s mother. The hand-made paper angel ornaments were her creation

The nativity set … a gift from my children and expanded by my step-son and his wife, bless them.

The snow people … made by my daughter, each snowman represented a beloved family member, including snow angels for those in heaven.

The miniature quilt beneath the porcelain nativity … a dear friend and sister-in-Christ. We have quilted together, prayed for one another, and served together in our local church for decades.

Christmas Day is drawing to a close. We’ve shared it “just the two of us,” my husband and I … and as I ponder the “cloud of witnesses” represented by soup pots and candlesticks, snow people and napkins … I am thankful. So. Very. Thankful. For the simple things that call to mind beloved friends and family members.

Merry Christmas, dear readers.

Monday, December 10, 2018

Christmas Ornament Stories: The Eiffel Tower

Christmas tree ornaments tell many stories. Repaired ornaments hint at toppled trees and toddlers. Others testify to admired artists or designers or beloved crafters. And some whisper meanings no one would ever guess--like the sparkly Eiffel Tower on my tree, which reminds me of a Christmas when we ran away from home. 

I recently promised to tell the story over on my Facebookpage 

The First Christmas Without Dad

     Bob and I took care to establish traditions that would ensure that Christmas was the best holiday of the year for our family, one of the more unusual of those traditions being that someone in our family always got a box of dirt. Never mind the significance. It was just part of what it meant to be a Whitson. But as my four children (ages 21, 18, 15, and 12) and I faced Christmas 2001, no one cared about the box of dirt. Dad had died of cancer the previous February. 
     Grief is a strange journey. Sometimes it leads us straight at the thing we dread, and we face it down. Sometimes we need to take a detour to avoid the dreaded thing until we are stronger. As Christmas approached, I felt we all needed the detour. A phone call provided it, but it took me a few days to embrace it.
     A dear niece had been living in Geneva, Switzerland, for two years. Was there any way the children and I could spend Christmas with her?
     No, I didn’t think so.
     Maybe.
     I would get back to her.
     At the last minute, I asked something absurd. If we came to Geneva, did she think we might also be able to spend a few days in Paris? I’d lived in France when I was in college, and I had always longed to return.
     Laura didn’t hesitate. Of course! It would be great fun. Just let her know. She’d see what she could do about finding hotel deals.
     I hung up and contemplated the obstacles. My two oldest children had jobs. They wouldn’t be able to get away. They were both in love. They wouldn’t want to leave for a week at Christmas.
     And the money. Oh, the money.
     As it turned out, the airfare was miraculously cheap. The two oldest children wanted to go. Their bosses let them off. My financial advisor approved. Bob would approve, he said. I thought he was probably right. And so, on Christmas Eve (2001), instead of crying our way through the usual, we were on our way to Geneva. On Christmas day, instead of stumbling into the Daddy-less living room and pretending to enjoy opening presents, we were fighting jet lag, walking the medieval streets of Geneva, eating dinner with an international group of Laura’s friends from Switzerland, Sweden, and England. My Midwestern children loved it.
     The day after Christmas we boarded the TGV and sped to Paris. I speak French and I adore Paris. This part of my life predated my falling in love with their father. There were no sad memories to confront here. I couldn’t wait to share Paris with my children. Would they “get it”?
     Standing before Notre Dame Cathedral, my son asked, “When did you say they built that?”
     “In the 1200s.”
     He stepped closer to the doors, staring up and up and up at the myriad stone carvings.
     Wow.
     One night we rode the metro, emerging along the Seine, admiring a particularly beautiful bridge and watching an excursion boat make its way up the river before advancing beyond the row of trees shading the walkway. The Eiffel Tower loomed above us in the night, its ironwork glowing bronze in the lights.
     Wow.
     On another night we read the sign mounted on a tall iron fence not too far from our hotel near the Sorbonne and discovered we’d been casually walking past the third-century ruins of a Roman bath. Roman. As in Julius Caesar and togas.
     Wow.
     We grabbed floor plans of the Louvre one day just before it closed, and that evening in our hotel room I told the children to look it over and mark the three things they most wanted to see. I wanted them to see less and appreciate more—to remember more than a maze of marbled halls.
     The next morning at the museum, I watched my children watch. What would they really see? It turned out to be the Greek/Roman/Italian sculpture. My children were in awe. Their mother was delighted. They were getting it … they really were getting it.
     In those four days, we probably walked five miles a day. We didn’t see the Musée d’Orsay or go up the Eiffel Tower or ride on an excursion boat or eat at a fancy restaurant or do any number of a zillion things tourists usually go to Paris to see and do. We did, however, climb the towers of Notre Dame and see the gargoyles. We walked the streets of Little Athens and marveled over the array of foods. We shopped at the century old La Samaritaine department store. We ate mussels and crepes and lychees, discovered Nutella, and marveled at the smallness of the cars and the beauty of the roses at a flower market. We made mistakes and got lost.
     I don’t imagine I’ll ever spend Christmas in Paris again. But in 2001, traveling far, far away from home helped one heartbroken family detour around a monster named Grief. We spent our first Christmas without Dad in the City of Lights. Of course, Dad spent the day with the One who said, “Let there be light.” But we did all right, too, because we came home knowing that we were going to be all right. We would return to the beloved traditions the next Christmas, and we would smile through our tears when the lucky recipient opened that box of dirt.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

If this is your first Christmas without someone, take heart. Be kind to yourself. Say "no" to the things that will just be too hard this year. Say "yes" to something completely new that you can navigate without the memories. And remember that you are not alone. Even in the moments when it feels that way, Someone is there to listen, to love, and to help you carry the weight of grief.
May He bless you with the knowledge of His presence in ways that speak comfort to your heart.
["The First Christmas Without Dad" was originally published in God Rest Ye Grumpy Scroogeymen, New Traditions for Comfort and Joy at Christmas, by Laura Jensen Walker and Michael K. Walker, 2003 Subsequently published in Christmas Moments, 50 Inspirational Stories of the True Meaning of Christmas, compiled and edited by Yvonne Lehman, 2014]