New Year’s Day, 2023.
It’s early morning. I am surrounded by the emptiness left by a Christmas come and gone and, wondering: What just happened?
I know that Charlie Dickens’ Scrooge had a happy Christmas Day after a life of misery, and went back to his bed, free of all ghosts, but not as happy as this aging writer — not a chance, Mr. Scrooge.
The beloved daughters, like some of your grown darlings, appear only on the laptop and iPhone screens, smiling in the 81-degree sun of southern California, and holding up glasses of nog and cups of coffee, with their husbands poking their heads into the frame.
Did we miss them, those once-upon-a-time toddlers in Christmas nightgowns, tearing colored paper from boxes of dolls?
Of course, we do. But we were blessedly spared the horror of late night calls from some unmasked crowd in an airport in Nebraska or Nevada. And spare me the terror of Chicago, where thousands of icy tarmacs lay buried under “historic” snow. Oh, I’ve been there on Christmases past on snowy tarmacs in Korea, holding on in icy winds to my travel orders. Going home.
I’ve heard carols sung on foggy Christmas nights in San Francisco and dusty saloons in Texas, while shoving quarters into a phone late at night in Monterey up in Steinbeck country. I’m happy they know none of that.
I hear She, who sleeps late, move around upstairs. She’ll be down soon, as she still does each year, asking, “What just happened?”
In the brightening corners I spot a tiny piece of what was once an ornament that catches the morning light.
Is it moving? Did I see movement? Maybe it misses its special space on the tree, alongside the other ornaments. I’ll pick it up later when I’m better able to get out of this chair, but not now.
Now, I like the way it catches the early light that gives this aging ornament, a last moment of grandeur, asking: “What just happened?”
A fluttering thought passes through my sleepy head: Is this who I am now? Is that what I’ve become — a cracked ornament from hundreds of Christmases past, still begging to be part of the game, and to be hung once again on the tree, admired and loved?
Gratefully, I am loved by three real women. I still get my old bones hugged, my greying clutter of hair brushed from my eyes.
I’ll settle for that. I’ll settle for love.
Over there by the monster television screen, a lonely piece of red wrapping paper that once held a precious gift huddles against the tree, used and discarded.
Oh, the tree. Let us not forget the tree. It’s not real, you know. All year it’s kept in the back rooms, waiting for the annual burst of activity.
I’ll take it back there this week, naked and perpetually green, stored in a corner silently muttering, “What the hell just happened?”
New Year’s Day, super cold, and so far blessedly free of snow. David my plower is asleep, grateful for the calm.
But as I write this in advance, very aware that Mother Maine still holds her cards close to her frozen breast, and that one morning soon, we’ll sit in the dark wondering, “What just happened?”
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
