Christmas 2006

For as long as I can remember, I've spent the early part of every Christmas Eve at the home of my dad's sister. It's the usual meal-and-gift-giving event, although this year my son was the only one to receive a gift. (The food, however, is generally gift enough for me!) Dad's family has never been particularly close, at least not in the same way that Mom's family has always been. So, often, through the years when I was growing up, Christmas Eve seemed almost the only time I saw my aunt and uncle. It wasn't quite that bad, really, but it was close, especially considering the fact that my aunt/uncle/cousin's house is only a couple hundred yards down the hill from the house I grew up in. And it was bad by comparison as well. Consider the fact that Mom's sister and family lived not too much closer in the up-the-hill direction, and I was there, it seems, almost every day.

Anyway, when I got out of the CRV this Christmas Eve, I looked across the creek and saw The Coop--storied practice venue of the White Water Band--still standing. For some reason, I guess I just assumed that when the road was widened a few years back, The Coop was a casualty of the expansion. Then again, I'm in that particular spot so little in these years, I've had few opportunities to think about the place. I've adjusted the contrast of this picture, because the evening was almost dark. To provide some perspective, I'm standing in the highway--or at the edge of it. Near the center of the picture is the door that led back through the entrance way or storage area and into the Coop proper. We practiced in the area where the two windows are visible to the left of the entrance way's roof line. I liked seeing the old place there still, especially after having so recently relived some of those days through writing about them.

Christmas was a struggle this year. I simply couldn't get a feel for it until, literally, the last minute. All of the gift-giving seemed hollow. The Christmas music in every store and restaurant was annoying. Moments that should have been the season's dart-to-the-heart were short-lived; I felt something for a short time, but then it went away, as if the season's dart thudded against some vest of chain mail and fell away. Then about 9:30 on Christmas Eve, after supper at my aunt's and an exchange of gifts between my little family and my mom and brother, my son and I drove back across the mountain to Tennessee to attend the 11:00 candlelight service at Cherokee. There, with words and music and friends, I finally felt--when all was said and done a few minutes before midnight--that Christmas had come, that the child had been born. I drove back across the mountain feeling Christmas, not contending with Xmas.

This morning we awoke and ate cheese biscuits and chocolate for breakfast at my mom's and a turkey lunch at my mother-in-law's. When my enthusiastic nephew seemed about to preach an impromptu Baptist sermon (something I believe I've heard enough of in my life), I decided it was time to head back over the mountain to Tennessee. We came home and fed the cat, I took a nap and then my son and I watched the DVD of Independence Day, which he'd given me for Christmas.

My mom's Christmas lights and me.