... and so this is Christmas...?

Thursday in the mall… Christmas shopping with my other and his son… I often buy lots of small boxes of chocolate for friends and family… small, delicious treats they wouldn’t normally buy for themselves but I know they enjoy… I’m waiting at the kiosk. They have three people working, all young. The young man is helping his friend. They are exchanging tales and the sales person is cajoling his friend into trying a particular piece of candy. It is a slow and lazy exchange. One young lady is waiting on someone on the other side, and the third sales person is in front of me organizing chocolates in the display case. She looks up. My other and his son are standing several feet away. She spots the son, a very attractive young man. She makes a bee-line for him. She has to walk around me to get to them. She asks them if they need help. My other motions toward me. The young lady looks disappointed. She walks back by me and begins again to arrange things in the display case. Someone else walks up and she waits on them. By this time the other young lady is free. She too arranges things in the case. I stalk away, surprisingly angry and strangely hurt. No chocolates this year.

Then we go to a store where they sell videos and dvds. The wait is long. The young lady who finally checks us out looks up after we pay and says with great sarcasm the line I’m sure they’ve been ordered to utter… “Have an enchanted evening…” “You too…” was my sad response.

Looking out over the humanity that fills the mall; the clinging couples, the packs of teens, the floating solitares, friends arm in arm, crying babies and beleaguered parents and grandparents struggling with packages and the transport of their young – all of us consuming as an act of celebration, I’m wondering about the meaning of Christmas.

Friday, the grocery store… We have people coming into town and so we brave the crush of shopping carts and people. For breakfasts and dinners we search for what will make our Christmas like a Rockwell scene. Did you get cream? bread? sugar? What else do we need? More babies and parents, and older people who use their carts as walkers as they move down the aisles alone… how many are far from family?... We stand in line, another line, to check out. $160 is the cost of a small feast for six.

Then home… we walk in the door and his son stands there… reaching out to take bags from us. “They’ve had a wreck… (a heartbeat)… but they’re ok.”

“What?”

“They’ve had a wreck but they’re ok. They flipped the car twice. It’s totaled but they’re ok. A few cuts and bruises, but they’re ok.”

“You’re kidding, you’re lying.” (A response from a childhood Christmas when I awoke and was told our house had burned down. The same incredulousness.)

“No, No… they’ve had a wreck… but they’re ok.”

Phone calls, phone calls… “Go to the hospital.” “No we won’t go.” “Back to Alabama?” “No… we’ll come on to Cleveland…” “Are you sure?” “If we change our minds, we’ll let you know.”

Christmas Eve, another day of shopping, my other and I are trying to find the gaps we need to fill with gifts and to decide which gifts need to fill those gaps. We try to be efficient and thoughtful all at once. I eye with welled up emotions the chocolates. (Still no chocolate for friends. My pride won’t let me.) We finally struggle home. Done or not, we have to get ready. Not completely sure if they’re coming… my other’s two other children; another son and a daughter, his former and now her other too. The day is long and tense. Lots of getting on nerves. Reports from the road confirm that they are in fact heading toward Cleveland, now packed tight into his former’s other’s car. Near midnight they arrive.

All the fears finally fall away as we see them face to face and they are whole. The work that kept hands and minds busy has done its job and suddenly things seem reordered. The girl at the chocolate kiosk doesn’t matter. The money doesn’t matter. The fact that all those gaps weren’t completely filled doesn’t matter. They’re here and they’re whole. A second’s worth of difference and our world would have changed and instead of waiting to open presents we might have waited in the hall of a hospital. (I am glad to see them all including my other’s former and her other too.)

A re-ordering of the universe… a setting into place the value of things…