There were years when every December day counted as five.
When I shortchanged the state by hours in order to cram in tasks, the list of which ate up whole pages in my calendar, not counting the sticky notes.
When I made midnight runs to Wal-Mart for stocking stuffers.
And Dave made nine o’clock evening ones to Buttreys for berries and oranges and sugar and nuts and tin foil and flour for his monumental batches of cranberry bread.
When we picked out a live tree in relative good humor.
And lost even a semblance of cordiality when we tried to bolt it upright in its stand, Dave on his stomach, pliers in hand and me offering muddled nods and smiles from my less-than-perfect vantage point clutching the trunk between boughs.
When decorating required navigating the icy back sidewalk to the garage and a shaky stepladder to fetch, high above the rabbits, boxes of decorations, whose contents were as jumbled as last-year’s “done with the holidays” mood.
When no gift seemed right for Dave–who never wanted any.
When preparing for my parents’ arrival or Peter’s family kept me awake, pondering which friends I could beg for a getaway napping couch.
And Dave’s dozen Christmastime in Montana book signings and talks rendered me proud and teary and further strapped for time.
When curating a Christmas letter that met both our tastes proved confounding.
When getting to Columbia Falls, no matter the road conditions, was nonnegotiable. And Alvin and the Chipmunks chirped us to distraction through the worst icy stretches going home.
And then, of course,
Came the fairy tale nights when we’d sit by ourselves in our light-dazzled living room, absorbing the miracle of our real family home, of our family, of the good fortune neither of us had bet on.
Cloth angels flying from the valances, Missoula Merc stockings hung on an honest-to-god fireplace, Kay’s Christmas pillows fluffed up the couch, a fan of accumulated Christmas books spread under the tree.
And nights still closer to Christmas when I went to bed to the tick of the kitchen timer and the wanton smell of baking oranges and butter and cranberries.
On to Christmas Eve when Dave divvied up his giveaway bread-run list by favoritism and age. I got the old ladies with whom, as it turned out every year, I had the best visits.
Onto homemade taco pie and the neighborhood light tour and sometimes church. And the up and down stairs ballet to see who could stay awake longest to stuff the other’s stocking. Or walk George and Dorothy’s socks down a block to the squeak of boots in snow and postcard scenes of smoke spiraling above each house.
And on Christmas Day, in the rising tide of wrapping paper and drama, Dave and I donned red ties with perfect Windsor knots and served up Danish Kringle to placate the troops until dinner.
Now, in this becalmed year, in this grandparenting season, in this stage of widowhood, I relish my quiet, the absence of obligation to make of late December a gala of spending, a squall of weariness and misbegotten expectations.
In fact, I am returned to my early single years when Christmas came to my apartment in pine branches sawn off misshapen trees and discarded in grocery store parking lots, a candle plunked among them. And a season celebrated with friends in evenings best described by the British as “knees-up sing-songs.”
And in this calm, I savor the transporting gift of recollection into which I can breathe that family Christmas scene alive again, and choose to decorate it with ornaments of tender memories. ©
