A vivid memory of a past Christmas
I have a memory from a Christmas past. Parts of this memory are as vivid as if it was just last Christmas. Other details are murky, at best, and likely not to be absolutely accurate. I suppose that’s to be expected when nearly 40 years have passed.
40 years?!?!
Life passes by so very quickly.
There was a time when older people told me such things—someday you’re gonna wake up as a 40-year-old father and wonder happened—but I concluded that they had no idea what they were talking about. I had my whole life ahead of me, I thought. Now, as an almost 50-year-old dad, I find myself telling this same thing to my own children. And yes, they roll their eyes at me just as I did once upon a time.
Anyway, back to my Christmas memory. Somewhere around 5th or 6th grade, as best I can remember, I was very sick. It was the beginning of life stage that would be characterized by frequent respiratory illness and strep throat. Not until my senior year of high school would I make it through an entire winter (and basketball season) without missing significant school time from illness.
So, that winter, leading up to Christmas, I was very ill and dehydrated. At one point, I remember the doctor telling my mother that I would need to drink x cups of water in the next 24-36 hours or else he would require I be admitted to the hospital. I remember clearly my mother waking me up every couple of hours through the night to drink a cup of water, how terrible the water tasted…and that I didn’t end up in the hospital.
I can also remember my lungs and throat feeling like they were filled with phlegm and yuck and coughing constantly….occasionally extricating a massive chunk of “gunk” that made me wonder how in the world that could have been inside of me!
Sorry…that’s kind gross.
As terrible as the experience was, my other clear memory is of my dad also being sick. For several days—I can’t say with any certainty how long it was—we laid side-by-side on the pull-out bed in the living room, with the Christmas tree down by the foot of the bed. If I’m not mistaken, we opened our presents from that pull-out bed that year.
My only other memory beyond guzzling water in the middle of the night, coughing up gross chunks of gunk, and laying there with my dad, was the electronic handheld football game I received as a gift. I have no idea who gave it to me, but after taking some time to learn how to play it, my brother and I soon became experts, challenging each other to see who could score the most points in a regulation game.
By today’s standards, it was an archaic game, consisting of nothing more than little red blips of light that moved across the screen just as fast as you could smash the buttons. Not long ago, my teenage son found a version of the game designed to be played online. It was on a site called “Ancient Games Your Dad Played and Believed Were Totally Awesome” (or something like that…just kidding). Retro is all the rage these days, so he thought the game was pathetically cool.
Our minds remember all kinds of crazy things. Especially as children, we remember with stark detail that other people who experienced the same thing have long forgotten. As miserable and sick as I was that Christmas, these memories make me smile. I remember being together.
Our experiences together are the memories we’ll remember most. So, as I look ahead to the next few weeks — with our college freshman back home for Christmas break, our high school senior having some time off from school, and our kindergartener excited about everything—my greatest hope is have meaningful time together…times that will be remembered.
May you, too, find the joy of just being together with family, friends, and loved ones — with much or with little, in sickness or health, with old traditions and new, with longtime friends and new ones, too…whatever it might look like.
Merry Christmas!
Thank-you Steve for sharing your family memories! What a blessing for us--strange though some may be! :-) Love, Mom