Christmases past and present

Christmas Long Past

It was 1977. I was 33 and was having a whopper of a mid-life crisis, a time when you feel everything is wrong with your life, the whole thing needs changing, in a blink of an eye you might walk away and never return. My houseband — we were not married but lived together — was also having another whopper of a mid-life crisis. Having your crises together simply does not work. You bump into each other and burst into a million tiny pieces impossible to glue back together.

 I remember it was Dec. 15 and he decided to move out of our magnificent house in Forbes Park into a hotel. Like a gardener who had just decided to quit on the spur of the moment,  I thought. Then a few days later he demanded that I get out of the house because he was not going to support me. I had made some biting remarks about earning enough money to buy him, you see, and those remarks must have bitten very deeply. Anyway it was over between us and I wept unabashedly on and off, sometimes in front of my children and some intimate friends.

 That was the most miserable Christmas of my entire life. I remember he called me on Christmas Eve asking if I wanted to go to the United States with him where he would turn into a professor and just teach and we could still be together — he, me, our children, all of us. “Think about it well,” I said, because he was too ambitious to be happy as a professor. Also I knew he was with another woman. He never called again. That ended that. I said goodbye to all my personal loves in the house, to all the trees I had planted there. 

 We spent our last Christmas in the house, my children and I, then that was all over but life went on.

Christmas Past

It was 1987. My children and I were all in the USA. My youngest daughter Panjee just graduated from college. We lived in a lovely little town called Burlingame near San Francisco, California.

That year we decided to buy a big fresh tree. I remember Panjee and me struggling to get that big tree into the house amidst giggles and screams. We trimmed it with balls and little toys and lots of lights. It was a gorgeous tree. It was going to be my first grandson’s first Christmas and everyone was there — my mother, my three daughters, my son, my son-in-law, my little grandson who was a little over one year old. My family was all together. 

We were all dressed up. I had been cooking cocido, I think, to bring a Filipino touch to Christmas in the US. The children — all grown up now — had spent the day conniving over how to say “Merry Christmas” to Powie, my grandson. Finally at around 10 at night my son and son-in-law Dan disappeared.  Then Dan came back smiling and began to play with Pow who was getting sleepy. Suddenly there was a loud banging on the door and very shortly after my son Gino slipped in through the back door. 

“What’s that?” Dan said.

“Let’s open the door,” Gino added.

They dragged Powie to the door and opened it and there was a huge box all wrapped up. “It’s from Santa!” everybody screamed. I will never forget the look on Powie’s face, the bright wide smile, the sparkling eyes. It was a big red car that he could ride and it was indeed from Santa Claus.

 That last Christmas in Burlingame was the happiest Christmas of my life.

Christmas now

These days we make the most of it. My oldest daughter and her children, except Nicc, are all in the United States. She doesn’t ever want to come back. My second daughter, her husband and her son are all in England spending Christmas with her husband’s family. Here are Panjee and Gino, my two youngest and we spend Christmas lunch together having turkey similar to the ones I used to make when they were small. That is on Christmas Day and usually it’s at Gino’s house with Faye, his wife, Maxine, his daughter and Faye’s parents.

 On Christmas Eve I go to Panjee’s house to spend the night there so I can wake up at 5 a.m. for their lovely Waldorf ceremony of lighting the tree with real candles and opening gifts. We all go to the Tapales house — Panjee’s father and his wife Meg — for dinner and some cheer. Then we come back home and do what the nuns used to call the Advent Wreath when I was small. It’s that ritual where you have four candles on a wreath. You light one candle per week before Christmas and sing “O come, O come Emmanuel. ..”

To me Christmas these days is lovely because I spend it with my children and their children, sharing in their rituals, our hearts filled with joy. That’s the way it should be merry in a quiet way but full of love and — in my family anyway — a lot of laughter. We always laugh through everything. It’s what keeps us together.