Enough

It was 1968, and I was ten years old – not even out of elementary school. My parents had been separated for more than two years, and it was just my mother, my sister, and I. My father could not be depended upon to come through consistently with a monthly payment of forty dollars in child support. He was a lot of things, but my father was above all things a talker, a used car dealer, a gambler, and a man who used alcohol to monitor his stress. He was certainly not the father written about in fairy tales even though he managed at times to step up and do the right thing. This was, however, seldom witnessed during my youth.

It was my Christmas break from school, and in the week preceding the holiday, my mother had managed to get us a Christmas tree, but she had no money for much of anything else, including presents. The five-foot spruce, decorated with tinsel, ice cycles, glass ornaments, and large multi-colored lights stood alone, dominating the living room of our tiny home, with no brightly wrapped gifts beneath it. Momma had warned us more than once it would not be much of a Christmas.

The night prior to Christmas Eve, a knock sounded at our front door. Upon answering it, we found our father on the front porch and in his hand, he carried a bag of coins: his meager poker winnings for the day. I don’t remember what he said when he handed over the bag, but I can imagine it was something profanely magnanimous, as though he was Father Christmas himself, come to save our holiday.

My father left (before we could see how little was in the bag, I’m sure), and my mother quickly poured the bag’s contents onto the coffee table. Since I was only ten, a sack full of silver coins seemed limitless in monetary value and possibilities. I remember thinking that all those coins could buy a ton of candy if nothing else. We were all admittedly excited even though the bag probably didn’t hold more than ten or fifteen dollars in total – something is usually better than nothing, after all. You must remember: it was 1968, so ten dollars was like having fifty dollars – or more – available to spend.

If you asked me what I remembered most about that Christmas so many years ago, I’d first be inclined to say a bag full of coins earned in a poker game. Truly, however, what I remember and perhaps most treasure is the trip with my mother and sister the next day to Woolworth’s Drug Store where we spent our unexpected windfall. I can recall the drug store's precise location, but I can't manage to remember one thing we bought during our shopping spree. I do know we had a great deal of fun as we wandered the aisles, selecting this and that to add to our treasure troves. I am sure it would have seemed to the casual observer that we were endowed with thousands of dollars instead of only so few. Our funds were low but our joy was great that Christmas Eve, and it was not the trinkets or the candy we bought that made it so – it was the time we spent together; shopping, budgeting, and giggling about paying with an abundance of coins as though we’d just robbed the neighborhood children's piggy banks.

My mother and father have been gone for many years, and I am now much older than either of them was on that Christmas Eve in 1968. My mother died before my father, and though I continued a limited relationship with him following her death, I never really broached the subject and spoke with him about any of the things that happened during my childhood. Oh, but I wish I had for it seems that not doing so may have been a disservice to me.

None of us as parents is perfect, and I have certainly had my fair share of falling short of the mark. Still, as an aging mother of two children – or perhaps I should say, as an aging, conscientious being - I am left to wonder about why my father did what he did. Why would a man – a parent - risk losing the money he had to gamble with in the first place during a game of chance when he had nothing more he could give? I suppose he had already served up so much disappointment that it was just another chance to either win and be the hero or fail and be the same as always. Unfortunately, for my father, many of his old habits never left him until age, disease, and death insisted upon it. I recognized that in advancing years, he was a man that grew to regret much. It was a sad story to watch unfold even though I had at one time been one of the main characters in the tale.

I’ll never know the answers to questions to which I did not ask. Still, after years of reflection and because of a strong desire to heal, I’ll choose to release the negative memories into the universe so that they may travel far away from me and my soul. Instead of remembering a man smelling of cigarette smoke and liquor carrying a bag of silver coins earned in a game of poker, I’ll make an designated decision to fill my heart with the memory of laughter shared between my mother, my sister, and I on that chilly Christmas Eve. We didn’t have a wealth of money on that day – or any other day - but we undoubtedly had a wealth of love and even happiness amidst a tiring situation. Thankfully, it is the love and happiness that resonate and grow, spreading across life in a multitude of ways to help ease the bitterness and heartache.

It is enough.