South Texas Christmas, 1966

I am sifting through old memories, now that they’re both gone.

This will be the first Christmas I face without their presence,

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his, brooding and implacable, hers, stoic and tough,

leathered by decades of marriage to a traumatized boy

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who had no way to express his pain.

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Christmas at 326 Southwest First Street followed the conventions:

a tinsel-wrapped tree, capped with a department store star

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from the Lebanese shop one town over, a wreath on the door,

another inside, because she loved the pine smell permeating

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the house. Tamales instead of gingerbread, no mistletoe

because that was for the pagans, the church-inspired fear of Saturnalia

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still sifting through her ancient memory, even if she didn’t realize it.

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Christmas was always her thing. Most things to do with us

were her thing; my father was present mostly out of obligation,

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it seemed to me, and as seldom as possible – absent even

when physically present. Like a roaming king visiting a remote castle,

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no time for laughter, no time for smiles, no expressions of joy.

My sister and I strove to keep invisible, lest we upset

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the fragile balance and drive the king into a memorable rage,

but it came anyway, more often than not. Then we’d flee to

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our respective hiding places, she and I, and employ the coping

mechanisms a six-year-old and a three-year-old could devise,

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until the shouting ceased, and the uneasy quiet settled.

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In 1966, my sister and I saw snow for the first time. Rare

for South Texas, rarer still than a light dusting, this was

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enough to make snowmen and snowballs and leave tracks

all over the front yard, tracing us playing tag with one another

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between the three leafless ash trees spaced evenly apart,

east to west. The memory is triggered by a photo we found

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in my mother’s albums after she passed this year, and I remembered

the childish delight of our joyous little screams, the breathless wonder

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of experiencing such rapture from nature at that time of year.

I remember her sitting on the top step of the concrete porch, bundled up

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against the cold, watching over us, the way she always did. Seeing us dip and

weave and hide behind each tree in an unending, joyous chase, until the snow

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lay trampled underfoot and the dark dusk came and she called us inside.

What I didn’t know, what I didn’t learn until many years later, was that

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the king had been watching us from inside the house, as we traipsed and

stumbled and squealed with joy at the unexpected, unbidden gift.

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Decades later, when she showed me the photos again as we prepared her move

after the king’s passing, she told me: “Your father always loved this photo.

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“He said you two looked like little deer playing in the snow.”

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I remember the feeling I got when she said those words to me,

how it helped transform my image of him, helped me understand

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he was just a man. Softer than some, harder than most, as much

a victim of his own upbringing and environment as I later became,

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and terrified more often than not, I imagine. I knew that feeling myself,

for a long time, and I’m grateful I’ve been able to break that cycle in my own life.

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I do not follow the seasonal conventions anymore, except for loving

my people and giving them thoughtful gifts when I can. I have seen

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many snowfalls since that winter of ‘66, but the image of

a king hidden behind a curtained window, smoking Marlboro Reds,

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watching me and my little sister cavort like late winter fawns,

and knowing he was capable of feeling and expressing such sweet sentiment…

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That has proven to be a gift greater than most.