bless the girl

May I just take a moment to be grate­ful? To have a child at any time. But to have a lit­tle girl at Christ­mas time, who takes so much joy in what is under the tree that is NOT for her, who is so excit­ed for, more than any gift, the arrival of her friend Annabelle from New York for a vis­it, is a thing to behold.

And I must say as well, while I’m being all sen­ti­men­tal, one of my strongest child­hood mem­o­ries of Christ­mas is of the piano recital just days after my dar­ling Grand­pa Loyd died (yes, he was a Loyd with only one l, just as my grand­moth­er was and IS a Bet­tye with an extra e!). I remem­ber com­ing home from school just after we had spent Thanks­giv­ing with my grand­par­ents on their south­ern Indi­ana “estate”, Five Green Acres, and how we loved to vis­it them there. The pick­le tree! The base­ment with the pool table! The stair­way we could all slide down, toward my grand­fa­ther’s study with his tree full of pipes to be smoked. For YEARS after­ward, when­ev­er I smelled a pipe being smoked, I though it was my grandpa.

Well, one day short­ly after Thanks­giv­ing I came home from school, and instead of just open­ing up the front door, which was nev­er locked as far as I can remem­ber, my moth­er opened the door her­self and stood, tall as any­body you ever saw (and she was­n’t all that tall), cry­ing. I nev­er saw her cry, except when the boy across the street was hit by a car (he was fine, by the way). But, her father, my beloved Grand­pa Loyd, had died. Some­thing super sud­den, super pain­less, just gone. And my moth­er was gone, then, too, to help my grand­moth­er pre­pare for the funer­al. And there we were, us three kids, sit­ting on top of the wash­ing machine in the mid­dle of a cycle, try­ing to fig­ure out what hap­pened after the clothes came out, and my dad was there, being valiant, fold­ing clothes, and won­der­ing what to do about the piano recital?

Because of course, as par­ents with small chil­dren, you find that plans must go on. In the end, our great, old-lady friend Mrs Young from two doors down, came to take me to the piano recital. Did my sis­ter play? She would remem­ber bet­ter than I. But I played. “I’ll Be Home For Christ­mas…” My moth­er could­n’t be there, but there was Mrs Young, who I remem­ber vis­it­ing in a nurs­ing home on the morn­ing after my wed­ding, and my hus­band spent the whole of our after-wed­ding day with her lip­stick on his col­lar (imag­ine her stop­ping to put on lip­stick!). And she had been there for me at my Christ­mas recital.

I sup­pose, more than din­ners or presents or stock­ings, this is what we remem­ber for Christ­mas. And I’m grate­ful for every­one who was there, when I was a lit­tle girl.