I think the thing I miss most about Grandpa Neil right now, besides it being The Season and how he was just the embodiment of this time of year in spirit, is how he missed out on how fashionable our gum rubbers have become. Ahead of our time in the barnyard, as it were. I can just hear the ribbing I'd get, if I'd shown up in pink ones to needle calves or something. Probably as bad as when I purposely bought ripped jeans that looked like they'd been soaked in diesel and left unwashed for fifteen months.
I remember so many Christmases... Mass on Christmas Eve after Mom had prepared our special family dinner. She made paste of mashed potatoes one year - too much enthusiasm with a hand-held blender. The Tora Bora Express, when Seamus and I hijacked her Christmas tree with his GI Joes on the Christmas train, and repelling down the tree... Took her hours to notice. After Mass, off to Ma's house for a Reveillon. House full of people - it didn't matter what had happened over the year: if you were family, you were there. And it's a big family. Santa at midnight with dollar store gifts. Almost always, a stranger passing by whose car had broken down, who was welcome into the warmth of the house. A light burning all night for that very reason, to guide them. Ragout, turkey, meat pies. Christmas cake with tiny icing flowers and those little silver balls on each one - it must have taken her hours. The decorations on the kitchen ceiling I had put up while on Grandpa's broad shoulders. My loud family all competing to talk. The singing. Laughing. Looking forward to more of the same in a week's time, for New Year's - but a little different, because the songs would change. Ripping into the gifts at about 3 a.m., and then heading home for a few hours' sleep, only to get into more gifts and candies and cookies and leftovers, and then back to Ma's before 11 a.m. for more food. Food, the food. An afternoon lost napping, drawing on uncles with markers and pens, nailing Grandpa with a rubber dart gun - right in the forehead - while he chatted with someone who had dropped in, his long legs stretched across the kitchen, hands laced behind his head...
And then a Christmas five years ago. The last Christmas with Grandpa. Quieter, not knowing what the next year would bring. Tense. Staying with him to change an ostomy bag. Hearing him apologize for being sick. Telling him he had nothing to apologize for. Lying quietly with him, while his body slowly shut down and gave into the widespread cancer that had been lurking for a long, long time.
We had a new tradition the next year: a community Christmas dinner. A few people we knew had lost family that year, not only ours... And given how full he had made our Christmases before, it was going to be an empty one. I think we just didn't want to be celebrating together, alone in that house. So we brought our Christmas dinner to the community hall in Kazabazua, and told people... Anyone who needed to eat, who needed company, was welcome. The donations were significant. We served dozens of meals, and delivered many, too. And each year since, it's gotten bigger. The donations - a lot of them anonymous - have been overwhelming. And the response has been both heartwearming and bittersweet.
Grandpa and Ma donated the original doors to that community centre. We like to think that he's still welcoming people in.
This year is different still. We have Leah... And she is spectacular.
Merry Christmas, if that's what you do. We take a mishmash of traditions and customs and have made it our own - none the less sacred for us. David, Leah and I will be with the family and large circle of friends and volunteers at the Kazabazua Community Centre tomorrow, serving a traditional Christmas feast donated by many, to those who need it for whatever reason. Drop by; the doors are open for all.
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