When Bob and I were newly married, his mother Ada would invariably be the first to call me on Christmas morning. She knew her son would be working in the ER, like all other non-Christian emergency doctors, and that I would be left home alone. We lived in the Berkshire Mountains then, and she admitted she would worry about me.
If you knew Ada, you would know that she needed to worry about someone almost all the time. Worrying was her business, it was her calling card for a career in marriage and family counseling. I would tell her she didn’t have to worry about me, that I came from strong Irish stock, that I didn’t mind being alone on Christmas because I was raised an “only” child. She would listen, and worry anyway.
Memories are always elusive. I remember being dressed up pretty in plaid, with saddle shoes and bows. I don’t have a lot of Christmas morning pictures. In one, I’m wheeling around a kitchen on my first tricycle. In another, I’m looking bleary eyed in a new chenille robe. Look at me in front of the tree, holding up yet another half-slip from an elderly aunt in Washington!
I’m pretty sure my holidays were spent going back and forth across the Delaware Water Gap to visit my family of origin. I was lucky, I had two trees and two Christmases!
By the time I married Bob, I was a lapsed Catholic. I wasn’t even recovering because I’d converted to Judaism. I wanted any future children to have a strong, faith-based education – none of this ‘pick what you want as an adult’ business. But during my year of three miscarriages in1983, I longed for the pomp and prayers of the Catholic faith. If I couldn’t count on my body anymore, where was my faith? Where was God when I needed her/him most?
Ada must have sensed my suffering. Everyone said I’d have another baby, don’t worry about it, try again. But I became fearful of driving and stayed home with the Love Bug. If I couldn’t trust my own body, why should I trust anyone else? Every Christmas morning all I could hear were guns in the woods – deer poachers.
Yesterday morning my sister Kay was the first to call bright and early She’d been drinking her coffee and listening to the radio and wanted to make sure we were OK -the Nashville explosion was all over the news. We didn’t know very much but it woke me up out of a dead sleep around 6:30 am. Our city farmhouse is just a mile north of downtown.
I’ve watched the smoke from the Twin Towers billow down the shipping lanes, now we could smell the fire from a bomb that was detonated in an RV outside of the AT&T building. It was “intentional”, Mayor Cooper said, when we could still watch the news, before we lost our (AT&T) internet. All connectivity is gone in our socially distanced and isolated world. It’s been eerily quiet, too quiet today.
Who would do something like this on the holiest day of the Christian calendar?
At least I wasn’t alone. Since Bob has retired I’m no longer flying solo on Christmas. And this year, Ada isn’t here to call me. She can’t worry about the terrorist bombing, or her granddaughter being exposed to Covid whenever she puts on her ER doctor’s coat. Losing Ada this year, of all years, was devastating. No funeral, only a graveside service with no more than 20. The grief just simmering beneath the surface, available to any moment.
My Mother-in-Law Ada was my last mother. My Foster Mother, Nell died suddenly when I was pregnant with the Bride. The Flapper died when the Bride was in high school. Love and loss inextricably bound.
Sending virtual hugs to everyone who lost a loved one this year, and wishing all my friends, and family of readers a healthy and peaceful New Year. Hoping you know that we are never really alone.
