Christmas Past and Future

I’m one of those people who never reads a book twice or doesn’t like to see a movie again.   But twenty years into my marriage, I broke my rule to re-read “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner.  

The book had originally been a bridal shower gift from a friend of my in-laws, and I’m embarrassed to say I can no longer remember who she was.  But I vaguely recall that the accompanying note said it was a mandatory tale for anyone embarking on marriage; a simple story of commitment and friendship amidst the backdrop of life.   It sounded banal enough that I set it aside and in the throes of wedding planning, it was left behind with my in-laws.  The day after our September wedding, my new husband and I left for China.

“Peking” in 1988 was still a relatively backward city. Residents wore Communist Mao suits and bicycles were the major mode of transport.  Bob was teaching at the Chinese Law University and our living conditions were Peace Corp poor; a concrete dorm room, jungle toilets down the hall and no potable running water.

If at first this all felt like an adventure, by December, I was missing my family desperately.  One of my sisters was pregnant, and this would be the first Christmas I wouldn’t be there.  The fun of paring our lives down to the basics had worn off with the advance of the holidays in our drab and secular surroundings. 

When our first big package arrived by sea from Bob’s Mom, I enthusiastically assembled the foot-high fir tree with attachable ornaments, and hung the stockings she had included.  Snuggled under a few holiday music cassette tapes was the paperback “Crossing to Safety.”  I was eager to open it, desperate to connect with anything familiar back in America.

The tale of a husband and wife on the cusp of their new life together and their burgeoning friendship with another couple quickly absorbed me.  The novel moved from Wisconsin to the apple orchards of Vermont, familiar territory for me growing up in the Adirondacks.  And then, with time, the challenges began, the things that life often hides under its skirts when we first take our vows.

 

The simplicity of the story and the sparse eloquence of the writing captivated me. There was no sex or violence, no swear words, dystopia, or green aliens.  It was a tale about life the way it is really lived, with loss and love, successes and failures, disappointments and triumphs. The characters came alive with Stegner’s beautiful prose.

 

Two decades later, I was a seasoned wife with four children in various stages of leaving the nest.  The world had left its mark on us all.  When my journalist husband was injured in the Iraq war, we were all tested.  We celebrated in his recovery, while coming to terms with the preciousness of time together and the importance of resilience.  We were no longer the doe-eyed couple who believed that one’s path in the world could simply be forged from the sheer force of good intentions and hard work.

 

I had decided that re-reading “Crossing to Safety” would be a wonderful way to honor our twenty year anniversary and yet I was slightly worried that it might disappoint.  This second time, I was determined to re-read the story without any rose colored glasses.

 

Devouring the novel as a young bride far from home, I had originally identified with the newlywed couple at the beginning of the story.  Twenty years later, it was the older couple, the road-tested version of the newlyweds, with whom I felt a kinship.

 

I empathized with what life had thrown at the characters, the medical scares, the dings and dents, the disappointments, the strength of the women’s friendships, the determination to go the distance and see things through.  The gift of “Crossing To Safety,” I understood in hindsight, had been receiving a blue print for life.  At the time, I had simply been too young to comprehend.

 

 

Looking back now at that first Christmas with Bob, I am nostalgic.  Life in China was simple and unencumbered.  We had no children or mortgages, no mound of bills, savings or possessions, just the strengthening foundation of a growing love.  We would need to call upon that in the years to come, to summon up what we had worked hard to construct.  But as I write this, 24 years down the road, I am grateful and proud that we have done more than simply survive.

 

I can still see that stark Beijing dorm room, feel the thrill of devouring a great book that has more than stood the test of time.  Although I couldn’t have imagined then what course our lives would take, as I now prepare to gather the brood for another family holiday complete with traditions, music and food, I wouldn’t trade places with my old newlywed self for all the tea in China.

  

Happy Holidays and may they be filled with remembering what's important.

Lee

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All That Stuff

“This is all your fault,” I mutter to myself in a low level simmer as I’m knee deep in boxes. I am talking to my husband, although he’s not home. But I’m talking to him alright. And maybe it’s better he can’t hear me. I’m not being nice. This dream of his, to move to a smaller, more streamlined house with more sunlight and solar heat and a smaller carbon foot print, well that’s just dandy. But now, as the designated pack mule for the family, sneezing repeatedly in foot thick dust in my son’s room and sorting through old baseball trophies and college applications that never got filled out, it feels a lot more like a labor camp. Prison labor. “In one more year we’ll be down to two kids,” he tells me. But as I pack up Tupperware and hold the tiny baby shoes of my twins, worried about where, in God’s name, we will store momentos in this new jewel box of a house, I wonder why I let him talk me into this. Like most Americans, we have too much stuff. Although we’ve moved nine times in 22 years of marriage—this being our tenth—the stuff keeps accumulating. Like a steady snowfall. How do we get all of these things in our lives? I’ve started being ruthless. When birthday party goodie bags come in, I stuff them in the trash in a flash. All those pencils and candies and plastic rings. Poof. Gone. I have a personal vendetta against birthday party goodie bags anyway. But as I combed through rooms and pared things down, putting them in piles for either a tag sale or giveaway or to keep, I began to feel a lightening of the load. My anger and resentment at doing this was dissipating. Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. A new start. A fresh beginning. What would my children DO with all this saved stuff in the end? Would their spouses care about the third grade reading certificate? Would they? In the first year of our marriage, my husband and I headed to Beijing, China to live and teach at a school there. The quarters were rudimentary. All we brought were two large back packs of possessions, with a box shipped by sea that arrived much later. We’d left behind all that china and the wedding presents, the engagement ring with the diamond, fancy clothes and shoes. Our life together was stripped of “stuff.” And we’d never felt freer or happier. There was no encumbrance. It was a great way to start a marriage – you were forced to stand and deliver, to work it out and talk it out. There were no rooms to hide in, no stuff to obscure the important issues. Nowhere to shop, really. And after we’d built a solid foundation in that first year of marriage with one another, it felt wonderful to come back to the states and construct a nest together, although we would move that nest many times. What that year overseas taught me was how really little we actually need. How unimportant the silver bowl is, the tea set from Grandma or the cashmere throw you HAD to have. The one that has sat, neatly folded, for a decade over the back of a couch. One of my friends is moving too. She is sorting through all of the heirlooms that her mother has given her over the years and she’s decided she is going to pare them down to one thing. That one thing will be representative of all of the others; all of the relatives, all of the past, all of the demitasse spoons and candle snuffs. Whether it’s a vase or a tray or something that we don’t always find a need for in our modern every day life, she will choose one thing and she has vowed to use and appreciate it. So after muttering, now I’m embracing more. Through all that dust and clutter and sorting and activity I’ve seen the light. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s the edited approach we need to adapt for our own lives. And so I’m editing. And editing. And I’m lightening the load.

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