When our
son, Nick, went into the Army in May, one of the things I thought as I said
goodbye to him was that for the first time in his life, he wouldn’t be home for
Thanksgiving or Christmas. For some reason, that bothered me more than I
thought it would.
That
surprised me, because I’ve never been terribly sentimental about those
holidays. When I was a kid, they were often days with obligations, where I
couldn’t do what I wanted to or play with my friends. Because of that, the days
often felt more like chores than celebrations.
When I went
off to college, the emotional level of the holidays kicked up a notch. Going
home then seemed to really mean something and was a way of reconnecting during
the period between childhood and adulthood. The difference between home and
college provided a yardstick for measuring my progress during that transition.
The Yearly Negotiation
In 1977,
Kathe, my younger sister, and I both got married, and the holidays took on a
hitherto unknown dimension. She was living in Seattle, I was living in Santa
Cruz, our parents were in Glendale, and the in-laws were in Watsonville and
Spokane.
At that
point the holidays got complicated. We would try to get our whole family
together for one of the two, and one of us would try to spend the other holiday
with mom and dad. That, of course, had to be worked around our spouses’
commitments to their parents, the work schedules of four people and so forth.
Planning for the holidays came to seem less and less like a spiritual family
bonding experience and more like an acrimonious labor negotiation.
The parents
are all gone now, and the kids are grown up, so it’s a bit simpler. The past
few years we’ve either stayed home — Linda, Nick and I — or occasionally gone
to Seattle to be with Kathe and her family. It has been considerably more
low-stress than before, and there was the certainty that at least our small
family would be together.
The Soldier Far Away
Nick’s
going into the Army changed even that dynamic, and we just figured that, buck
private as he was, he wouldn’t be able to get time off then. It looked as if,
for the first time in 37 years of marriage, it would be just Linda and me for
Christmas.
After basic
training at Fort Jackson, S.C., Nick went to Fort Eustis, VA, for advanced
training as a helicopter mechanic. If the class had started right away, he
would have been done in late October and low man on the totem pole at his new
posting after that. But the Army works in mysterious ways.
It turns
out that they didn’t have enough people to start the class right away, so he
spent a month at Fort Eustis doing janitorial duty every day, which I’m sure
built his character no end. Once training got under way, graduation was set for
the day before Thanksgiving.
Given
Linda’s work schedule, flying out then wouldn’t have been feasible. But then
the Army struck again. Nick was chosen to stay for additional training on the
next generation of Blackhawk helicopters, and his training end date moved to
December 14. At that point he’d have two weeks’ leave and wouldn’t need to
report to his next post until the first of the year.
So he got
the leave, and he’ll be home for Christmas, arriving late the night of December
18. Given the nature of the Army, it could be his last Christmas home for
years, but I’m trying not to think about that. Let’s just enjoy this one.
