In the Spirit of Christmas

I recently began to reminisce about Christmases past. I do that in the summer. Goes well with my habit of singing Christmas Carols in July. And that other habit I have of standing on one foot while doing the dishes. Anyway, here's what I wrote about what I remember:

Before I ever met him, he hated Christmas. Hated it for the same reason he hated his birthday-- they were too close together. They were fake. The attention wasn't really on him, and the gifts for the two were often combined into one bigger gift-- It made him bitter to be so short-changed. Isn't that strange?

It was a victory-- the buzz of war’s end and the fear-stench of D-day rolled into one-- the first time I brought a Christmas Tree into our house. Not our first year there, but our second. Such a little thing, a tree.

We negotiated back and forth, just a suggestion gently interposed here or there when he wasn't struggling with other aspects of our life together... Finally we agreed. A live tree, no more than three feet tall, no ornaments, one strand of lights-- white lights only. He'd help me carry it into the house no sooner than the 23rd of December, and it had to be planted in the back yard no later than December 29th. It had to be under $25... And I couldn't mention Christmas or trees at all for the month between now and then. Certainly not on his birthday!

But it was a TREE! Something to reflect the seasonal glory I feel every time the Earth cleans her slate to begin anew. Something to connect our home with the homes of other families throughout the community to which I so desperately wanted to belong. Something friendly and healthy and clean in our married world. Something that wasn't a secret.

I laugh now to remember how he broke out in hives wherever the needles of that feathery little aromatic desert cedar pricked him. How angry he was when he finally planted it in January, and entered the sliding glass door on our little almost-A-frame house, strangling the earth beneath his feet with every twist of those mud-glazed black boots. Arms covered in little red welts. Of course, it wasn't funny at the time-- it was my fault, this crawling pain he felt in waves across his skin. My fault that he was allergic to Christmas. To the only tree on the lot I could find that was more than a seedling and less than $25, two days before Christmas.

I guess life is full of little victories like this. I guess it's hard to admit that I was part of the problem, too, but I know now that I was. I didn't hold him accountable for his choices, didn't put up boundaries between his problems and mine. I just checked to be sure the shovel was no longer in his hands, and then went forward to apologize for the tree, and offer what comforts I could to the places where his skin was broken and angry. After all, they were only little scratches on the surface, nothing deeper than that. They could be soothed, and given time, they would mend. Right?

The F.R.G. meets once a month on post, and the women who attend speak of seemingly innocent things between items of business on the agenda. Officers to officers, enlisted to enlisted, sergeants' wives straddling the emptiness between. The Captain's wife leads the meeting, and reports back to the General's wife, who also sometimes attends. They say a wife has no rank... I understand how easy it is to lie with integrity.

"Oh, yes-- we're putting our decorations up a little closer to Christmas," I tell them. "You know, we usually get a live tree, and we want it to survive the move back outside..." I no longer remember what "truth" I told about the total dearth of Christmas spirit in our home the first winter of our married life... Probably the same thing I said about the fact that he hated roses, cats, the color pink, home improvement shows on TV, and the time I spent talking with old friends on the phone-- that there were more important things in life than what kind of flowers I got on my birthday.

Some pieces of the people you spend your energy on get stuck in your psyche... The way the trapezius muscle rested under sun-spotted skin with a certain luscious convex curve that's missing on other men, the elephant stench of the bathroom after he ate ice cream or cheese, that tightness around his nostrils that said he was hiding something again-- something that was, in his words, "easier to ask forgiveness than permission" for having done. The sweet smell of the cologne he wore before we were married.

I remember the first week we lived together in the house I found. It was November, maybe December. We'd been married for six months, engaged for three years before that, and now finally, we could be alone together in our own space. We'd bought our own home, weathered our wedding on the coast, his four months of Training in Kentucky, my car accident in St. Louis. Things were finally going to be better for both of us.

I remember looking around at the end of that first week, noting the week's worth of discarded socks, scattered like so many crumpled gold-toed snowballs around our new king-sized bed. His OD green bath towel from our wedding, still so wet from yesterday's 5am shower that it dripped as I gingerly carried it the last two feet from the carpeted floor to the hamper in the corner.

I remember the moment I finally understood that the slovenly disregard he'd shown every hotel room, every quaint B&B of our courtship-- it was how he treated all the objects in his life. That my carefully hoarded life treasures would get no better treatment from him. That one more of my "it'll be better when" dreams was not coming true as planned.

And that knowledge sits in my psyche, making me cold and withdrawn around men with similar strengths and propensities. Men with birthdays in December, and allergies to milk. Men who wear that particular cologne. Now that my life is under my direction, it is like skulking around a sanitarium after dark to return to these memories, these rules, these smells and most of all, these complex truths. I am haunted by the ghosts of Christmases past.

I am no longer willing to give up the celebrations of my life. I am uncomfortable knowing that I did give them up-- many times, and to many people. Uncomfortable knowing how easy it always was to find a reason to stay behind, helping someone else’s dreams come true. The good little Wife, supporting my husband's career, depending on him for security and friendship and even identity at times. Learning to celebrate the small things, learning what it takes to survive in a world where soldiers are treated like machines, with no control over their lives and no way to guess at their future. Learning not to plan too far ahead, as a buffer to disappointment. Living in a community where belonging and blending in is everything, and you-- the wife-- can never be a priority. You have no rank, remember?