“In the depth of winter,
I finally learned that within me,
there lay an invincible summer...”
- Albert Camus
I don’t remember what it was.
Or when.
I don’t.
Honest to God.
Maybe it was dragging the tree up from the basement.
Yes, maybe that was it.
A 9 foot “artificial” tree (I abhor the term “fake”) that we bought when we moved into this house over 20 years ago.
A 9 foot, artificial monstrosity that requires pain-staking, branch-color-coded-precision to bring it to all of its New York City’s Rockefeller Center tree-to-end-all-trees aspired-to glory.
We were hosting a holiday open house and I needed to fill a spot.
A spot that was begging for a tree.
A grand, “look at me tree!”
We shopped around, got a great deal, and I’ve been assembling that grand tree every year since, filling that same begging for a tree spot.
And every year since, there have been threats.
Threats to do away with that artificial, 9 foot tree-beast.
“It’s too much work!” some say.
“It’s too much tree!” say others.
“It takes too much time!” cry some.
“You’ll put your eye out, kid!” lecture others still.
“Some” and “others” being my wife and kids, the majority of kids being grown and gone, the threats have dwindled to a withstand-able minimum.
One year we went a little crazy.
Extreme Christmas.
We got a real tree to fill the spot.
Worse.
Decision.
Ever.
It began shedding the moment it entered the house.
By New Year’s it was nearly naked, almost proudly naked.
Shameful.
As the holidays drew to a close, it became not a good in any sense of the word, naked.
A “kids, don’t look!”, “avert your eyes!”, “oh good Lord!” kind of naked.
A you-can-hear-the-needles-dropping-from-the-as-you-walk-past-it-breeze kind of naked.
Ultimately, a “no more real trees!” (and was it ever really “real” anyway?), but damn, the-spot-still-needs-a-proper-filling-and-I-like-it-so-my-9-foot-tree-beast-lives-on, “here I stand!”, defining, holiday, leaving me emotionally kind of naked moment prevailed.
I won.
Sort of.
The assembling of the tree has become a tradition.
A thing.
A ritual.
A Christmas resurrection involving whiskey, brandy, Sambuca, or any other sort of “adult” beverage.
Perhaps egg-nog extra.
Perhaps all-of-the-above extra.
Perhaps.
And music.
Christmas music, of course.
An eclectic sampling that could be the sonic equivalent of that neighborhood Christmas lawn display that has Santa and his elves kneeling at a manger alongside Mary and Joseph while Rudolph is red-nose-lighting-up baby Jesus to a trio of Wise Men floss-dancing with Frosty.
Yes.
Yes, that was it.
The what and the when.
It was the tree (not the eclectic, neighborhood Christmas lawn display.)
My tree.
The 9 foot, artificial monstrosity I’ve been assembling annually for decades hit me and hit me hard.
It hit in waves.
Emotions.
Tears.
Waves of emotional tears.
“Christmas is a bridge”, wrote author Gladys Taber.
“We need bridges as the river of time passes”.
My river had grown increasingly dark in its passing - cold, menacing, and overwhelmingly unpredictable.
My river, at times, felt uncrossable.
The unannounced, unwelcome battles for breath, the ghoulish nightmares, the clock, the waiting, the dread, the strength-sucking, swirling, it-would-be-easier-to-give-up drain of it all.
The I-watched-it-and-I-felt-it-in-real-time-son-of-a-bitch-of-a-stroke that blew up my hospital home going celebration.
Stroke.
Curious word for a nasty breaking and entering bodily crime.
The covid19 symptoms, the not so good, the bad, and the truly ugly, middle finger salute symptoms.
The real, so very heartbreakingly real, especially when someone-anyone-calls-covid19-chaos-a-hoax, real symptoms that plagued and played my body, my mind and my heart.
The surgeries.
The hearing-the-news-shock, the nights before, the mornings of, the lights, the fears, the voices - the voices in and out of my head - the pleading, prodding prayers and the Divine, the waking up to the different, the new, the scarring.
The million scars, the interior scars, the seen and the unseen, the “here we are now, entertain us!” scars.
2020.
The river version.
A living whitewater, mesmerizing, underneath the all, always breathtaking, always there, river.
When the current crescendoed, the thought often came to me, seemingly from nowhere, “Christmas, I can’t wait for Christmas!”
Like a declaration.
A manifesto.
An oath.
In February, in April, in waiting rooms, in therapy, in August, I wanted Christmas.
I wanted safety.
I wanted normalcy.
I wanted, I wanted, I desperately wanted.
I needed.
A bridge.
A Christmas bridge.
I knew if I could make it to Christmas, I’d made it, I’d really made it.
I’d survived.
It kept me.
When the current overwhelmed me, the very thought of a bridge of Christmas meant something, something hope-filled, something real, something visceral.
You can’t hope for something that real and not be transformed when that something finally arrives.
Standing in front of my partially assembled, artificial tree-beast, it was here, that moment had arrived.
I was in it.
More fitting, I was on it.
I’d made it.
A Christmas bridge.
I.
Am.
Here.
When Lauren walked through the room, I pulled her close and hugged her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Are you okay?”
“It’s all good” I said softly.
“It’s good, this is good, it’s all good”.
I thought of the words of Coldplay’s Fix You, and while not a Christmas song, it fit:
“Tears stream down your face,
When you lose something, you can’t replace
Could it be worse?
Lights will guide you home,
And ignite your bones...”
Looking back and looking down at the dark river of 2020, my doctor’s words resurfaced: “You shouldn’t be alive”.
You can’t have those words spoken to you, out loud, in the presence of others and not be profoundly and permanently shifted.
You simply can’t.
I should have been in the company of the as-of-this-writing-over-300,000 dearly departed, those whose brush with covid19’s chaos has taken them away from this life.
I shouldn’t be alive, but I am.
I am.
I’m alive, I’m shifted and I’m here.
Gratefully so.
Home, on a Christmas bridge.