A Red Tricycle

I saw a photo online the other day of a Christmas tree from 1948. It looked like the tree we had that year. The branches were sparser than we now expect from evergreens, but draped with tinsel icicles, who could tell?

On our tree, the lights were shaped like candles. They held a liquid of different colors, and when they warmed up, bubbles began to rise inside from base to tip.

That tree on Christmas morning shone with magic disguised as packages wrapped in silver and gold paper, flanked by an object of longing too big to wrap— my red tricycle with shiny chrome handlebars.

All of it came enveloped in love so sure and true it could be taken for granted.

Not enough is written about happy childhoods. Maybe it’s because they are over much too soon. And something new must be found to fill the holiday space.

When I was a young woman, the period between December 22-January 2 throbbed with party-going. There were balls every night, preceded by cocktail receptions, along with luncheons and an occasional afternoon tea. This was the Houston debutante season, where marriageable daughters were “presented to society.” (Think of Jane Austen. Really.)

For a participant, which I was for several years, it was like spinning into a jeweled tunnel, spangled with tiny bright lights, and spinning out again—somewhat dizzy—on January 3 when classes began once more.

You were given no time, no space, no opportunity for missing the magical Christmas of childhood.

And the older generations were kept too busy to think about mortality. There was so much black tie dancing, drinking, dining, and conversation. No wonder the oldest couples often slipped away by ten o’clock.

When I moved on into adulthood—and before life filled up again with family— I would notice how slow and empty the last week of the year would seem. How depressing it could become.

And after I was divorced, the whole Christmas swirl— comprised mostly, by then, of merchandizing messages— became something merely to endure.

The necessary focus on your child, or children, blurred as the holiday was parceled out between parents. Even the relative constancy of attending church became divided into Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Hale felt the pressures of commercialization and broken family rituals the same way I did, so we would “run” somewhere together as the holidays approached.

To Galveston, most of the time. The beach in winter can heal almost every stab of spiritual ennui. Sometimes we took my son and mother. Eventually we would go alone.

And we would come back refreshed, able to see those last days of the year as valuable prep time for the new year. Planning time. Not depressing, at all.

In the new stage of life that begins after your spouse has passed on, however, rituals offer themselves for amendment.

A Christmas visit to farflung family in early December, for example, can avoid some of the holiday travel crunch. And this year, without my dog as well, I find my urge to “run” remains strong, buoyed by habit and expectation. What will I find when I go? Grazing cows in a short-grass pasture unrolling by my window.Asprawling field lying quiet and stubbled, resting. Long, empty beaches, shining silver as the tide retracts. Will this be peace I encounter? Or loneliness? Or just solitude, paved with golden blocks of memory?

Readers can contact Hale at bfhale2017@gmail.com Her new book, This Familiar Heart: An Improbable Love Story, is available at the Fayette County Record office and bookstores, on and offline, everywhere.