each page and then how to spray the finished product. That was our Christmas gift to our mother that year. Nostalgia is the exemplar of things past, not an accurate measure of reality, but a mere taste of pleasure once lived. This Christmas, I will be at my parents house once again for the 6th time. My father is 98 years old; my mother is 88; and I, well, I am eight, and I am standing at the top of the stairs looking at the distorted Christmas tree through the looking glass. And there is Anne, my sister. Yes, she is ten, holding her Reader’s Digest tree up to my mother, and my father just drove down the driveway in his Ford wagon – with Tiny Tim on his shoulders perhaps. Am I George Bailey in Frank Capra’s film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” groping for Zuzu’s petals, calling out to Clarence, standing by
the Christmas tree with my own daughter as a bell rings: “Look, Daddy. Teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.” Am I Norman Rockwell painting a holiday scene through an open window: a boy leading his brothers and sisters down the stairs past the Japanese smiles on his way to Christmas past? I like to remember the way things were, and I am grateful that my parents are still alive and still living in the same house. Nothing has changed, really, not even the
boy. We try hard as adults to act our age, to bury foolish ideas and dreams; but each Christmas, just as the Hallmark corporation asks us to do with their pretty cards, I check the back of my own heart to make sure that the child I was and the adult I am are still the genuine product of my mother and father, who hoped that their beliefs in what is simple and good and brave and wise have made a difference in the child they gave over to a world that easily forgets the glow of the Christmas tree after December 25th.
Dr. Christopher de Vinck, a graduate from Teachers College, Columbia University, is the Language Arts Supervisor at Clifton High School; an adjunct professor of English Education at Montclair State University, and the author of 12 books. His best know work is The Power of the Powerless (Crossroad Books) a book on the struggles and joys of loving his severely disabled brother (see page 42). This essay is from his upcoming book ‘Moments of Grace: Days of a Faith Filled Dreamer,’ to be published next Spring.
December 2010 • Clifton Merchant
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