Christmas letter 2001- The familiar and the miraculous

Dear family and friends,

A queer Christmas, this one is. No matter how we try to dress it up in Christmas carols and decorate it with lights, the image of the two towers crumbling and Manhattan smoking will not become visions of sugarplums. Any Christmas when bombs are falling can't be merry.

In his song "Happy Xmas," John Lennon sang, "A very merry Christmas/And a happy New Year/Let's hope it's a good one/Without any fear."

This is my mom's first Christmas without her mother. Grandma Ruby died in August at age 95. Christmas without your mother is not the way Christmas is supposed to be.

When DC's parents were out of the country for Thanksgiving, she pretended not to mind. This Christmas, she's keeping them closer to home at the cabin on the Castor River. Let it snow, let it snow.

I hope the strangeness of this Christmas isn't affecting children as much, that they're as excited as children ought to be as the days count down. Maybe we can catch the Christmas spirit from them.

DC is still teaching at Southern Illinois University and tending to her practice here. She makes pottery and worries about our sweetly demented dog Hank, terrorists, my golf addiction, tornadoes and the health of ferns.

DC and I have devoted nearly half of 2001 to fixing up the rental house we bought. That's an appalling amount of time to spend in the company of paint brushes. It has made me cranky as Christmas approaches.

Last week I got upset when DC put dying ferns in the bathtub. This week, abetted by a missing doorknob, she locked me out of my own closet.

Taking the door off its hinges was the only way in. After breaking into the closet and cleaning the new dead leaves out of the bathtub, I was identifying with my Scroogey side.

The next day, the doorknob appeared and the ferns disappeared. Christmas miracles do happen.

In California for our niece Monica's sumptuous wedding last summer, we imagined what it would feel like to live there again. We still miss California and lots of people there, but home is here now. Every Christmas we see more people we grew up with who have moved back home. Maybe it's a rite of middle age or a benefit -- we know what we want now: familiar faces.

We have a new face in the house, that of a lost, scarred and sickly little beagle DC named Alvie. When DC's father played with the Salvation Army band in front of the mall last weekend, DC put Alvie in a basket at the musicians' feet hoping people would give more money. Alvie wore a little Santa's hat. The Salvation Army did well.

Alvie wheezily sleeps on a blanket in a small, open suitcase on the floor at the foot of our bed. He is our Tiny Tim. The magnificence of his spirit reassures us there is as much reason to believe in Christmas this year as ever.

Peace and love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.