I wish

Yesterday I put up the family Christmas tree. It was a day-long endeavour, filled with trips to get more and more lights since my others were burnt out. The intricate wrapping of each branch, the scratches from the bristly needles, the yearly attempt to make sure each ball and ornament was evenly spaced...an undertaking that normally delights and satisfies. The creation of a beautiful, gleaming monument to the season, to family, to hearth, to home. To God.

Not so much this year.

My father loved Christmas. To this day I am not certain as to precisely why. He was a man made hard by life; surly and taciturn at best and patently offensive and abrasive at worst. He was the sort of person who loved only by degrees, doling out his meager little affections in such distilled doses that you felt you'd won the world when you earned so much as even a passing praise. However, each year's descent into winter and the approach of the Christmas season literally transformed this man from dour to delighted. He found the greatest joy in searching high and low for just the right gifts, and my father was a gift giver par excellence. He put thought and effort into his gift giving, trying to choose exactly that one thing that would mean the most to the recipient. In this way, I suppose, he found he could best express the love he felt.

That carried over into the annual decoration of the house. The best way I could ever describe the scene would be to say it looked like Christmas threw up on our house. Everything that was not nailed down was decorated. There were garlands and lights and at least 3 trees, sometimes more. Christmas pillows on the couch. Christmas linens in the bathrooms. We even changed the artwork hanging on the walls in the living room to pieces we had that reflected the simplicity of a winter scene. Bowls brimming with candy and nuts. Bing Crosby's warm liquid voice creeping from the stereo. It was as close to the perfect holiday atmosphere as one could possibly imagine, all fueled with the fervor of a man who otherwise would've played much closer a Scrooge than a Santa.

Since my father died, the magic of Christmas has faded for me. There is no great desire to decorate, no fevered search for just the right present. What has replaced it is a hollow numb, a feeling of being drained.

I learned quite a lot from my father. Those who know me well know that I am definitely my father's daughter when it comes to gifts. It's one of the few things about me that I really like, to give gifts that show how much love and care I have for the recipient. To give someone a moment's joy when they see that you did remember when they said how much they loved that certain thing, and that it mattered to you, that THEY mattered to you...that is one of the only ways I know to capture a fleeting remnant of that Christmas spark and carry it forward. To show love.

I wish I knew how to love better. I wish my father had known, too. And most of all, I wish I could have just a moment of that magic back; to be home, anchored and certain, instead of feeling adrift in the world, brokenhearted and small.

This year's tree might be one of the prettiest I've ever decorated.