Planes, Trains, and Ships

Christmas, for me, always seems to be about airplanes. Or more precisely, travel.

Since I left home in 1979, the only Christmas I can remember that wasn't spent on the road or as a guest somewhere was the one I spent off the coast of Kuwait. 1993.

This year, my daughters and I will be traveling to Wyoming to visit my parents. I am not sure which of them is more excited about the visit. If I had to pick, I'd say it was my dad.

Like most kids, I got some cool gifts over the years, but what I remember most about Christmases when I was growing up was the laughter. And the music.

My mother has her PhD in Music Education, and though that came after I left home, she was the assistant music director at our church for many years, so from the time I was old enough to join the Junior Choir, my mom and I (and later my sister) had Candlelight Service and Christmas Sunday services to prepare for and perform in. By the time I was 11 or 12, I was in the Handbell Choir, and then the Youth Choir. My friends and I would join the processional, careful to take seats close to an aisle so that we could slip out for the bell loft before we were needed there, and then back down to our seats in time to sing with the choir. Performing added a level of excitement to holiday services that I long to recapture.

When Christmas didn't fall on a Sunday, our family tradition was to sleep in until at least 8 am...interminable for my sister and me until we hit our teens and actually preferred to sleep in. We'd all take turns opening presents, with my dad taking pictures of us nonstop, though mostly of my sister. When the base of the tree was visible once again, my dad would head for the kitchen to make the world's best pancakes.

One year, in my early teens, Dad and I went out for a tree on Christmas Eve...I have no idea why we waited that long, but those were lean years for us, so it's possible that until that day, my parents weren't sure we'd get to have a tree and food on the table. It's also possible that the season was so busy for my mom, and business so busy for my dad, that we simply put off getting the tree until the last minute. Whatever the reason, we found ourselves at the tree place in a parking lot on Hartford Road well after dark, looking at trees illuminated by the street lights and a string of bare bulbs through that thin, wind-whipped snow that falls only when the temperatures have fallen below freezing. When we'd decided, we went in to the office, where the tree guy waved us out the door again. "Take any tree on the lot, no charge," he said. "Merry Christmas!"

Our return home that night was both joyous and triumphant: we were men, and we had won that tree. Over the years, my mother has made many jokes about my father's frugality, and that tree remains in our memory as having elevated his sense of economy to legendary status. The Christmas Eve quest for a tree became a tradition steeped in egg nog and jokes, and on those few Christmases when I was actually home before Christmas Eve, my dad and I have upheld it. Once or twice, my brother-in-law has joined us. Men hunt tree.

My dad has an unbelievably creative mind, and no one who knows him will ever deny that he thinks of things in different terms than the rest of us. One year, he gave me a Marine recruiting poster. Not because either of us had any ties to the Marines, but because it had a photograph of a Phantom fighter on it. Cheap gift, a poster, right? Not very original? This was no ordinary poster: it was a billboard poster. One Saturday not long after, we wall-papered my room with it. That Phantom was 25 feet long, and covered two and a half walls of my room. No, my dad didn't just give me a poster. He gave me an image of the ultimate expression of my dream to fly, one that I'd see first thing every morning and last thing at night for as long as I lived under his roof. He gave me a celebration of a passion we shared, that we still share. The message was clear: "This is what yo can do, if you want to, Son." He gave it in a way no one I know has ever even considered, much less gotten...that poster stands as one of the coolest gifts I've ever heard of.

Years later, when I was in Maine to help build USS COWPENS, I went into the blueprint library at Bath Iron Works and printed out the exterior line drawings of the ship to give my dad for Christmas. That led to this:

...which is now on display at the Cowpens National Battlefield Museum. It was built mostly from scratch, out of plastic and fiberglass and wire and brass, and it is six feet long.

Over the years, there have been several occasions when I've been unable to be home for Christmas Day, so the family has moved the whole celebration and all the traditions that could be moved to whatever day I could be there. The important thing, as far as my mom and dad were concerned, was that the family gets to be together for the celebration. I will be able to offer this to any woman who chooses me: two Christmases.

For several years after my sister moved to California to be with Joe, the three of us have given our parents gifts that honor them with our creative talents. One year, we borrowed their video camera for several days before Christmas, and presented them with a short film about what Christmas means to us. The film was hosted by Joe as Wiley Beaton-Smythe, a vaguely British talk show host who goes around interviewing various people (all played by my sister and me) about the meaning of Christmas. Another year, we wrote and recorded a 40's style radio play about a Sam Spade-est-ce-que private eye hired by a mysterious and beautiful woman to find the meaning of Christmas. A couple years ago, we recorded an album of our music for them.

It's not just that I love how they made Christmas for us when we were young, I love that they gave us so many options for making Christmas wonderful now.

It's that one fact that makes being solitary at Christmas such a bittersweet thing; My most passionate Christmas wish is to share all of this with a woman who understands and appreciates it.

Anyway, I have all of that to look forward to.

And the best thing about Christmas this year is that my niece's EEG was normal today. There is no sign of the abnormal brain activity that indicated lurking seizures and infantile spasm. Yesterday, when Joe went to check on her in her crib, Clara heard his voice, rolled over, and started giggling.

So, this year, it seems there will be one more laugh in the Kalbfleisch household.