I'll be home for Christmas

My Dad died at home on December 24, 2006 shortly after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Mom carried on with cheerful determination for a little over eight years until her passing on January 12 of this year. Naturally, I miss Mom and Dad greatly, as many of you miss your parents this Christmas, and I will remember mine today with a true Christmas story Mom told us when I was a child.

My Dad was drafted into the US Army after Pearl Harbor. He thought his flat feet would disqualify him medically but he was pleased when he passed the physical. Dad, who was a math whiz, had dreamt of being a West Point grad but he narrowly missed winning an academic competition for the places allotted to one of Alabama’s US Senators. Instead, Dad attended Auburn and earned his degree in Education, the least expensive course of studies offered, as his family couldn’t afford to pay the tuition for the School of Engineering. It all worked out, however, as he got a job teaching math at Coffee High in Florence, Alabama and met my Mom who was teaching Home Ec. They were married at the end of his first year at Coffee on June 15, 1941. The Japanese surprise attack came less than six months later on December 7.

Dad’s military career was rather complicated. Leaving out myriad details irrelevant to this story, Dad was sent to Officer Candidate School (OCS) and came out a Second Lieutenant, though not without a few misadventures. He opted to join the Quartermaster division of the Army Air Corp (later the US Air Force), which trained him and sent him around the country to a series of posts ranging from Atlanta, Georgia to Russell, Kansas and points in between. Military policy allowed my Mom to accompany him on his travels and live in the officers’ quarters of the various bases. However, after a number of false alarms, Dad finally received orders in late 1943 for an assignment that was remote, obscure and safe (as long as the troop ship he sailed on didn’t get sunk by a submarine) in, of all places, India. (I must mention here that my Uncle Alfred Scott, his only sibling, by complete coincidence, also was sent to India, where he and my Dad were occasionally able to get together and play tennis).

It was getting close to Christmas when the wives of the officers who were shipping out packed up to return to their homes for the duration of the war. All of them were worried, and justifiably so, about their husbands getting back alive and whole. My Mom and a group of her friends met at a café to share a meal prior to departing. As Mom described it to me, someone went over to the jukebox and the song that came up was Bing Crosby’s “I’ll be home for Christmas.” As you can imagine, every one of the officers’ wives burst into tears. Mom told this with a smile, which would not have been the case, I’m sure, had my Dad not been one of the fortunate ones who came home unscathed.

Of course, without Dad’s safe return, I wouldn’t be here to tell Mom’s story and all the ones that followed, a host of small, personal events of little significance to anyone but our family. Children grow up and leave the nest but the imprint of home on the heart is indelible. The meaning of Christmas changes with the pitiless advance of time but in the deepest reaches of the psyche something pure and simple remains, even when all that’s left are two surviving siblings and a modest house rich in stories whose days in the family are surely numbered. It’s December 25 and as long as memory holds steadfast,

“I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.”

Another dream about my mother

I went back to sleep around 6am and had another dream where my mother was very old and weakened and I was trying to take care of her. We were at the house in Athens getting ready to have breakfast. She was eating something like cold soup or cereal with berries in a bowl. It seemed she wasn't eating much, causing me mild concern, so I added more from a jar into her bowl. Then, I thought about how we used to have orange juice in the morning. I commented she didn't have it regularly like she used to. I was thinking about seeing if there was some in the refrigerator we could have. Then I noticed my mother had painted strange designs on her face and the back of her head with yellow paint (perhaps tempera), the outline of a heart all around her face and painted over facial features, eyes, mouth and lines elsewhere. It reminded me of something a remote tribe living in the Amazon might create. Perhaps it was more like a child's crude art work. I thought this was odd but I accepted it as a manifestation of her confused and frail state.

I've had similar dreams periodically over my adult years with my father and Grandpapa Scott after their deaths. The recurring theme is the old parent or grandparent is in very precarious physical and mental condition but I'm acting as if this is just the normal state of things.

The feeling of these dreams is the old person will go on forever despite the toll the years take on body and mind.  It's as if everything will continue like an integral approaching infinity but never reaching it.

Darth Cheney

What should we make of the fact Dick Cheney identifies with Darth Vader?