The Coming of The Season…

This time of the year, with all the meanings it conveys and carries, is sometimes a difficult period to manage for me; especially when recent issues and happenings will carry the emotions at fingertip level…

I have to go back to childhood years to understand the full meaning of this season; no, not the fact that we who call ourselves Christians profess to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, whose existence and passage in and into our history was a rite of rebirth and understanding. My lack of current commitment perhaps goes more into what the history of the season has been for me.

In posts written at other times, the usual get together in my grandparents’ home has been alluded to. Yes, we had the big dinner (on the 24^th, not the 25^th) as well as the midnight mass and the celebrations. More than anything else, there was this incredible spirit of family; that celebration which went beyond the palpable aspect… more the feeling of overabundant joy and kinship. Perhaps it was because I witnessed the unraveling of this feeling; the unraveling of a family which had been kept together through the efforts of the older generation (grandparents) and their constant reminders of our being a nuclear family, no matter if we lived apart.

As an adult, I have come to realize these continued efforts do take a lot of commitment and time; they also create(d) a lot of risk taking on the part of the “keeper of the guard” … in my childhood, my grandmother definitely had the position.  And no one could have done a better job than she did. It was one which was taken to heart, mind, body and soul … she plunged into the role of matriarch on the fly (we would say in Spanish “matriarca sin cartera”), a very special role which to us grandchildren was that of a friend and funny “older lady” who always catered to us and who, most of all, was someone we could always count on to regale us with an interminable amount of patience, care and love. As far as the adults went, she kept them on line … so to speak.

In my mind, she is the absolute image and figure of “Christmas Past”. All we did during the Yule season went through her; perhaps some of the more telling and happy moments of my childhood. Then, in the latter years of my life in Cuba, as the new system came in and as our family began to disintegrate, she also became the image of that aspect of our lives; a period of time that signaled the end of all we had known ... of all that we, as a family, had been able to accomplish.

Although the happy times were many, those last couple of years and, especially after one whole side of the family left (the aunt and cousins with whom my sister would later live in New Rochelle), her eyes changed. A brave front was kept alive for those of us who were still there. But her eyes changed… blue eyes which had always been alive and smiling, even when receiving the worst tantrums her oldest grandchild could muster (that’s me) … those very eyes which inspired trust and peace by just looking at them began to look tired, reddish from private tears, and downcast.

The last two Christmases were telling. Not much could be found to have the traditional meal and I do not really think the effort was put into the process… in 1961, our (my sister and I) last Christmas in Cuba, she already knew we were leaving and her eyes and face expressed all that had to be said. I could not read her eyes at the time, as I can now read them from memory and personal experiences lived along the way… as a young person without much experience, all I could think was that she was not feeling well.

When I am asked about my last memories of my country, the answer can go in several directions. If someone is asking on a superficial level, the answer will be equally superficial … we will talk about the house, the general memories and such … I f someone whom I know has a true interest and with whom I have a degree of trust asks, then the answer is very different. The truth will win out… those memories are not happy; they are memories of a family disunited, of folk who after working a lifetime to have their dreams come to fruition, see everything disappear in the blink of a moment in existence. 

They are, in detail, memories of my grandmother’s eyes and how, as the last months of my stay I would see them less and less … and when I would, they would reflect a deep, inner sadness and hurt which I would only come to understand years later and for other, my own issues and experiences lived. She was already withdrawing into that shell which would, eventually, wrap itself around her like a protective blanket so as not to allow destructive events she could no longer control, to bother and hurt her.

I have learned over the years to look at this season as one of regained joy and new memories, those made along the way with new families and friends. Yet, at the bottom of the toast well, there will always be those woven time memories which created and then, when unraveled, took down the incredible familial meaning of the process and the season. We will, as a family, enjoy its bittersweet presence this year; we will miss those who are no longer with us and raise a toast to them, to their memory and with much love. Yes, to my son and his grandmother who recently died but, in my heart and not so secretly, also to those who gave this man-child an opportunity to learn the meaning of joy and family at a very early age, for they will also be present … for, in my life ... they have never left.

Be Well … Be Back!!!

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