Christmas in the Jackson household was never about Santa.
Sure, the jolly old elf made an appearance now and again. When that red-velvety figure strolled out of Grandma’s back bedroom on Christmas Eve, a sack full of toys slung over his shoulder, his “ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas” ringing through that homestead, one look at those twinkling eyes and even the littlest ones knew it was really Uncle Stan and, to the next generation, Uncle Mickey.
From earliest memory Christmas in the Jackson home has been about the account of Christ’s birth in chapter 2 of the gospel of the physician Luke. Grandma’s living room would overflow with her grandchildren, and then great- and great-great-grandchildren, and plenty of presents. The noise must have been deafening, but before eager fingers could tear into those gifts, a hush would overtake the room as Grandpa sat in the recliner and reached for his Bible. At his feet, little ones planted elbows on crossed legs, eyes glued to the man in the chair.
“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,” came the much-anticipated and oh-so-familiar refrain.
It’s a cherished tradition that stayed pretty much the same for decades as the adults edged into frailty and the children grew, marrying and producing little ones of their own.
Somewhere along the line a piňata was introduced. And then duct tape. As the clan grew in size and stature, Dad and oldest son Alan decided that, to make sure everyone got a swing -- or two -- the thing had to be duct-taped. Indestructible duct tape wrapped seemingly endlessly around cardboard and bits of brightly colored tissue and battered repeatedly by great-grandsons and great-granddaughters adept with a bat. By the end of the night that piňata bore little resemblance to its original shape, as did the candy inside.
When Grandpa passed away, Grandma set aside her grief, hosting grown grandchildren and their own broods in her home every Christmas Eve. Her table was covered with sandwich fixings, tamales, casseroles and sweets. Eucalyptus logs in the fireplace that Santa never stepped foot in would glow and flare, embers popping against the screen.
Then it was Grandma’s turn to leave and our tradition underwent a major overhaul: It came to our house. When it was time, Dad would sit in the recliner and read Luke 2. As the years passed it became clear that each one might be the last. Then that day came.
Last year our tradition underwent another major overhaul. We all packed up children, food and presents and headed to San Diego, where caregivers at Dad’s last residence turned over the library to Dad’s family. There we hugged, ate and chatted, cameras capturing every bittersweet moment. The piňata hung from the ceiling, forgotten and unscathed.
Brother Ken handed Dad a Bible and sat on the arm of the sofa, helping hold it as Dad’s voice came loud and clear, “And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy…”
This year our own little clan will celebrate Christmas Eve at our house. There will be a piňata for the little ones -- our grandchildren -- and plenty of food and laughter. And, before tiny fingers will tear into that brightly colored wrapping paper, their grandpa will sit in the recliner and turn his Bible to Luke chapter 2.
Because, after all, that’s what Christmas is all about in the Dale household.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Friday, September 30, 2011
Still mourning.
I miss him, my Daddy, who shared my sense of humor. Who seemed to know what I was thinking. Who definitely "got" me.
And I miss her. My champion. My hero. My prayer warrior. My encourager.
Heaven got the better part of this deal.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
September sunrise
Septembers in the Colorado Desert deliver the most spectacular sunrises. Moisture from Arizona’s monsoon season hangs over the eastern horizon, the perfect canvas for the rising sun. Fingers of light stretch across the skyline, reintroducing the star around which our world revolves. Purples and pinks give way to hues of orange so vibrant they are almost painful in their beauty.
It is such a sunrise that greets me Sept. 11, 2001. The paper was an afternoon delivery then, and for several months out of the year sunrises were part of the seven-minute (if the stoplights cooperate) commute to work. Turning the corner east onto Adams Avenue, I marvel at the brilliance filling the windshield. What a great way to start the workday, I remember thinking.
That was the last positive thought of the day.
It took a few seconds for the images, at first televised and then delivered by satellite to our newsfeed, to sink in. A plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, where workers were settling into their workday. The explosion sends shockwaves through the tower and throughout the nation. Twelve minutes later a second plane hits the South Tower.
We watch in horror as the TV in our publisher’s office delivers non-stop coverage and speculation. Stories trickle in on the AP wire, tersely worded at first, becoming more elaborate and detailed as the minutes pass.
I call my husband at home as our second son, then a high school sophomore, and his sister, a 9-year-old fourth-grader, get ready for school.
“Turn on the TV,” I tell him. “What channel?” he asks. “Doesn’t matter. Any of them,” is my reply. I remember this 10-year-old conversation as if it were this morning.
A third jet plows into the Pentagon. Twelve minutes pass and the South Tower collapses; 25 minutes later, so does the North Tower. And then the news comes, an hour to the minute after the attack on the South Tower, that a plane has slammed into a Pennsylvania field.
As the morning unfolds and the rest of the staff arrive, decisions are made on how to cover these attacks. The day’s paper is too small, and we bump up its size and buckle down to do our jobs, stuffing horror and fear and their accompanying bile into corners to be dealt with later.
The publisher decides to do a special section after the daily is printed so we can justly chronicle this morning that mirrors that other “day which will live in infamy” nearly 60 years before.
The rest of the day is a blur of text and images. Revision after revision of AP stories, updated, tweaked, resent. We scour them for fresh news as any inkling of hope in finding survivors dwindles.
With the click of a mouse the now-iconic images of terror fill the computer screen: of fireballs and smoke and people plunging past office windows; of first responders pouring into buildings, climbing stairwells to their deaths as terrified office workers descend, some to safety. Ash is everywhere in these images now so familiar to us all. Images of men and women in office attire, peering with haunting, shocked eyes through soot-covered faces, of fire trucks crushed by falling debris, of the cavernous crater where two enormous skyscrapers stood mere hours before; of emergency workers waiting at hospitals for the rescued victims who will never come, of family members and horrified New Yorkers filling parks with makeshift memorials and pictures of the missing.
Hundreds, thousands of images, springing to life one click at a time. Numbness sinks in. Afternoon gives way to evening. The sun has long set before this day’s tasks are completed.
Home, finally, and tears dammed throughout the day flow freely. No more images, please, especially of people freefalling those scores of stories to their deaths. Of the hopelessness and terror that surely filled their souls before they leapt. No TV. No Internet. Just silence. Audio, visual, mental silence. Please.
“What do you remember about 9/11?”
“How has 9/11 impacted your life?”
We’ve asked those questions dozens of times over the years, several times this week.
The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are etched indelibly into our collective national psyche, having changed forever so many things about the way we live.
And I’ve never looked at another September sunrise without remembering this one.
It is such a sunrise that greets me Sept. 11, 2001. The paper was an afternoon delivery then, and for several months out of the year sunrises were part of the seven-minute (if the stoplights cooperate) commute to work. Turning the corner east onto Adams Avenue, I marvel at the brilliance filling the windshield. What a great way to start the workday, I remember thinking.
That was the last positive thought of the day.
It took a few seconds for the images, at first televised and then delivered by satellite to our newsfeed, to sink in. A plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, where workers were settling into their workday. The explosion sends shockwaves through the tower and throughout the nation. Twelve minutes later a second plane hits the South Tower.
We watch in horror as the TV in our publisher’s office delivers non-stop coverage and speculation. Stories trickle in on the AP wire, tersely worded at first, becoming more elaborate and detailed as the minutes pass.
I call my husband at home as our second son, then a high school sophomore, and his sister, a 9-year-old fourth-grader, get ready for school.
“Turn on the TV,” I tell him. “What channel?” he asks. “Doesn’t matter. Any of them,” is my reply. I remember this 10-year-old conversation as if it were this morning.
A third jet plows into the Pentagon. Twelve minutes pass and the South Tower collapses; 25 minutes later, so does the North Tower. And then the news comes, an hour to the minute after the attack on the South Tower, that a plane has slammed into a Pennsylvania field.
As the morning unfolds and the rest of the staff arrive, decisions are made on how to cover these attacks. The day’s paper is too small, and we bump up its size and buckle down to do our jobs, stuffing horror and fear and their accompanying bile into corners to be dealt with later.
The publisher decides to do a special section after the daily is printed so we can justly chronicle this morning that mirrors that other “day which will live in infamy” nearly 60 years before.
The rest of the day is a blur of text and images. Revision after revision of AP stories, updated, tweaked, resent. We scour them for fresh news as any inkling of hope in finding survivors dwindles.
With the click of a mouse the now-iconic images of terror fill the computer screen: of fireballs and smoke and people plunging past office windows; of first responders pouring into buildings, climbing stairwells to their deaths as terrified office workers descend, some to safety. Ash is everywhere in these images now so familiar to us all. Images of men and women in office attire, peering with haunting, shocked eyes through soot-covered faces, of fire trucks crushed by falling debris, of the cavernous crater where two enormous skyscrapers stood mere hours before; of emergency workers waiting at hospitals for the rescued victims who will never come, of family members and horrified New Yorkers filling parks with makeshift memorials and pictures of the missing.
Hundreds, thousands of images, springing to life one click at a time. Numbness sinks in. Afternoon gives way to evening. The sun has long set before this day’s tasks are completed.
Home, finally, and tears dammed throughout the day flow freely. No more images, please, especially of people freefalling those scores of stories to their deaths. Of the hopelessness and terror that surely filled their souls before they leapt. No TV. No Internet. Just silence. Audio, visual, mental silence. Please.
“What do you remember about 9/11?”
“How has 9/11 impacted your life?”
We’ve asked those questions dozens of times over the years, several times this week.
The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are etched indelibly into our collective national psyche, having changed forever so many things about the way we live.
And I’ve never looked at another September sunrise without remembering this one.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Sweet, sweet music
Some of the ivory keys are chipped on the tips. The pads, hidden, are threadbare. A stain on the front, left long ago. There’s a fairly fresh scar along the edge, left by an impatient child forcing the lid open.
Every time I dust the keys, the darkened wood, it’s as if this piano is calling, “play me.” But it can’t coerce from these fingers the magic it can from Mom’s.
“Stodart, New York,” it reads as the lid is lifted.
If it could tell a story, it would tell of its journey to Los Angeles, given in the early 1940s by loving parents to their youngest child Mary, whom they called Molly. This old upright followed Molly to Pico and then to Whittier. It embarked on its journey first to California’s Imperial Valley when Mom married Dad in 1949, to Melrose, Ore., and Bremerton, Wash., before being loaded into the U-Haul for a return trip to Imperial. It sat for more than 20 years in the Imperial Community Church parsonage and, when Dad retired in his 70s, moved into our home.
It’s been tuned, burnished and played countless times over these seven decades.
My earliest memories are of Mom sitting at that piano. Playing it comforted her in times of stress, cheered her in sadness, shared her heart in times of praise. Her fingers would trip effortlessly over the octaves, cajoling haunting, uplifting, sweet melodies.
Sitting here, looking at this simply crafted music-maker, I remember winters in our Melrose home, huddled in the dining room, the only truly warm place in that home built in the 1800s. No insulation. No central heating. A furnace in the dining room our only source of heat. The pipes froze nearly every winter and we’d slip and slide down the hill to bathe in the church sinks. It truly was a delightful adventure for a child.
And Mom, tired after a day of teaching at Hucrest Elementary, after coming home to feed her brood, after putting some of us to work helping her grade papers, would sit on the piano bench and just play.
“Great is Thy Faithfulness.” “The Old Rugged Cross.” “How Great Thou Art.” “Isn’t the Love of Jesus Something Wonderful?” Scottish ballads. Irish lullabies.
Today Mom’s fingers are aged, gnarled, and pain accompanies her playing. But so does peace.
When Dad was hospitalized awhile back and life as we knew it had changed forever, Mom went indoors, sat down at the piano and played, her aged fingers cajoling sweet music from the aged keys.
Sweet, sweet music.
Every time I dust the keys, the darkened wood, it’s as if this piano is calling, “play me.” But it can’t coerce from these fingers the magic it can from Mom’s.
“Stodart, New York,” it reads as the lid is lifted.
If it could tell a story, it would tell of its journey to Los Angeles, given in the early 1940s by loving parents to their youngest child Mary, whom they called Molly. This old upright followed Molly to Pico and then to Whittier. It embarked on its journey first to California’s Imperial Valley when Mom married Dad in 1949, to Melrose, Ore., and Bremerton, Wash., before being loaded into the U-Haul for a return trip to Imperial. It sat for more than 20 years in the Imperial Community Church parsonage and, when Dad retired in his 70s, moved into our home.
It’s been tuned, burnished and played countless times over these seven decades.
My earliest memories are of Mom sitting at that piano. Playing it comforted her in times of stress, cheered her in sadness, shared her heart in times of praise. Her fingers would trip effortlessly over the octaves, cajoling haunting, uplifting, sweet melodies.
Sitting here, looking at this simply crafted music-maker, I remember winters in our Melrose home, huddled in the dining room, the only truly warm place in that home built in the 1800s. No insulation. No central heating. A furnace in the dining room our only source of heat. The pipes froze nearly every winter and we’d slip and slide down the hill to bathe in the church sinks. It truly was a delightful adventure for a child.
And Mom, tired after a day of teaching at Hucrest Elementary, after coming home to feed her brood, after putting some of us to work helping her grade papers, would sit on the piano bench and just play.
“Great is Thy Faithfulness.” “The Old Rugged Cross.” “How Great Thou Art.” “Isn’t the Love of Jesus Something Wonderful?” Scottish ballads. Irish lullabies.
Today Mom’s fingers are aged, gnarled, and pain accompanies her playing. But so does peace.
When Dad was hospitalized awhile back and life as we knew it had changed forever, Mom went indoors, sat down at the piano and played, her aged fingers cajoling sweet music from the aged keys.
Sweet, sweet music.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Not by chance
I don’t believe in chance.
It’s not by chance I’m watching the sun set over Tecolote Canyon. It’s by design.
By design the ridge across the canyon glows like wildfire consuming the hillside. By design the sky above burns brighter, almost painfully so, as the sun sets over the Pacific, just on the other side. By design waves of gold and orange and pink give way to shades of purple and shadowy blue, a crescendo of color set in motion by the one who created the Earth, the universe, and all that is within them.
Nature’s orchestra responds in the song of the wrentits and towhees hopping in the scrub brush and the tiny, demanding squeaks of a hungry hummingbird. The swallows swoop in unison. The hawk glides on the thermals, suddenly plunging toward a branch, seizing it so violently the entire treetop shakes.
It wasn’t by chance the doctors found tumors in glands in my throat. It wasn’t chance that led me to today.
The nurses -- Cynthia, Maricela, Pam, Jennifer, Feven -- it was by design we crossed paths. Pam, prepping me for surgery and chatting comfortably about her upcoming trip to Tahoe with her family. Jennifer, facing layoffs on the floor where she normally works and with her husband long out of work. Nurse’s aide Diane, at 22 mourning the recent death of her father -- who was my age. Cynthia, who joyfully delivered news from the doctor that both tumors were benign, who, when it was her turn as charge nurse to make assignments popped her head in the room and said she had given me Maricela. Sweet, compassionate Maricela, with heartfelt hugs when it was time to go home.
We were brought together by the same hand that traced those vibrant colors across the western sky.
If not, I wouldn’t be sitting here days later on the patio of our friend’s condo above Tecolote Canyon, soaking in the quiet and beauty I so need for spiritual and physical healing.
Nope. I don’t believe in chance.
It’s not by chance I’m watching the sun set over Tecolote Canyon. It’s by design.
By design the ridge across the canyon glows like wildfire consuming the hillside. By design the sky above burns brighter, almost painfully so, as the sun sets over the Pacific, just on the other side. By design waves of gold and orange and pink give way to shades of purple and shadowy blue, a crescendo of color set in motion by the one who created the Earth, the universe, and all that is within them.
Nature’s orchestra responds in the song of the wrentits and towhees hopping in the scrub brush and the tiny, demanding squeaks of a hungry hummingbird. The swallows swoop in unison. The hawk glides on the thermals, suddenly plunging toward a branch, seizing it so violently the entire treetop shakes.
It wasn’t by chance the doctors found tumors in glands in my throat. It wasn’t chance that led me to today.
The nurses -- Cynthia, Maricela, Pam, Jennifer, Feven -- it was by design we crossed paths. Pam, prepping me for surgery and chatting comfortably about her upcoming trip to Tahoe with her family. Jennifer, facing layoffs on the floor where she normally works and with her husband long out of work. Nurse’s aide Diane, at 22 mourning the recent death of her father -- who was my age. Cynthia, who joyfully delivered news from the doctor that both tumors were benign, who, when it was her turn as charge nurse to make assignments popped her head in the room and said she had given me Maricela. Sweet, compassionate Maricela, with heartfelt hugs when it was time to go home.
We were brought together by the same hand that traced those vibrant colors across the western sky.
If not, I wouldn’t be sitting here days later on the patio of our friend’s condo above Tecolote Canyon, soaking in the quiet and beauty I so need for spiritual and physical healing.
Nope. I don’t believe in chance.
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