The Christmas of my freshman year was the first that I attended midnight mass. Given a candle while departing the church, I remember clearly the literal and spiritual glow that warmed me against the sharpness of the cold New England night air.
It snowed on Christmas night my sophomore year. I took a long walk with our new puppy – a black lab colored starkly against the still falling snow. Her name was Rosemary United – (yes Maddox, my fandom pre-dated the treble). That year I discovered the most beautiful Christmas sound – that of snow-muffled silence.
I cannot recall a thing about my junior year Christmas – I guess I was just too busy being a junior.
Senior year (with regards to my amazing advisees) Christmas was a time of transitions. After breaking my leg during the first game of the season, my cast came off. Also, my braces were removed after a long thirty month ordeal. And, I was deferred from my EA college – Christmas break was soon to be a college essay blitz.
Perhaps I could have chosen to speak about these transitions, and with some skill and agility try to relate my experiences to what many seniors may be feeling right now – and if I was effective, help calm those who are overwhelmed. I do not, however, possess that skill and agility.
More relevant to the purpose of this address, I found while wandering through my Christmas memories that none of my core memories (Quick shout out to Angie, Riley, Victoria, and Virginia, and all of A period AP Psych for sharing my first viewing of Inside Out) contain people.
Yes, none of my childhood Christmas memories contain people.
It is not that people are not in my memories.
I adored my mother’s father, the WWII pilot who flew with “Yosarrian.” There is not a prank we pulled or a story he told that I cannot describe in minute detail. And yet, none from Christmas.
My father’s mother was a saint who could relax me like no other as she scratched my head (and a full head of thick brown hair that bleached blond in the summer it was) with her long nails. I do not see her at Christmas either.
Dominant in most of my childhood memories is my father. Saturday morning trips to the dump. Sunday morning breakfasts at the diner. Biking and fishing on the Cape. Seasons of playing catch trying to straighten my errant throws – so successful to sufficiently lead to innings of getting shelled with my flattest of flat fastballs. Round after round of golf. There really still is nothing better than walking down the fairway after both my dad and I have crushed our drives down the middle. (For us, if I recall correctly, it happened on the second hole at Captains when I was 19.) When it comes to Christmas memories, however, my father, along with my mother and sister, are absent.
I don’t know why this is. Perhaps it is because the tastes and smells that so many of you adore are a detriment to me and my limited diet. Perhaps it is because being unable to advocate for myself and articulate my desires, I rarely received what I wanted. Perhaps it is not because of what happened as a child but rather that Christmas got difficult after my parents divorced (when I was 25) and my sister and I had to perform a balancing act to satisfy each of their now separate desires. Perhaps it was a result of my decade abroad when, although I spent Christmases in some amazing places such as Hong Kong, Istanbul, Melbourne, Bangkok, Varanasi in India, Osaka, and Seoul, I was mostly alone. Perhaps I lost track of home.
Over the past week, I have thought about this. The time I normally spend in my head has been amplified over the past weeks as I wonder about these Christmas memories.
What I have discovered is that I am ok with this. Although my mental make-up may be the reason for my peculiar memories, they do not subtract from the future.
I am lucky that at a later stage in my life, I fell in love not once, but twice. First with my wife, Minjeong, and then with my son, Hanul – a remarkable surprise who could be considered a Christmas gift – born on December 28th. Those of you that have shared a classroom with me have seen my glow when I speak of him. You might guess that, in my eyes, he stands starkly against any background. I am never too busy for him, and he changes too fast for me to keep up.
Given my memory situation, I do not try to quote “create memories” for him, although my human grasp for immortality does hope that he will remember me. I plan to, borrowing from the microeconomic lexicon, “maximize moments.”
Ask me when I return from Massachusetts in January how my Christmas was, and I should be able to tell you about how much Hanul enjoyed cutting down and trimming the Christmas tree with his grandmother, my mother, making cookies with his aunt, my sister Sara…how he loved his gifts, especially digging into his stocking, new robots (thanks Benjineers), strategy games, and legos. And, if I am lucky…and it snows…I will tell you about the walk he and I took with Minjeong in that midnight snow…where the Christmas silence emphasized that what truly mattered was not the future memory of that moment, but that moment itself.
Merry Christmas.
