"Running Commentary"

Home For Christmas

    I’m curious.
    Help me with an informal survey. Here’s the question I’ve been contemplating – are you going home for Christmas?
    We should probably define the term. Where do you go when you’re going home? Is it where you live? Perhaps home is where you grew up, with fond memories of your childhood. Is it a place you can point to on a map? Or none of the above?   
    In 1946, I was conceived, signed, sealed and delivered in San Francisco. I was too young to know, but the day I emerged from St. Francis Hospital in the Nob Hill neighborhood? I was home. San Francisco was my very first home. As a native, I still identify with my birthplace. I’ll always be a California kid.
San Francisco was home.
By the time I was knee-high to a fireplug, I instinctively realized my concept of home had shifted. It was no longer a place on the map; instead, home was wherever my mother was.
When I was with Mother, I was home.
Home included two other great loves of my life – my sister Faith Marie, and big brother Jim. Eight years older than I, Faith always looked out for her baby brother. I remember a Saturday matinee with her girlfriends to see heartthrob Pat Boone in “April Love.” Faith let her little bro tag along. Every time I hear that song, I smile – it sounds like home. The love of a big sister.
As for my big brother, what can I say? I’ve always looked up to Jim.  Literally and figuratively. Five and a half years older, Jim is over six feet tall – sans shoes. Me? I’m barely 5’8” – in high heels.
Don’t quote me.  
I don’t actually wear high heels.
Jim and I were very close growing up. We played and invented every game imaginable – one on one – and it’s no exaggeration to say I always lost. Always! But I never gave up or quit. And interestingly, those defeats helped shape my personality. I’m a scrappy fighter. Not afraid of anyone. I always thought I’d win the next game. The word Indefatigable comes to mind. Youthful naiveté.  
My family was my home.
Home never included my alcoholic and philandering father. Mother married Tom right out of high school – he was good looking, smart and came from a good family. Obviously, none of those qualities helped to mold him into a good husband or father. He was neither.
Here’s a telling tale. Mother suspected Tom was having an affair. One day, he left the house to “run errands.” Mother enlisted the help of a family friend and together they surreptitiously tailed Tom in a car.
When he met up with his girlfriend, Mother walked right up, leaned over into their car and confronted the paramours. She didn’t yell or scream. She coolly told the woman, “You can have him.” Kicked to the curb, Tom moved out the very next day – it was his daughter’s ninth birthday.
Incredibly, we never heard from my father again. He was a ghost. No child support, no gifts, cards or letters, no phone calls on birthdays or at Christmas. Not a word. Only 53, he drowned swimming in an deep-water canal. Empty liquor bottles nearby suggested suicide.
He had lost his home. There was only one thing left to lose.
We heard of his death from my grandmother. History notwithstanding, I felt compelled to fly out to Phoenix for the funeral of a man I never knew. As did Mother and my sister. We paid our respects. He was a bum, but he was also my father.
It’s sad, but he was never my home.
Mother remarried on my fourth birthday – and this time she got it right. Mom and Dad were happily married 52 years. I was never deprived of love or a kind father-figure.
Dad and Mother became my home.
Through the intervening years, my concept of home changed considerably. I married and became the proud father of three little urchins, each of whom have grown and now have children of their own. Nine grandchildren! When I see my kids and grandkids back in Philadelphia, I definitely feel I’m home.
Whenever we’re with family, we’re truly home.
All of which brings me to Christmas 2021. Will Roy Michael be home alone this year? In a sense, yes. I’ve decided against traveling back east to see my kids. Mother is gone this year … but don’t think of me as unhappy. I have so much to be thankful for in my life.
A poem by William Wordsworth sets my holiday table… “What though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.”
What remains behind is me … my home now is wherever I am.
I find strength in knowing how rich and full my life is.
It’s odd how a big-city guy from California and Philadelphia ended up in Kansas, but I’m here. I have new friends and live in a beautiful house. My space … my home. Moreover, I have two new “kids” with whom to celebrate Christmas – Boulder and Rocky, who make me laugh. I’ll also spend time with my sister and brother-in-law. It will be a quiet day of remembrance and reflection.
I can now answer my own survey. I’m in Kansas.
I’ll be home for Christmas.

Note:  Merry Christmas. God bless!  Rmykl@yahoo.com