Home For Christmas
The package
arrived at precisely the right time: two days before Christmas, when I was
feeling the gloom of my first winter on the road. Away from
family, away from friends, with only four other itinerant musicians as company.
It just
didn't feel like Christmas. For that matter, it didn't even feel like winter!
“I'm going
to miss all the little things that made Christmas special,” I had written to my
mother a week earlier. “Decorating the tree, the special cookies, the Constant Comment tea after dinner...even those cheesy
old Christmas records of yours!” I laughed when I wrote it. We had always
complained to Mother about those Ray Conniff Singers
records, turning every song into an instant elevator-music snoozefest.
Now I was humming those songs as I walked across the parking lot to the club
where we performed each night.
When the call came from the hotel desk, I was
surprised. "A package for me?” I repeated
excitedly. “I'll be right there!” I grabbed my heavy winter coat--the one that
the locals always stared at before asking where I ever found such a coat. I had
explained half a dozen times that where I come from, this was the kind of coat
one needed at this time of year, each time eliciting a puzzled gaze of
disbelief.
In minutes,
I was at the hotel, where the clerk cheerfully lifted the suitcase-sized box
onto the desk. My eyes must have been saucers, and they instantly filled with
tears, when I saw the address label, penned in my mother's hand: “To Lindseye,
From Santa.”
Gratefully,
the box was not as heavy as its size suggested, and I carried it back to our bungalow
to open. Robyn, the other female singer, was just coming out of her room when I
clamored through the door. Her face lit up like a child's when I told her that
the package was from home. I set the box in the middle of the floor, and we
began to tear it open. Inside there were several boxes of different sizes, all
nestled among the white styrofoam “ghost farts.”
While I
opened the biggest box first, Robyn opened a smaller one that contained a tin
of homemade cookies. I paused in my unwrapping to name the various traditional
German treats, including spitzsbuben and springerles. We each selected something to munch on, and I
resumed the task of unwrapping what turned out to be a small decorated
Christmas tree. We were both giddy with delight as we unwrapped the rest of the
small boxes, among which were a box of Constant Comment tea, more cookies, and
a few gifts for me. It's funny to me that, as I recall this story now, I don't
remember what the gifts were.
At the very
bottom of the box, almost buried beneath ghost farts, was the smallest package.
When I tore off the wrapping paper, there was only a cassette tape, with the
words “;Merry Christmas”; written on the label. We quickly ran to my room and
slipped the cassette into my tape player. As the voices of my family and
friends reached out from the speakers, I was overcome with emotion. Mom had
recorded messages from just about everyone I'd ever known, wishing me a Merry
Christmas and blessings in my travels. I couldn't believe what a wonderful gift
I'd been given! When the first side of the tape finished, I turned it over for
the second side. I was unprepared to hear the matchless stylings
of the Ray Conniff Singers crooning the old cheesy
Christmas songs I thought I'd hated so much all my life.
Robyn and I
must have listened to that tape a dozen times over the next two days. We even
sang along with the songs as we hung our shiny earrings on the tree and sprayed
fake white snow on the windows. Despite our location, we both made it home for
Christmas that year.
copyright
2002 Lindseye Greye