So This is Christmas …
Well, not yet. But soon.
I’ve had a year, to say the least. This seems to happen when the calendar is on an even number. Divorce, heartbreak, starting anew in an old place, trying to get my bearings. Again. There has been happiness, too, of course—a new book came out, new friendships emerged, I settled into my life as a nearly full-time author, and as I see the end of the year coming fast, I have high hopes for what’s ahead.
My mother messaged me a couple of weeks ago—the near-constant contact of Facebook makes telephone conversations ever more quaint, which is just as well by me, because I hate talking on the damn things—and asked if I’d come home to North Richland Hills, Texas, for Christmas. She knows I’ve been hurting. I know I’ve been hurting. My impulse was to say no. So I said yes. My impulses haven’t been all that reliable lately.
That supplied the occasion for doing a bit of math. Here’s what I looked like, more or less, the last time I spent Christmas with my family in Texas:
With my sister Karen circa 1991, just before I moved away to Kenai, Alaska.
And here’s what I look like, more or less, today:
In Billings, Montana, Spring 2014. (Photo by Casey Page)
Near as I can tell, I haven’t spent a Christmas in Texas since 1990. Less than a year later, just before Thanksgiving 1991, I was off to Alaska, and then my nascent (or, at least, not-quite-static) career carried me to Arkansas, Kentucky, Ohio, back to Alaska, California, back to Texas for a few short months, Washington state, back to California and, finally, here to Montana, where I’ve been since June 2006. It’s an article of faith among young newspaper journalists, if such creatures exist anymore, that holidays are for working. I never imagined that I’d stay away from the place I call home for 24 years’ worth of holidays, but that’s the way it went.
A lot has happened, obviously, to all of us. My part of Texas is now thick with nieces and nephews. I’ve gone and become middle-aged, built a marriage and seen it come apart, watched people come and go from my life. I’m older. That’s undeniable. Am I wiser? I wonder sometimes. My parents—vital and healthy though they may be—are in their autumn years. I’ve burned through one career and started another, and while my prospects appear as ascendant as they did when I was twenty years old, I have the energy of a man my age, not the boundless optimism and unstoppable motor I had then. It’s not the same. That’s OK, but I should have found the time for my family, for the place that gave me a foundation for my life, long before now.
So I’m going to Texas. And I’m going to damn well enjoy it. Better late than never, right?
