Advent Day 1: Silent Night

     A carefully decorated tree stands in the corner. It’s lights twinkle and flash in the darkened room. In the soft, colorful glow, a visitor could make out the familiar shapes of Christmas presents, painstakingly wrapped and carefully arranged beneath the boughs of the Christmas tree.

     Note cards attached to each present all bear the same name. The name of the daughter of the man who sits silently in the rocking chair across the room. He sits in the darkness, looking at the tree as it glimmers. Staring at it…but looking beyond it. Looking back through it’s branches, back to the place in his heart where his cherished memories are stored, the memories of the Christmases that have come before.

The presents are for his daughter. His little girl. His Daisy.

She is a grown woman now, married and living in another state. But in his heart –and especially at Christmas—she is his little girl.

And it Christmas Eve once more.

     He thinks of the Christmases they spent together when she was little and they lived in the house in the country. How he decorated for weeks, and how everywhere they looked, they found Christmas. He thinks of her when she was four years old, zipped in a Barbie sleeping bag, cuddling up to him to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and then “The Grinch” and then “Scrooge.”  He hears her sweet, child’s voice singing Christmas carols in the car as they drove to pick out a tree. He feels the biting wind against his cheek as he sneaks up a ladder to the roof of their house just as she is falling asleep, to jingle his sleigh bells, and call out to imaginary reindeer, and convince her once again that Santa himself is up on that roof. He smiles as he sees her squinting her eyes tight together to convince Santa that she is asleep.

     He blinks back tears as he remembers lying awake until late into the night, because he was even more excited than she was on those magical Christmas Eves.

She called him only this morning, to say “I love you Daddy” and to wish him a Merry Christmas and to assure him that she, and her husband and the kids, would all be there Christmas afternoon. They’re going to the in-laws in the morning and then they’ll come to see him after lunch, she says. He put on his best face and kept the sadness out of his voice as he told her he loved her, and to take her time and, “Just get here when you can.”

But he didn’t mean it. Not really. He wishes she was there right now. Like when she was little. He has presents for her husband and for his grandchildren. They’re stacked neatly in his bedroom and tomorrow he’ll lay them out carefully beneath the tree next to hers. But tonight…tonight only her gifts sit in the soft glow and twinkle of the lights. Because it reminds him of how it used to be. How briefly she was just a little girl. How there was a time when it was just the two of them.

     Her mom left when she was only eighteen months old. She’d never known an intact family at Christmas. This fact never seemed to bother her mother but it tore her daddy’s heart out. He would have endured all the sorrow and pain if it meant her daughter could wake up in the same house as both her parents. But that was not to be. Her mom remarried. He did not. He chose to devote himself to his only child. He reasoned in his heart that had he remarried, given his age, he likely would have married someone with young children as he had. This would mean spending more time with someone else’s children than with his own, and he never could reconcile that. So, he didn’t try.

     He remained single and devoted to his daughter and collected great Christmas memories in the hopes that they would dull the pain. It worked, for the most part, but under it all was the quiet sadness of a broken home, unfulfilled dreams of family, and the longing for the things he never had himself as a kid. He wanted this for himself as much as for his daughter. As it turned out…neither of them had it.  But he did his best to make up for the emptiness they both fought against at the holidays. He did pretty well until she got older. And fell in love. And got married.

     He breaks from his thoughts and turns to look at the little porcelain Nativity set on the coffee table near his chair. It had been his grandmother’s. It probably dates back to WWII or before. The figurines are hand painted and the little stable is made of wood. It looks like someone took the real Nativity and shrunk it down to miniature size. He thinks of his grandmother and how she carefully placed this crèche under the Christmas tree each year when he was a baby. How it mesmerized him even then. How it seemed to contain a tiny piece of the very spirits of each of the characters in the scene.

     He reaches out to touch the figure of Jesus. His eyes blur. “Jesus,” he whispers. It’s a one-word prayer of desperation, and loneliness, and disappointment. Not knowing how to say what his heart is feeling and not having the energy to try. Not tonight.

“Where have the years gone?” he wonders. “Why am I still alone?” He wonders if he should have remarried. He wonders if he should pack up and move to the town his daughter lives in. He wonders if he’d been wrong all these years. He wonders if he was a good enough dad. A good enough believer. Did he love this Jesus enough? Did he show it? He knows he shouldn’t think this way, but he can’t seem to stop the thoughts tonight. They come on their own.

     His fingers run over the smooth porcelain finish of the baby Jesus in the Nativity set. The same one that has told and retold the Christmas story for over 80 years, 60 of which encompass his life to this very night. His eyes blur with tears again.

It’s another Christmas Eve. Another Christmas Eve without his little girl, without the family he sought, without the voices of friends and family and festivities. He remembers when he had all that, for however briefly. He closes his eyes as the tears roll slowly down his cheeks. In the darkness, he feels the smoothness of the Jesus figurine. He sees his grandmother’s face and hears her sweet voice as she sings “Silent Night.” The voice morphs into that of his daughter, who seemed to inherit her great grandmother’s singing gift.

     Another Christmas Eve races toward midnight and he is awake. Awake like he was when his daughter was little and he was as excited about Santa’s arrival as she was. Only now he awaits the flood of memories and the reminder that he is old. Old and alone and someone’s granddad.

     The Night may be Silent, but his heart hears the loud refrain of the memories of Christmas past. Memories of his daughter. He drifts off to sleep, his hand still resting on the porcelain Jesus, laying on the little manger, coming to save us from our sins. And to turn adult women back into little girls for just one day each year.