Christmas came and went
A modest year for gifts under our tree.
Last week was Christmas. We stayed home Christmas day and enjoyed a quiet day as a family. There was a fire in the hearth and rather than make a fancy dinner, my Long Suffering Wife and I opted for something easier. Fancy cheese from the cheese shop in Providence and fancier bottle of champagne. It was a lot easier than trying to appease the various and sundry dietary requirements that plague our family. Boxing day we drove LSW’s home town of Marshvegas (Marshfield, Mass for those of you not in the know) for second Christmas with my in-laws. Then last Saturday last Christmas with my best friend and his wife.
It was a pretty good Christmas. The boys, as they usually do, made out. This a testament more to the generosity of our Friends and family than to their greed. Not to mention the fact that LSW and I are generous too.
It is still odd for me to see so much under the tree. Not because I am frugal or hate Christmas. In my family the holiday was a modest one in terms of gifts. As a kid, there were times when there was no money and certainly not much extra for things like Christmas gifts. A couple of toys when I was a kid, books, there were always books and usually clothes that added some variety into my my mostly hand me down wardrobe. Then when I moved in with my dad, money wasn’t as tight but I was too old for toys.
A couple of years before I moved Off Island, (for the three people reading this who don’t know me I lived on Nantucket Island until I was thirteen) my family was going through a financial rough patch. It wasn’t as bad as the height of our flirtation with poverty, when blocks of government cheese and flats of thirty eggs showed up in the refrigerator. No, this year we weren’t poor but do to a series of unfortunate circumstances there was no money for Christmas presents. What gifts there were had been sent to my maternal grandparents as we were supposed to go there for the holiday. The same financial hiccup that caused us not to be able to go to my grandparents also meant there were no presents under the tree that year.
I was, as one might expect upset. On Christmas eve (though it might have been on the day itself) my friend Mike O’Keefe called me and asked me to come to his house. When I arrived he and his sister Kelly, gave me a couple of presents that were meant for them. I was and I am still incredibly touched by this act of generosity.
I always credited Mr. and Mrs. O’Keefe for being responsible, if not for suggesting it then for raising to generous people. I spoke with Mrs. O’Keefe five or six years ago and she put the blame, as any proud mother would, squarely on her kids shoulders. Sadly she passed away four and a half years ago leaving the world a poorer place for her passing.
Mike reached out to me last week, a few days before Christmas to tell me his father had passed in the night. Mike’s dad was a towering figure in my young life. In many many ways Mr. and Mrs. O’Keefe served as a role model for what parents could be. They offered me a vision of what family life could be that was completely foreign to me, as by then my parents had been separated since I was three.
I think of the O’Keefe’s every Christmas. I think of their children, my friends, Mike and Kelly, as well. I look at our Christmas tree, overflowing with gifts for our boys and hope that my sons would be as generous if they had a friend in the same situation I was in then.