I'm dreaming...

Every year I promise myself not to get caught up in the frantic rush of Christmas and each year I find myself ensnared. Not unpleasantly, you understand. I've actually grown to enjoy it. ("Grown to" is an interesting phrase. I first "grew out of" and now I've "grown to".) It has become fun. When you have an eleven year old boy, how can it not be? I still grouse and complain about the commercialism and all that, but I do love Christmas. In my heart I love it. I just try not to let on.



It just occurred to me that I haven't heard Bing Crosby sing White Christmas this year. But wait. Here's a link to Elvis singing it.




When I was a kid, I dreamt a lot about a white Christmas. I don't recall that we ever had one, but it didn't matter. The dreaming was enough. Just imagining what I would do if the snow came. I was always trying to find some definitive evidence that Santa Claus existed. Reason told me it was impossible for an overweight guy in a sleigh pulled by tiny, flying reindeer to cover so much territory in one night. Still, I had no real proof that he didn't exist. A little snow on Christmas Eve would be all I needed. It would be impossible for him to get in and out of our house without leaving sleigh tracks, footprints, reindeer droppings. Some trace.

Now that I live in New York I do see a white Christmas now and then, but I've never think to check for footprints in the snow. Hmmm.

And so it was that tonight's theme became Christmas trees and lights. From Wales, Virginia, North Carolina and Louisiana.

November 22, 1963

I remember that day and going to buy popcorn in a movie theatre where I was watching a very dumb movie called Mary, Mary. I thought the woman behind the counter was trying to tell me a crude joke when I asked for popcorn. "The president's been shot" she said. "Oh?" I said. "And governor Connelly too. In Dallas. I just heard it on the radio." I realized then she wasn't joking.

I left the theatre and drove towards home. A small girl's college was near a Catholic church I passed, and I saw students running towards the church, crying.

I drove from southern Viginia to Washington, D.C. that night, arriving in D.C. after midnight. I went to the little park across from the White House and stood quietly with others. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to do that, but I thought I should do something. It was about two a.m. when the grey Navy ambulance bearing the President's brought him back to the White House.

That weekend was so cold.