EVERYONE NEEDS A LITTLE CHRISTMAS

She saw him before he saw her. Whether he was really sleeping there in his chair or merely dozing, she didn’t know. He did sleep a lot, that she did know. In fact, he seemed to always be in dreamland whenever she came upon him nowadays.

There was a time, in her long ago memory, when that certainly wouldn’t have been the case. Back then he was always happiest in his workshop, forever tinkering with some such thing in his garage or his basement. She didn’t think he’d ever purchased a lawn mower fresh from the store – in fact he would look for people’s cast-offs on trash pick-up day and haul them home for refurbishment or to scavenge for parts. He had been a master-fixer.  A true child of the Depression, “make do or make it do” - that was pretty much his motto.

But the workshop was gone and there was no basement at the place where he lived now. Oh, that was necessary, she knew. Somewhere down deep she hoped he knew it, too, but she wasn’t sure he really did. She knew he missed the freedom of coming and going as he pleased, of having stuff to just “do.” She hoped he realized it was for his own good, that he needed this place, that his car was better off in someone else’s hands and that he really did need the other hands that helped him with his meds and saw to his daily needs.

Well, anyway, here it was Christmas-time once again and she hoped she could help him get some enjoyment from the season. It made her a little sad to think of his Christmases as a boy. He’d told her mother that the only Christmas trees he’d known as a youngster were those as were found at school. No candles or tinsel or special ornaments at his own house. For him there had been no joyful treks, stomping through the Minnesota snow, out to chop down an evergreen and certainly no laughing, jostling times with his siblings as together they strung popcorn or made paper garlands to festoon their prize. The woman suspected this might be due to his own father, her paternal grandfather, whom she’d never met. This man had passed on well before she’d come into the world, long before her parents had ever come across one another themselves. She did know, though, that the grandfather had not been a happy man, forced to work the family farm as he was, against his will, at the bidding of his own father. The grandfather was known to be a rather cold, stern man, not given to much emotion and apparently not even to such apparent “fripperies” as Christmas.  She felt for those kids, her dad and her aunts and uncles, and for those long ago Christmases that just weren’t.

As the father of his own family, she remembered fondly that he had always made sure his children knew Christmas. There was always a tree, bright with those cool bubble lights and shiny icicles, a few presents, the Sunday School program with “pieces” to be memorized at church and without fail, no matter how lean the times, a delicious holiday meal on the Day itself. The woman and her siblings had never known a Christmas that wasn’t. And, as kids, they had never known their father had.

And so, with a thankful, grateful Christmas heart the woman pushed open the door and gently called to the drowsy old man in the chair. “Hi, Dad,” she wakened him. “I’ve got your tree! Let’s give this room some Christmas cheer!” Because, you know, everyone needs a little Christmas.