Bah Humbug! Why I Escape to the Beach for Christmas

Bah Humbug!  Why We Go to the Beach Every Year for a Christmas Escape

            I love Christmas.  Really, I do.  But I began to love it a little bit less in 2005, when the hotel in High Point, North Carolina, where we were staying decided to close its restaurant at the last minute, and we therefore had to have our Christmas dinner at a smoky bar called The Red Eye, or something else twice as bad.  As my dad said, “it wasn’t quite the Fa Rararara dinner of the movie A Christmas Story, but it was a close second!”  My uncle was living alone at the time, already suffering from liver disease that was a combination of bad drinking habits and overall inattention to health.  We knew even then that this might be his last Christmas, and we wanted to take him to a nice dinner.  Thank you, hotel restaurant, for closing even though you told my mother you’d be open.  I suppose I really should thank the bar tender for keeping the place open that night.  I might have had a Christmas dinner of French fries, chicken fingers, and ginger ale, but that’s better than the mayonnaise jar that was in my uncle’s refrigerator.  That’s what happens when a male bachelor lives alone for a little too long.  When we got back to the hotel, my sister and I watched the movie The Forty Year Old Virgin.  How spiritually enlightened can you get? I shared a room with my younger sister, and she spent almost an hour talking with her new boyfriend, a Columbia Law School student along with her.  Granted, this was about a month and a half after I had broken up with my most recent boyfriend.  Talk about a kick in the gut, and mine is not nearly as large as Santa’s. 

            Even better was Christmas of 2006, when we went back to North Carolina to visit my grandmother and my uncle.  That year, my uncle died two days before Christmas.  Therefore, we had to hang around North Carolina until the 26^th because no pastor is going to hold a funeral on Christmas Eve or Day.  Dad’s stepsister Marita was kind enough to have us over for Christmas dinner.  We spent a somewhat awkward, but nice time with Marita, her husband, and her son Skipper.  Skipper is very nice, but he does not look into the camera when someone takes a picture of him.  As if it’s not hard enough to connect to your distant relatives.  The day after Christmas, my parents, my sister, Marita and I went to my dad’s brother’s funeral.  We were the only people in attendance. 

            The year 2007 was better for Christmas because we got to see my Aunt Pat, my Uncle John, and my cousins Cindy and Kathleen after many years.  But this was also the year we put my grandmother in a nursing home.  My dad predicted right: she outlived my Uncle Charlie.  Both my mom’s mother and my dad’s brother were alcoholics: one got help through AA, the other one didn’t.  The one who got help lived to be 87 years old.  The one who didn’t passed away before he turned 60.  At least he lived just long enough to say goodbye to his younger brother, who had tried to help him.  His two nieces were on his way to see him when he was on his deathbed, and unfortunately, they didn’t make it.  Sadly, he probably wouldn’t have known us if he had seen us that day.  I do hope he knew that we loved him, though.

            Gran did not die that Christmas, thank goodness.  I was in her new nursing home room on the day of Christmas Eve, waiting as the ambulance arrived from her former retirement community.  They wheeled her in, and even though she was drowsy from her medication, she recognized me, looked at the ambulance operators, and said, “Isn’t she beautiful?”  My grandmother was even more of a perfectionist than I am, so these words meant a lot coming from her.  We settled into her room, and I had her teddy bear and pictures ready for her.  I wanted the new room to feel like her home.  Shortly after, she said rather loudly, “I want my radio, radio!”  Ever since her husband, my mom’s father, had passed away in 1963, close to the time of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Gran had not been able to sleep without her radio on.  From what I have heard of my Grandpa Jack, I think he was very much like JFK: idealistic, handsome, Catholic, charismatic.  Even though my grandmother was unusually independent and strong for her generation, I can see why it would have been harder for her to sleep without him, especially since she never remarried.  I told her we would bring her the radio as soon as possible.  Radio brings noise, and noise brings comfort, especially in an unfamiliar place.  

            Fortunately, Gran’s new nursing home was close to our family friends the Herberts.  Gordon and Corinna have been friends with my parents since Gordon and Dad were in the military together in the early 70s, so they feel more like family to us.  Their daughters Caroline and Emily are close in age to my sister Patty and me, so we have spent summer holidays together at Myrtle Beach.  This year, the once again away from home at Christmas Robbins family had a place to go, and this time, it was with the Herbert family.  We also had extra time with our cousins, which assuaged the otherwise uncomfortable situation.

            Gran lived for two more months in the nursing home.  I got to see her one more weekend before she passed away in late February.  I went to her room, and Fox News was playing instead of the radio.  Still, she seemed comfortable and at peace, and she recognized me.  She talked about how she wanted to find me a new boyfriend.  I told her it would happen when it was meant to.  Somehow, I think she needed to hear that before she went back to sleep for good.  Two weeks later, both of her daughters went down to North Carolina because her condition worsened.  She passed away the next day, but held on long enough to see both of her daughters and to talk to all four of her granddaughters.  An hour before she passed away, I got to tell her over the phone that I loved her.  She couldn’t speak by then, but my mom and my aunt both said she smiled. 

            Needless to say, I no longer believe that Christmas is magic.  But I do believe that the story of my Christian faith is that light is present in dark situations, and that sometimes, magic comes in unexpected places and at unexpected times.  Last New Year’s Eve 2010, I almost believed in magic once again, yet it proved to elude me.  But that, my friends, is a story for another day.  For now, I will say that my parents take my sister Patty, her fiancée Ethan, and I to the Caribbean every Christmas.  We rent a villa in St. John’s and we live, as my dad says, like we are much richer than we really are.  We say it’s because we need a break from our busy jobs as educators, lawyers, professors, and writers.  Really, though, I think it’s also because we are hoping that the salt of the ocean will heal the wounds of Christmases that have been less kind to our family in the past.  Right now, I do not believe in magic, but I do believe in the beauty I see at the Caribbean beaches and within the souls of my family members who have stayed together regardless of obstacles.  I no longer love Christmas as much as I used to, but I do love my family much more.