Silken waters

Inside a small blue cardboard box that was wedged among all of Timm's photo CDs and slides are about 100 to 150 4x5 film positives of what are consistently Timm's best photographs. According to Christie, Timm was collecting images for a coffee table book. Certainly there are enough winning images in this collection to suggest they were intended for that work.

I asked Wade to scan them at high resolution so we can get the most mileage out of them, and now have those scans in my possession. (I downloaded them from Wade's iMac when over at Beth's parents' on Christmas Day.)

I'll feed these out in small dollops because each image deserves a good look.

In these first ones, each lends flowing waters a silky-smooth appearance. To get that effect, Timm reduced the shutter speed of his camera and held it very, very still (probably with a tripod). That everything else in the frame is so crisp and sharp means that but for the water, nothing else was moving.

Waters caught mid-motion, left, and extended, by lengthening the exposure, out to a silken pour.

The effect of silky waters shows up in so many of Timm's images that it's one of his trademarks, an obvious favorite, his most consistent accomplishment. It's something only a skilled photographer can catch. Each of these images shows that Timm had earned a place among the best photographers of that moment, that image.

And what of it? Silken waters are motion's quintessence, a secret only revealed to the inner eye and the photographer skilled enough to emulate it. As Heraclitus said, Nature loves to hide; Timm had to wander far into the wilderness, peer so many times, so many ways, to come across vistas which were revelations, and then slow down his camera to catch the jolts of wonder hidden in the sanctum.

Silken waters: stillness inside the illusions of transit. To pull these images from the river of our life's incessant motion reveals a deeper serenity, seen only by the spiritual eye. Timm may have been refining a craft, but he was also reaching with his soul, finding in the right frame eternal depths.

Just a picture, Timm would probably say, but there is no denying that each lavishes an almost uterine pleasure to the viewer, sighing, from one's deepest inner ear, "You are here" or "welcome home" or simply this: "All is well."

For one so incessantly in motion himself, for all those years, to be comforted by such an image by its voice of silken waters would be of greatest healing and affirmation. Timm worked his way back home in each of these images, if only for a moment. For him and now us.

Thanks again to Wade Boggs for his tireless efforts scanning all of these images in.

Memories beget memories

Timm (then Timmy) burrowed into a snow-fort dug in the aftermath of the Great Snow in February 1967, the same year which sets my Christmas Reverie.

Talking with brother Will on Christmas Day, he said that after seeing the "Christmas Reverie" posts he recalled some pictures stashed up in the attic from the time, mostly taken with a Polaroid camera he'd gotten for Christmas somewhere back then. He'd fished them out and with a newly-aquired scanner created digital versions which he then emailed me. Thanks bro! He also said that he's been taking loads of pictures with the camera he inherited after Timm's death - taking pictures his way of remembering Timm. So I hope he shares some here.

Dad and Will digging out from the Great Snow, Molly enjoying the fruits of their labors -- and the storm's.

Molly in her snow-fort.

Molly and I next to the Christmas tree in the parlor of our Evanston, IL house, taken either in '66 or '67. The famed sled-hill is just outside and looks quite inviting.

Easter with Will, Molly and myself.

That's family friend Rusty Barefield, holding court outside his convertible sports car. Will has claimed his spot and looks, rather disdainfully, at Molly and her gaggle of friends who are using their feminine wiles to get a ride.

In the summer of '67 we also vacationed in Colorado. Will must have taken this shot of the rest of us outside the cabin we stayed in for one of the two weeks we were out there. I think it's my birthday - Number 10 -- in front of us on the table is the cake Mom baked, which failed to rise due to the altitude.

The other week we spent in Colorado that summer of '67 was at a dude ranch with all of the amenities.

Timm aboard his noble steed, assisted by new friend Chip, at the dude ranch in Colorado, 1967.

Molly and Timm.

Timm.

A Christmas reverie (concluded)

There we all are, Timm (Timmy, in the tale) Molly, myself and Will (Billy), standing next to the creche in our Evanston street house on the Christmas Eve I remember below, ca. 1967. The pipe organ Mom plays in the tale is behind Will.

This morning it is warm here in Central Florida. After so many weeks of unusually cool weather – so many chilly mornings writing here with a blanket on my lap, kitties Belle up top with me and Hugo under the blanket at my feet – it’s around 60 at 4 a.m., three windows open to a softly chirring, somewhat humid dank dark Christmas Eve, with a few Christmas lights still burning, at this hour, on one of the houses down the street. Maybe this seems like paradise to those of you reading from colder climes and chillier days, but it deeply misses the mark of my Christmas dreams. Hard to see them when it’s 80 degrees and brilliant …

Not so in Salem, Oregon—Timm’s last home—where things are heavily snowed under after a big storm on Monday night dumped eight inches and icing roads. Many trees were downed, blocking traffic, and 30,000 Salem residents were (as of yesterday) without power. One resident, whose Ford 150 suffered a blow from falling limb, likened the sound of branches breaking from their loads to “shotguns going off.”

The scene in Salem, Oregon, on Monday. As of last night, many Salem residents are still without power.

A white Christmas then, albeit dubious in its luxuries. This year snow connects the coasts, because a winter storm also has rolled through the Midwest and slammed into the East. When I talked with Dad on Sunday, he said eight inches was already on the ground with more expected.

When you don’t have anything else to do than watch it, winter snow is perfect and beautiful, falling in such dreamlike slowness, covering all in white, creating a wonderland that always seems to hearken back to childhood Christmasses. Of course, it’s another matter if you have to go out and deal with that mess in order to get to work. Or getting on the roads to visit relatives for the holidays. Travel becomes a misery under these conditions, with millions bravely heading out, hands tense on the wheel, faces grim and ghostly behind windshields whose ice has been roughly scraped free.

For Timm, the Salem snowstorm would probably have been both blessing and bane. He was an outdoorsman who loved a good hike, and snowshooing was apparently a great pleasure. He could have readily spent this Christmas out in the woods with Christie, breathing the cold crisp wilderness air, trees humped with snow, the trail ahead yet undisturbed by human traffic – clean and pure and exhilarating. Of course, he would have also been taking pictures, hoping to get paid to have such fun.



We sure wish he would have been in his Florida or Pennsylvania homes for Christmas, laughing round the dinner table with Dad and Fred and Will and Sarah at one latitude, or with Mom and Molly and Beth and I at another. This year he might have made it, for the first time, and it would have been a prodigal event, Dad and/or Mom (or maybe even both, in a circuitous trip) relishing the face of their youngest son, all grown up, so serious and able and dear. A chair Timm never filled at our holiday table must now remain forever empty, its hope never to be fulfilled in this life.

A Christmas card idea Timm was working on -- the message, to me, is clear -- present but not.

We aren’t alone in missing Timm. I think of the pew at his church in Salem which he won’t be in this Christmas, the spot in the choir which can’t quite be filled by another baritone. Have they performed “Benedictus,” partially in memory of Timm, in full joy of that rich music he so loved? Surely his church community feels the hole in their midst, formed by Timm and other parishioners who left out the back door …

I think of clients, peers and other sympaticos in his photography business, those whom Timm had befriended and entrusted with his work. He had earned a place among them by hard work and persistence, creating a major portfolio for some (like Oregon Gardens), becoming a go-to photographer in the eyes of businesses like Mount Angel Publishing, reliable, smart, capable and good. He would surely have been out in Monday’s Salem snowstorm, taking oodles of pictures, trying for the money shot, the single image which told the entire story. He had become experienced enough to know how to get that photo; but someone else had to take it on Monday, the trade passing on as it does, because it must … Still, Timm was good enough to make pros feel the loss of a brother …

A holiday picture of Oregon Gardens taken by Timm last year.

I think of all the suffering and disadvantaged whom Timm reached out to, out of ancient habit as well as every forward inclination of his recovery, his career work too … Someone still waiting for a social security check in the district of Congresswoman Hooley on whose staff he worked, unable to purchase Christmas gifts for her children; a crystal meth addict just coming out of jail who either gets a bed in a recovery house or forays back to the streets; a sponsee at AA suffering those bad holiday blues, with all the bum freight of woeful Christmas ramping up his thirst into something terrible. All of these will not be helped by Timm this Christmas; others must step up to the plate, often those Timm had had helped who had become helpers themselves, offering a hand because Timm’s hand had so readily reached out to them …

I think of Christie, Timm’s girlfriend, now in her first Christmas without him; how they might have been sharing a place together by now, Timm overcoming his fears of domestic intimacy – wrought by so many wrongs over the years, including his own distastrous first marriage – his heart grown strong in faith and tempered by experience enough to believe – enough -- that the benefits of love are always greater than the risks, that beauty and grace and kindness does exist between two people on this earth, that love can beget love. (Last night as we slept, for whatever reason, Beth and I both kept reaching out for each other, holding hands, whispering I Love You’s from the waters of sleep, coming back to each other again and again, and Violet our Siamese riding between us, curled in perfection.) Christie will have to go this one alone, and that’s a hard, hard task, the difficulty itself a measure of how much there is to feel for another …

Though they have been separated by a continent for decades, it is hard on Timm’s parents, each in their own ways, enduring this Christmas without Timm. Whatever their own histories and beliefs and fates, Mom and Dad both are earnest, deeply loving parents; they both love their kids without measure. So where, how to calibrate the loss of their youngest, most errant (at least in wandering) son? Like the jazz standard goes, how far is the moon, how deep is the sea …

Hard too for siblings Will and Molly, in homes of their own making now, with news of that first family distant yet present – you know? Molly’s family faces a second Christmas without son Nicholas; I wont’ dare say its any easier for them, but conversation about Nicholas at Mom’s Christmas Eve table was much more ready, making Nick seem more present; and perhaps, by association, making Timm seem close …

(Molly e-mailed me this today: “Do you remember the Christmas in Evanston where we all begged Mom and Dad to let us wake up Timmy? … I remember one year I went to the kitchen with you or Will and ate breakfast. There was almost no cereal, we couldn't figure out why the cupboard was so bare. Later when it was really time for breakfast, we found all the cereal and such in the dining room. I believe I had two breakfasts that year, or maybe I just tried to rush everyone else through.”)

Hard for Timm’s best friend Ken, companion for so many years, getting through a difficult Christmas (his wife has breast cancer) without Timm’s ever-present support ..

And yes, this first Christmas without Timm hard for me too. As if I haven’t tried to say as much already … Yesterday morning I woke with a single image from a dream, a closeup of a waterfall in mid-torrent, a vantage from within, or amid the falling. How strange, I thought on waking, maybe that’s how Timm saw his perfect waterfalls when he photographed them – as expressions of heart. From the outside they are only beautiful, but from within, they are sublimities of heart, raging cascades of feeling, powerful and dangerous, uncontainable, perplexingly free, ever seeking reunion with the sea.

"Silver Falls Snow Day," taken last January by Timm.

That torrent broke in Timm’s chest at last, taking him home into the bosom of that ocean which he called God. As a brother, kindred spirit, fellow traveler and lover of beauty, I see Timm on the other side of that waterfall, home now, free, forever lost.

That torrent – Timm’s – is gone, and the photos which remain can’t quite fully articulate the expression he sought to bring out of the grand and terrifying reaches of his heart. “With all of the pain that this life can bring, we must never forget that there is still beauty,” he wrote on the back of a series of cards featuring his photographs which he once tried to market. “It quiets. It excites. It heals. It touches something deep within. It is with this in mind that I share this photograph with you.” Postcards from Timm’s heart, that’s what he have in all of these gorgeous photographs, partial dispatches of something he was trying to complete with his eventual history – forever now incomplete and partial in one sense, done in another.

It’s easy to swoon down into the depths of holiday blues following the trail of Timm’s absence this Christmas, like tracks disappearing into a snowy night. What’s that Ernest Tubb country tune, “Blue Christmas”? The penultimate Christmas drinking song, sots assembled on barstools, each a tumbler of resentment and ennui, pouring down whiskey oblivions in measure to the bitterness of the homeless night outside. Drinking to the sum of Christmasses in which we didn’t get what we want, as if happiness was a trust broken long ago by a Santa Claus who didn’t care or didn’t even exist.

Taken by Timm, I wonder if the bound and gagged Santa represents childhood dreams locked away in the hearts of adults.

But the ultimate Christmas drinking song is also the one I sing loudest in sobriety – “White Christmas” – A song which went out on the airwaves in the bitterest years of the Second World War, with so many homes sundered, with so many too far away for Christmas, with so many who would never make it home. The perfect white Christmas of home may exist “only in my dreams,” but still we come home to it, somehow, celebrating a happiness which is not composed out of getting what we want but wanting what we got: my happiness this Christmas, deeply without Timm, comes from remembering Christmas with him, those blue eyes so full of Christmas lights, twinkling like bulbs on the tree (eyes which Timm gave to someone else when he died – actually, two people with eye disease now see better with Timm’s eyes). He’s present there with all of us, forever there in my dreams.

I celebrate and love the Christmas that is; I remember and cherish the Christmas that was.

Merry Christmas, Timm – and to all!

There we all are again on that Christmas Eve long ago, later that same night -- blearier (especially Molly), sleepier: lulling to our personal and collective Christmas dreams.

A CHRISTMAS REVERIE

(conclusion)

(In the tale, we have gathered round the foot-pedalled organ in the parlor of our Evanston, IL house, Christmas Eve 1967, Mom playing the music, Dad standing behind the four kids ... )

And sing: O come, all ye faithful, joyful and tri-um-phant, our kidp-mouths so small, forming perfect trusting O’s, singing into the warm shining room, so womblike and protected against the bitter snowy night …

On top of the organ is our nativity scene, a dark wood theater into which, some nights ago, we all helped to set up, unpacking from tissue the hand-carved figures of Joseph (looking down in adoration, hat clutched to chest) and Mary who’s seated and looking down too, a shepherd, a sheep, and, of course, the infant Jesus in his crib, tiny hands reaching out to all of that devotional downward gazing. Unwrapping each of the figures was a special family rite, wondering just who we were unpacking, gasping with surprise and wonder when the next figure is disclosed, their features so delicately carved into the pale ash wood, savored by each of as as the figure is passed around, admired, praised, before setting it, according to each child’s whim, into the crèche. There are smooth wood folds on Mary’s robe, a coarseness to the shepherd’s cloak and bear, much like the sheep’s coat of wool .. and Joseph, what longing is carved into his pinched, Germanic face …There is a small gasp of surprise every year when Baby Jesus is unwrapped, so tiny and helpless in his carved hay-bed. Each of us holds the figure, running a finger over the smooth wood of His face, rubbing it softer, darker every year. One by one we set the constellations of Christmas into place at one with our history, figures of memory in the crèche of home as I remember it at childhood’s high mass, before the word Home became a complex and conflicted place.

Candlelight flickers on the crèche scene and on our faces as this Christmas we sing:

“Holy, Holy, Holy …”

“Hark, the herald angels sing …”

“It came upon a midnight clear …”

“God rest ye, merry gentlemen,” the light of memory growing moody, gilt-edged, firelit, boozy-glowing as we sing with minor-key richness:

Sing, as Billy and I rib each other, bundled for too long together without a fight; with Molly delicate, almost porcelain in the candlelight; with Timmy nestling Bum-Bum under one arm and thumb securely mounted in his mouth, his wide blue eyes like Christmas bulbs; with Daddy protecting us from behind, his voice like a pastor’s spread arms; with Mom at the helm of the organ, sailing us all the way home:

Sing, with a resonance that echoes in every Christmas to come, through all the rooms we have since filled and emptied, down years when only one stocking hung from the mantel, years when two or three gathered to give thanks and pray for those ever absent, years when there was no tree, no lights, no song, years when Christmas seemed a child’s story framed on too cold a night, too too far away; years when we could celebrate and say Yes above all the losses:

Sing, sweet childhood, finishing with “Silent Night,” slow and soft as the fire cackles behind us and adult and child voices join together in full trust of this night, secure in this home, all of it hanging like a gold glass ornament from the proudest bough of the tree, a Christmas gift we must always, always cherish …

And today know: we have been loved so very well …

* * *

Timmy is carried up the stairs to bed, already asleep on Daddy’s shoulder. Molly is next, her eyes gleaming with the fairy-lights of Christmas. Billy and I linger by the fire, stare into the flames that lick and tickle the last remaining log. Sparks loose and float up the chimney, angelic. We listen to “Amahl and the Night Visitors” -- the music is ancient to me, out of the dark folds of my earliest recollections of Christmas, soothing, calm. I grow sleepy. The fire burns yellow to orange to red, devouring that last log slowly, making its foundation collapse finally in a shower of sparks, lulling my eyes to heaviness with a pulsing red cluster on a bed of ash.

Time for bed. I trudge up off the carpet, kiss Daddy goodnight. He whispers I love you, his stubby cheek smelling of pipe-smoke and Aramis cologne. My face glows warm from the fire but cools as I walk up the dark staircase, step by weary step, each next carpeted step more formidable than the last. Mom follows behind, her hand on my shoulder.

I pull back the coves of my bed and hop in. Mom works the covers up around me, tucking in corners, sweeping out wrinkles. I am safe in a cocoon of sheets, bed-cover and a heavy wool blanket. My room is cool, not cold, and dark. Hall-light forms a bright triangle under my door.

Mom sits next to me on my bed, runs a warm hand over my face. Her fingers are strong and cool and knowing. She is a shadow, indistinct. Is this how baby Jesus first saw his mother Mary? I ask. I talk of Christmas carols and of presents under the tree – does she think Molly has figured out what I got for her? Mom’s voice is deep and quiet, a forest stream of peace, assuring me that my gift will be a complete surprise.

I say my prayers, a long litany of God-blesses that run the gamut of everyone I know and sometimes love – parents, brothers, sister, pets living and deceased, friends; and then do some last-second prayer-politicking for that chemistry set I want more than anything in the world at that very moment: Geez God, I pray, I’d be able to learn so much with it … Amen, Mom whispers squeezing my hand, cutting off my litany. She kisses me on the forehead, squeezes my hand three more times – our code for I—Love—You, which I repeat back. She whispers Good night, sleep tight in that tired, loving maternal sound that resounds so deeply in my innermost ear, like the sea …

.. And don’t let the bedbugs bite, I whisper my antiphonal refrain in my fragile, imperfect, dependent kid’s voice. She rises heavily and pads slowly and silently out of my room. The door creaks shut and she’s gone.

It is dark in the room except for a sliver of hall-light beneath my door. I see cartoon Santas, elves, curious reindeer all peeking into my second-story window. My eyes get heavier. I know that as soon as I fall asleep, the magic begins. I wonder, once more, what's in all those brightly-wrapped packages labeled for me? What will I get? The chemistry set? or maybe a tape recorder! Tommy Holmgren thinks he's getting a set of walkie-talkies. Maybe I'll get a microscope instead, jeez that sure would be great, one with some slides, a-and one of those dissection kits, with dead things in specimen bottles to cut up ... I know that a stocking waits outside my door at the shore of first waking, a stocking stuffed with trinkets and nibbles to busy myself with until the rest of my siblings have risen. Please God, wake Timmy up BEFORE seven-thirty, this year!!!

I hear Mom and Daddy murmur downstairs. Christmas music still plays on the stereo. Wind whispers to me, somewhere just outside. I know none of its bitterness. The long night will not come for years. I sink deeper into my warmth, and darkness is a friend.

Finally, all is quiet and still.

The silent hours pass.




The light is born.

It will soon be morning!

Christmas joy to you all!

A Christmas Reverie (Part Two)

A picture taken by Timm a few years back, found recently on a photo CD in one of the boxes I carted back from Oregon. Timm used this Santa figure on many occasions. I'd say this was a cover photo for a holiday publication put out by Mount Angel Publishing, who hired Timm on many occasions. Is that Timm as a boy in the background? Or every one of us?

This year we celebrated our Christmas Eve at Granny’s (Mom’s) early – on Sunday night, the winter solstice, due to church scheduling conflicts on Wednesday with Molly’s family. Mom’s house was decked out as it has been for this ritual event over the past decade, in the full hope and clarity of the season, candles everywhere, soft Christmas music on the stereo, the crèche laid out on a buffet with all the wood figurines intact after all these years, nuts and sweets in bowls, cards piled in a basket, the tree decked with all the old ornaments, plus a few new ones – a small camera Molly found somewhere which she made into an ornament, adding Timm’s name to the top, and a silver bell inscribed with a seasonal message from the non-profit organization which handled organ donation after Timm died.

Beth and Mom before Molly and her crew arrived.

As usual, a boisterous, quite edible event, (potato-leek soup and salad and sandwiches, Molly’s apple pie and tapioca pudding, in recognition of a celebrated Timm event, back in his high school days, when he furtively spooned ta glob of what he thought was tapioca from a bowl in the fridge, only to discover it was chicken fat. (“I couldn’t understand why Timm refused to eat chicken for a long time back then,” Molly laughed.

Every time Beth and I come down for the event we see a new morphing of Molly’s girls, Sarah at 14 now a cultivated drama queen, Mary-Beth sunnier and looking quite the attractive young woman now, Kathy ever more absorbed than ever in her drawing of comics.

Christmas Eve dinner at Granny's (even when it's on Dec. 21): We've been doing it for so many years now that the seating order at the table should be engraved in stone. From left to right around the table: Mary-Beth (mugging, typically, for the camera), Kathy, Molly, Jim, Sarah, Mom (obscured), Beth. My chair is in the foreground.

Conversation went in new directions as we talked too about Nicholas and Timm, remembering them both at the holidays, their enthusiasm and spirit. Mom produced a few photo albums and a box which I went through, looking for a few more photos for this post. Jim talked at greater length about the accident than I had heard before, struggling to understand how it might have happened (there were recalls that year of the SUV Nicholas was driving) and then accepting it was an accident, still dealing with Nicholas’ big red truck (getting title to it is difficult because Nicholas put a new axle in at one time with different vehicle ID numbers or something). Mom and Molly and I told Timm Christmas stories, his penchant for divining (if not pre-opening) presents, those big blue eyes taking in the Christmas tree.

Oddly, remembering Nicholas and Timm gave new life to our gathering, new depths and smiles—bittersweet perhaps, but the night seemed more intimate. The hugs lasted longer too.

Forty years after the Christmas Eve celebrated in the reverie which now continues, Mom is still doing her best to provide for her kids (and grandkids) a place which is warmest and safest in the glow of Christmas. She’s never lost the gift; it may have been tropically warm outside, but in the dark glow of her house (with a/c at full tilt), the night felt like Christmas Eve 1967 to me all over again.

Before eating, as she always does, Mom said grace before the meal, she prayed for those we love so who were taken to Paradise early, in God’s time, not ours, and prayed for the continual healing of our hearts, and for all of those still with us but not present in that circle (like Dad and Will, Beth’s family, and Jim’s). She concluded with a prayer we all repeated --

"Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, may this food to us be blessed ..."

Amen.

Now for that earlier circle, bounded by a house in Evanston, IL, one Christmas Eve in 1967 …

Timm in 1967 or so. Actually here I think he is just waking up on Christmas Day -- he was notorious for sleeping in -- but here let's set the mood of his anticipation to the night before.

A Christmas Reverie (Part Two)

(David Cohea, 1987)

Inside, it is warm. The air hums with the labors of that big black furnace in the basement. All about the old house it is sere and shadowy, thick carpets everywhere, heavy furniture, pools of lamplight offering patches of warmth, twilight in the windows fading rapidly from blue to black.

Walk around, try to find us in the looming spaces of that century-old house …

Molly and Tim watch “Garfield Goose” on the Motorola in the living room. Molly lies on a big, dusty-wheezing red cushion Raggedy Ann doll under one arm; Timmy sprawls nearby, thumb in mouth, his blue eyes dulled, for the moment, by the cartoons flashing several feet away.

Daddy is in the library reading a novel. His head is half in and out of lamplight. Pipe-smoke drifts, blue, spirituous, winnowing about on lazy eddies of air. From time to time, he lifts a heavy glass to his lips and sips his Scotch. Two walls of books crow the room; hundreds of volumes shout from colorful jackets or whisper from crusty old spines. Daddy is absorbed, but if you walk in and ask him when the next James Bond movie is going to open, he will invite you onto his knee and hold you there, and tell you with a quiet smile exactly when.

In the kitchen, Mom assembles a Christmas Eve feast. She pulls a roast out off the oven, ladles steaming juices over the glistening brown crust. On the counter the little black-and-white TV is on, its tiny screen flashing some Christmas special. Frocked choirboys who look much like the little ceramic ones that gather on the mantle in the parlor sing around a church altar. Mom hums along, smiling.

Next to the television is a cardboard Christmas punch-out calendar we have been attending to every day of this month. Cereal-stained fingers of varying smallness have pried open a door every breakfast, each door grained with gold and silver sparkles, revealing a fresh new room or vault on the way to Christmas: blue angels, tilting bells, candy canes, a sprig of mistletoe, green toy-elves industriously at work, decked trees … Every day is another prophecy of that final, twenty-fifth door. By annual succession it falls to Timmy this year to open this year’s final door, which seems a shame to the rest of us. I mean, he doesn’t understand what’s going on, does he? so why don’t you let ME open it? But Mom only smiles and shakes her head with that mysterious mom-wisdom, and gently tells us that Timmy has as much right as the rest of us. We are silenced, for now, by the simple equality of her love.

Upstairs, Billy is in his room with Shep, playing with his army men, waging war to the sounds of pop music on WLS. Looking young and hungry, Shep curls in the corner, tail up around his nose, observing with quite eyes the advancing military threat.

Walk down a long creaky dark hall and you’ll find me in my room, listening to the “Thunderball” soundtrack on my little record player and stalking agents of SPECTRE with a deadly toy snub-nose .38. I am inches away from disarming a steaming nuclear missile aimed at Washington when I hear my name hollered out from far away, on some distant shore akin to waking: Time For Din-ner …

Downstairs, Daddy puts a Percy Faith orchestra album of Christmas music on the stereo: “Hark The Herald Angels Sing” swells up out of the library, rich and joyous. We all file into the dining room to eat. Among us kids, our excitement begins to swell. We act like skittish horses, erupt in explosive giggles, exchange knowing smiles.

Christmas Eve! The wait is nearly over!

The large dining table fills the room. There are six settings: Daddy and Mom at opposite ends, Billy and I to one side, Molly and Timmy on the other. An Advent wreath of fresh-smelling pine boughs, pine cones and long white candles sits at the center of the table, one purple candle unlit. Candlelight glints on silverware, glows on our faces, glints in our eyes. Mom lays a steaming dinner of roast, mashed potatoes, and green beans and carrots in front of Daddy.

We join hands and pray: “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, may the food to us be blessed.” Daddy prays on, his deep voice thanking our Almighty Father for His many blessings, for the impending birth of His Son, for the coming of the light into our lives … His words disappear into the resonance of his voice, so strong and assured. Just the sound of that deep voice protects our warm-handed circle, forever, it seems on that night …

Amen! Let’s eat! Daddy serves us one by one, carving off slices of hot beet, spooning potatoes, forking carrots, directing the heaped plates down the line to the proper recipients. Kid-talk labors around mouthfuls of food, pondering the vicissitudes of Garfield Goose and how to ice down the sled-hill in the side yard, when a boy might be old enough to go downtown on his own to see “Thunderball,” how much Raggedy Ann needs an Andy for Christmas … Daddy and Mom sip wine from crystal goblets, corral the conflagrations of bickering, speak a few quiet words to each other somehow above or around all the noise of childhood. They both look weary, something beyond just the labors of parents over a holiday – a knowledge of Christmas we kids won’t understand for years …

It is full night outside; only dark shadows of tree-branches are visible. Gusts of wind moan around corners of the house. A ghostly acre of snow weighs on the house, siloing flakes which fall steadily from the sky. The boiler kicks in, causing the lights to flicker. “We Three Kings” plays soft and sad on the stereo in the study.

Dinner evaporates into a torrent of dish-removal; we share clean-up duties tonight so that all may start enjoying the night’s promised events earlier. Even Timmy helps out, carrying a fork through the pantry into the kitchen, offering it to Mom like a precious stone. In no time, the leftovers are wrapped and harbored in the fridge, counters are wiped clean, dishes all stacked in the dishwasher. Mom, ever the Dish Washer, labors alone for a while with pots in the sink.

Later we assemble in the parlor. We kids have changed into our pajamas. Daddy builds a roaring fire in the fireplace. There is a solid feel to the room, anchored by the weight and age of its contents – the green oriental carpet, that heavy, gothic-backed chair Mom sits in, the old pump-organ, Daddy’s brown leather chair with the bird-headed armrests, that big red loveseat that Timmy disappears behind with his faithful companions Bum-Bum, his teddy bear and King-King, the tattered remnant of his infant blanket. Shep curls by the fire.

The Christmas tree is in the back of the parlor and fills most of the sunroom. Tall and proud, its branches are showered with ornaments and blinking lights, something on every bough. I remember the feel of cold pitch and bark-roughness on my hands as three of us carried the tree from some snowy lot to our station wagon and then into our house, prickly branches protesting passage, raining a trail of needles, the house suddenly filling with the smell of pine forests as wide as Canada.

Here it stands, dazzling and decked with all we treasure and will remember. Lights blink on and off from the recesses of branches, carefully wound by Daddy and Billy ... There are strands of cranberries and popcorn, chains of colored construction paper, candy canes, cards, from distant relatives, sprays of tinsel. And ornaments, each an epistle from some Christmas of old: Fragile gold balls dating back to Pittsburgh where Billy and I were born; an elfin band of trumpeters and piccolo-players and a drummer, all curled shoes; brush-tailed songbirds; velvet guitars; blue bells. a couple slightly chipped from handling by little hands; home-concocted ornaments of Styrofoam pinned and glittered according to the age and sloppiness of their diverse Cohea kid creator; a carved ivory dove on a string; a blue ball with my name write in gold glitter; a Howdy-Doody smiling elfin skates; and shining red, blue and silver balls of every size, picked out of old boxes lines with crepe paper, shining from the tree-lights as well as from the flickering fire, reflecting back the eye of childhood’s awe …

And the presents! They are packed around the base of the tree, large and small packages wrapped in bright foil paper, festooned with a rainbow of ribbons and bows. Had anyone guessed what I was giving them? And what was inside that big red package with my name on it? Or in that one sticking out from the pile to the left? Or that one? Secrets and mysteries, the elusive grail of wishes whispered into my pillow at night. Christmas Eve is the fullness of that mystery, a cusp which will break, come morning, into Revelation and Joy, all that is latent coming to birth at last. We will know, come morning … but first, this fullness, this pregnant expectation at high tide …

Daddy gets up to put on the Barbara Streisand album and the parlor fills with late-Sixties, downtown Yule, Daddy’s urban carol. He picks Molly up by the waist and whirls her around the room. She holds on for dear life, her eyes wider than her smile, for she is Dancing with Daddy! The rest of us take turns after her, grabbing on to our dancing papa-bear, trying to match his huge strides, his wild happy waltz around the room. It’s a mad carousel, everything aswirl, pierced by shrieks of laughter. Daddy’s eyes crease with delight as he sings along with Streisand, his voice at turns basso and alto and creaky falsetto, loud and then whisper-quiet. He really only knows the first couple lines of the song and then ad-libs the rest, carving-each-word-till-it-falls, something about homiletics he learned from the debate team at Princeton years ago.

Molly dances for Daddy.

When the song ends the dance crashes to a halt, a sled at the bottom of its hill. Daddy disengages, wheezes, giggles, coughs, finds his chair and pipe. Whew! Knocking his pipe against an ashtray he empties the bowl and then refills it with fresh, moist tobacco from a zippered black leather pouch, tamps it down with a finger and then strikes a match and holds it to the bowl while he puffs, working the tobacco into a glowing coal. His grey eyes are amused and his feet still tap at the refrain of the last song. The room fills with scented smoke – Borkum Riff., his brand, the way Cutty Sark was his Scotch back then.

Soon the album side finishes and Mom takes a seat at the pump-organ. It is very old, refinished an antique white. She adjusts tuber-shaped stops that are labeled in a Germanic-looking script; then begins to work the pedals with her feet. The bellows labor and wheeze and begin to emit the sounds of the carol Mom plays, reading from an opened hymnal. She plays carefully, picking out the notes as one who never gets any time to practice. Deck the halls with boughs of holly … The rest of us gather around her, Daddy with arms over two of us, our faces solemn in candlelight.

(The reverie concludes tomorrow.)

A house Timm shot last Christmas, decked and merry like the Evanston House which Timm recalled from years and years ago.

A Christmas Reverie (1)

A winter wilderness scene shot by Timm in Oregon several years ago. This image was scanned from a slide among unlabeled thousands found in box in Timm's apartment after he died last April. My father-in-law Wade is patiently scanning them all; t his image is from his most recent batch of scans, which I picked up a couple of weeks ago. Timm often would take off by himself on Christmas Day, heading into the woods to hike. Perhaps this is from such a Christmas Day for Timm. In an email Timm told a friend last year he might be making the "trek home" for Christmas. I like to think that he would have.

* * *

In the Christmas season of 1987, twenty-one years ago, I was getting ready to marry for the first time and become a father (OK, a step-dad) to boot. I was thirty years old, six months sober, and felt deeply that I was turning a page, leaving behind one life for the uncertain vagaries of a responsible adult life, the overlong adolescent become the family man.

Over the fall I had journalled at great length about my history, telling my story from start to present for the first time, opening doors which had long been closed, accounting all of my hurts and wrongs. In Alcoholics Anonymous it’s called a Fourth Step -- “made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our selves” -- though, like so many things I foolishly did the first time around in a sobriety which did not last – it was my own way of doing it.

Surprisingly I felt a sweep of nostalgia in the remembering. My former recollections had been too black and white in locking things away; there was much in the past to treasure. Maybe it was because I was becoming a dad that I looked at my own family history through a different lens, that of looking for help rather than to criticize.

Molly’s wedding in the previous summer was the occasion of our first family re-union since Mom and Dad separated for the last time in 1974. Surprising to most of us I think was how happy the occasion was – and how happy we were to be together, if only for that moment. For me and many of the rest of us the hard hurt had faded over time. Was if possible to be a family once again, albeit at many miles remove from each other?

As Christmas approached in 1987, I began writing a remembrance of a family holiday, summing the best of all our Christmasses as a family on a single day, Christmas Eve 1967. It was also one of the first extended pieces of writing I had done since leaving college a decade before. (Sobriety for some reason re-awakened my pen.) I completed the piece and Fed-X’d copies to Mom, Dad, Will, Molly and Timm, with instructions to read on Christmas Eve.

In the spirit of that gift now 20 years old, I reprint it here in three sections, in these days leading up to Christmas, in memory of that family and that day. Some moments last a lifetime, and some of them are the happiest of our lives; the day which I now account is one of them, and glows still in my memory like a bright bulb on a tree.

I hope you enjoy.

The Evanston house of our childhood in the the 1960s. Built in the mid-19th century (in the picture you can see one of two iron horse-hitching posts down by the street) and located on the corner of Church Street and Wesley Avenue, most of the buzz you still hear about our childhood years originates in that house. Now distant, it remains magical in memory.

This Christmas Eve is cold yet bright and cloudless, the sky a regal blue. Sunlight dazzles off fresh-fallen snow. Trees that ring our back yard bend down with it, their dark arms dropping clumps of it in random falls.

Bill and I shovel the sidewalks, he on Church Street, me on Wesley Avenue. My shovel breaks into the white crust, crunches down and scrapes along concrete. It is a sudden, rasping sound that echoes all over the neighborhood. Small puffy breaths form, dissipate around my face. I grunt and snivel and sweat. Soon – never soon enough! – the big green bushes that mark the beginning of our neighbor the Davis’ yard approach. With triumph I shovel the last sidewalk square.

I walk back, ignoring the white spots I missed (I was never good at mechanical tasks). My black rubber boots rattle on the raw concrete. Cars work slowly up the Church Street hill, their tires caked with dirty snow. In our front yard, down by Wesley Avenue, two black hitching-posts rise from the snow like exclamation points. their iron horse-heads peer down opposite ends of the street; they are silent sentries, protecting all who live at 1632 Wesley.

Billy comes up around the corner, shovel over shoulder. He springs when he walks, cocky, coiled, a loud energy at work in him that makes him frequently bite his lower lip. He has finished the longer, more trampled stretch of sidewalk along Church Street in the same time it took me to shovel the shorter. His face glows with the cold as surely does my own. We smile, because we both know what we are now free to do.

As if we have been watched – the heavy front door of the house swings open, and in one single motion Molly, Timmy and the family dog Shep bound out. Shep, a mixed collie-German Shepherd, clears the pack and attacks a snowbank, diving in and then leaping up to prance away, his tail furious in pent-up joy, his snout now white. Molly and Timmy follow, wobbly wonders encased in sweaters, snow suits, boots, mittens and scarves. All decked in blue and red, Molly is a chattering blueberry muffin, Timmy a beaming cherry. Pulling Americian Flyer sleds and a plastic saucer from the porch, we dash for the side yard, hooting with ear-to-ear smiles …

The hill! I point my sled, take a few running steps, and fall heavily, grunting upon impact. The sled crunches, jostles, slides faster downhill. Snow sprays up into my nose and ears … my cold fingers grip the wood sled-runners, trying to steer, though the only true direction is down, down, down. I feel a smile crease my face like the sun out of a cloudbank; a giggle shakes out, funny-stacatto with every bump the sled encounters. Sep barks and chases me, dipping his snout into the snow, sneezing out another shower of flakes, barking at my yard-long glissade. Finally reaching the bushes at the western edge,
far downhill from the beginning of all delight, the sled crunches to as top. I rise heavily, as if from sleep, awakened almost hurtfully from every sledder’s reverie. I beat the snow from my legs and turn, wondering why no one applauds so majestic a ride. I trudge back up the hill, head down, trailing my sled by its rope. Close to the top I see Mom standing in the window of the sunroom. She waves, her breath fogging the window. I wave back, my smile awakened by hers. My steps become light.

The day is not too cold – in the upper 20’s. The weatherman on WLS promised more snow to come on this Eve. A white Christmas! And so we throw ourselves intently at the hill, our four faces each with grandmother Nana’s chipmunk-cheeks, all glowing the color of a Bell’s red delicious apple. Kids from the neighborhood arrive, bearing sleds or begging rides from ours. There’s Kevin and Margaret McHugh, and my buddy Tommy Holmgren, and others whose names are long lost to me – boys who look hideous in ski-masks, girls wearing white mufflers, gleefully clutching at their sleds with mom-knitted mittens.

Molly surfs her sled, she’s standing up on it, slowly passing down the hill in silent, stock-still on her mount. Timmy hurtles by on the blur of a red saucer, turning this-way then that, his blue eyes wide. Time gets lost; minutes, hours, a full lifetime passes. Frozen brown tufts of grass peek up through the sled-ruts. Clouds thicken in the sky, turning to a churlish grey chowder. All gets quiet and muffled, our yodels and hoots pushed back in our faces by the advancing storm.

Timmy launched down the hill on his saucer.

Billy launches his sled, boots kicking up a fury of snow, blasting down the hill. He runs back up and announces to us his plan to ice the hill with a garden hose, making the sledding a terrifying jolt of a thrill. Shep returns from his foray of the neighborhood with tail at half-mast (he’s tired), snout white, ears still pointed and alert, panting in the cold.

Big flakes begin to fall, silently as a baby’s breath. In a few minutes mothers begin calling their children’s names from every compass-point of the block. Our sled-mates trudge reluctantly off, making fading promises to return the next day after opening all of their presents.

It is nearly dark, but Molly begs for one last ride, just one more … She settles down on a battered American Flyer and Billy takes hold form behind, rocking the sled back and forth a few times like some bobsled racer getting ready to launch. One, he huffs, two … and shouts THREE!, hurtling with his trademark hot energy for four or five steps, then releases her.

Timmy and Billy and I watch the sled-girl shape make the final descent of the day down the hill in some sort of ballet which carves the complete shape of a childhood, swishing and skating and gliding down the hill, coming at last to silent rest, almost invisible now in the heavily falling snow, fading at last into a certain darkness.

(continued tomorrow)

In January 2007 Timm took a series of shots for a snow day in Silverton, Oregon. I see the kids playing here and remember all of us kids building snow-forts after the Big Snow of '67, when three feet of snow fell.

Adults sledding on the same day last January. Timm, I believe, found a way to return to the joys of his childhood in pictures like these.

Resonant shadows

That's Buster, whom we managed to deck in a Santa cap for a quick pic back in 1997. His last Christmas with us was in 2000.

Saturday afternoon - sitting here watching Colorado State vs. Fresno State in the Arizona Bowl-not a prestige bowl but who cares! I've worked half the day outside and getting ready for various Christmas events (we gather over at Mom's tomorrow) and I'm enjoying a few moments of rest. Beautiful day if not very Christmassy - it's sunny and around 80 - all the windows open as well as the back door, since today I hung the door on the porch, finishing the screening project which will allow us to get those cats out from under us for part of the day. Ironically, Violet is the one who has fallen in love with the new space; she wandered down before lunch and hasn't left there yet. Getting a happy snootful of the big big world.

Beth will be pleased. Screening in the porch, she says, is her real Christmas present this year. I spent most of my vacation a few weeks ago painting the porch from top to bottom. Beth's over in Titusville today visiting a friend, so she'll come back to find her present finally delivered. I'm lucky to have someone who's so easily pleased ...

Violet and Belle check out the new screened porch.

This is the first Christmas without Timm, and the second for sister Molly without her son Nicholas, who died in an auto wreck in Feb. 2007 at the age of 23. (Molly's husband Jim also lost his father to blood cancer about six months later.) So the resonant shadows begin to creep in to our holiday table. Had things gone different in April, Timm might be visiting Florida for Christmas, maybe even staying here. Beth says he was the easiest houseguest we've ever had, so attentive and unobtrusive and helpful. Maybe by now he would have found another job to transition into after the end of Congresswoman Hooley's job. (Back in April, we were emaling back and forth about how to best scout out new opportunities.)

As Nicholas got older (and moved out on his own),he would make an appearance at Mom's Christmas Eve event, cell phone in tow, talking with the girl he so cared for, making plans for After. A typical young man. But Nicholas was a special guy too, in some ways very much like Timm , always so attentive and caring.

Jim and Molly with Nicholas in 1987.

Nicholas at my mother's Chrismas Eve event in 2004. The gift card was from Beth and I and it was to an auto parts store, something Nick was in infinite need of with his truck.

It was a very rainy that terrible night in February 2007 when Nicholas had his accident. He was staying over at his mother's place (Molly was his step-mom, though she raised him) and a half-sister had called after 1 a.m. to get picked up from a bar down on the south Orange Blossom Trail. His mother asked him to go pick her up and Nicholas didn't hesitate. He loaded into his girlfriend's SUV with her and his best friend and they took off. The car spun out on the Turnpike and crashed into a utility pole, killing all three at once.

Why did we have to lose the biggest hearts first? The question hangs heavy this Christmas season. I know there isn't any real answer to that, but it does make their absence especially difficult. Well, we'll do the best we can, celebrating the moment with who is still here, affirming the light and hope of Christmas with our smiles and ready appetites and gifts.

When we travel to Beth's parents' house on Christmas Day for that family's holiday celebration, the merriment hopefully will continue to improve. It's been nine years since Beth's nephew James died in a car wreck, and his mother and father and surviving brother seem to become more and more a part of the proceedings every year.

Beth's nephew James at a Boggs family Christmas event in 1998. He died the following January.

Today it's so fair and warm it's hard to get much sense that Christmas is just a few days away. (Of course, I hear that blizzard conditions are currently barreling down on the Northeast, so this feeling is surely limited our latitudes.) I can faintly hear Christmas carols floating up from the downtown-shopping district (at night so ablaze with Christmas lights that no snow or cold is required for proper effect). On the mantel of our fireplace there are a few Christmas cards - many are cutting back this year, it seems - both Mom and I have used Timm's pictures in Christmas cards I've designed; hers is up there. Soon I must wrap presents for tomorrow's event. So much yet to get done, so little time.

Had it made it here, and had he ended up staying with us, we would be heading out for a walk about this time, two tall, aging brothers who didn't spend much time together down the years but every time they got together it was like they had never separated. Talking about our worlds. Laughing a bit. Step by step identical in gait and weight. Our voices carved of the same baritone. Our interests peripheral to each other and yet, as I have found, reflections of the other, of the family we grew up in. A good family, if you ask me.

Timm's photo "Snowy Falls North," which I used on Christmas cards this year.