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.
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.
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.
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.
(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!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Leave a word for Timm here!