Column: Tales from Exit 22

The Witch of December came early.

I’m not sure there is a Witch of December. I know November has one. The Witch of November is the name given to the winds that blow across the Great Lakes in autumn. Gordon Lightfoot sang about it in The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Witch or no Witch, winter began early. Old Man Winter usually arrives before the calendar has him scheduled. I suspect he needs to practice.

My feelings on winter are that if the power stays on it’s a great day. If the power stays on and the sun shines, it’s a perfect day. Not everyone feels that way.

“Winter gets my goat!”

That’s what the lady, definitely not a witch, told me while I was ringing the bells for the Salvation Army. She was shopping for gifts. Christmas is the time of year when we desire without explanation and give little consideration to the fact that we already have things that we once only hoped for. We want the past forgotten and the present remembered.

As a child, I talked of my needs but my parents heard of my wants. I didn’t think money grew on trees. I had no idea where money grew and I didn’t care. I wanted too much. Wanting too much is like chasing two rabbits, you won’t catch either one. I begged like a panhandler on fire. I asked until I could ask no more. I wished for plenty, but if wishes were granted, we’d all live in castles. Too young to anticipate disappointment in Christmas gifts, I didn’t know there was underwear lurking under the tree until I opened the presents. Kids get gifts because parents know that Christmas never ends but childhoods do. I think my parents based gift purchases for me on the “That should shut him up” scale.

We milked cows. That gave my family the time and opportunity to talk to one another. I remember one discussion well. It was about something other than Christmas that happens in December. It was the first time I understood the reality of death. I was a tyke, just getting into macaroni art, bothering my father with questions while he attempted to secure milk from Holsteins. I was at the age where there were no awkward discussions. I knew something about death. We had livestock on the farm. I’d heard about death in church. I’d seen the Grim Reaper in newspaper comics. I’d listened to adults reading newspaper obituaries. I’d been to funerals of incredibly old people who I knew but not really. I asked my father if Grandma would die one day. She was the most ancient of those I knew well.

“Yes, she will,” my father replied, calling me sonny.

“Will you die, too?” I asked.

Dad answered in the affirmative, I’m sure adding that he hoped not for a long time. I didn’t hear anything after “yes.”

I’ve read that we act out of either love or fear. I acted out of both. I climbed to the haymow and scrambled back into my hidden sanctuary built of hay bales. It was there that I cried those great sobs that accompany bad news. I’d thought that those I loved would live forever like photographs that refuse to fade. I had learned that life is like walking on thin ice. People fall in.

I recall the words of the poet John Hall Wheelock, who wrote “In the quiet when the light of the past falling from the high stars yet haunts the earth, I think of those I love — dear men and women no longer with us — and not just in grief or regret, but rather with a love that is almost joy, I think of them.”

I have lost many loved ones since that talk with my father. I feel a touch of sadness at this time of the year because both my parents died in the month of December. I miss them. December can be hard to take. Funerals and bad weather make it difficult to be jolly, but Christmas is a delightful time. I adore stories and Christmas comes with the most and the best stories.

The only extended warranties we have are our memories. At Christmas, our memories commingle with warm wishes, good deeds, prayers and wonder. We learn that the things hunters of dreams crave most — happiness and serenity — are obtained by helping others find them.

“I wish Christmas were here,” said the lady whose goat had been gotten by winter.

Not me.

That would be wishing my life away.

Hartland resident Al Batt’s column appears every Wednesday.