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A Christmas Story
They say that humanity is possession of a higher intelligence. The thing that
makes man so distinctly human, so much more highly evolved, is his sense of
comprehension, rational thought; or at least, that is what’s commonly said. The
truth, however, lies in the exact opposite. It is one of man’s completely
irrational abilities that makes him so special; to see beauty anywhere, anytime,
in anything.
Consider a cold, Massachusetts night. It’s one of those nights where you just
can’t seem to get warm, no matter how many jackets, gloves or scarves you wear.
A man, a young man, stands on his back porch, looking out on a dark night in his
crowded neighborhood. Lights shine dimly from scattered windows, trees batter
against windows so thin and brittle that they should have shattered years ago.
His face is grim as he picks fallen leaves off of an old ripped up couch and
sits down, shivering.
Somehow, through some trick of the human mind, he is transported. Transported to
neither a time nor place, but to a feeling reflected through both, a feeling
thought long gone, forever lost, a feeling that would never return.
He stands outside on a night much like the one he began in. He is in Vermont,
though it really doesn’t matter. The grimness in his features is gone, replaced
by the soft, smooth unweatherdness of childhood, his head tilted up so high the
back of his neck aches from the strain. A hand lies on his shoulder, the hand of
some giant masculinity, not a frightening masculinity, but rather the comforting
warmth that could only come from such an imposing figure. He calls this hand
“Dad”. Dad’s other hand points up, at some distant star shining dim in the
moonlight. “Do you see that one? That’s part of Orion’s Belt.” He doesn’t see
the star Dad is pointing to; it is lost to him in a sea of shining beauty,
thousands of torches shining in the windows of houses so distant they blur into
a murky gray. “I see it,” he tells his father. Not a lie, per se, but
solidarity, a reciprocation of warmth, love in a shared experience.
He and Dad walk side by side, the cold unable to affect them in their warm
little bubble called family. They brush through the foot-thick snow lining the
walkway and enter the cabin. The father strips him of his gloves and boots,
places the boots on a tray in the front hall and leads him by the hand into the
cabin. They place their gloves side by side in front of the fire place, the
father huddling close to his son, sharing in the warmth of the flickering
dancing fire before them. They sit down cross-legged in front of the fire and
Dad says something. It doesn’t matter what he said, just that they shared a
laugh that seemed to go on forever.
The man is back on his small back porch in Massachusetts, though it doesn’t
really matter. He stands up and crosses to the railing, looking back out into
the darkness. He can’t see the stars tonight, just an inky blackness stretching
out from above his house, expanding endlessly into a sea of swirling
nothingness. But he recalls that night, long ago. The cold can’t touch him; a
warm bubble inside in his stomach won’t let it hurt him any longer.
It’s all so temporary, he thinks to himself, that temporary feeling. A temporary
feeling, a temporary place, even a temporary father. A father he sees so little
of these days. That night may be gone, the father may be elsewhere, the stars
may be invisible, but that feeling remains, just waiting to be conjured up from
the hidden, obscured, magical parts of his mind.
And all was well.
Reason no. 36:...
Shawnda Eva
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