Twinkle, Twinkle Little Chirstmas Light

I confess that I am a whore for Christmas lights. I love those houses that decorate for the season, way beyond the point of sanity. I will with an un-explained joy in my heart, go miles out of my way to view these wonders of electrical excess. I must also express my own sorrow at not being able to create one of these joyous wonders in home.

I have been in love with Christmas lit homes for as long as I can remember. One of the best things as a child was coming home after a Christmas shopping trip, and seeing the house on the hill in Johnsonville, clearly out lined in a multitude of colors, bright enough to land planes by. I still wish for the tree in White Creek, taller than the house it grew next to, strung with lights; put on each year using a boom truck [their electric bill doubled each Dec. Dad stopped one year so I could walk under the magic tree, and he asked]. There is a house on Harwood Hill which puts up so many white lights, that I believe not a square inch is left untouched. There is something so grand about lighting your world, adorning your shrubs in electric jewels, that tells the world of your love for the season of darkness.

The first time I drove to Maine, just before Christmas wasn’t really to go shopping. I had read in “Yankee” that the Nubble Light House in York is lit with thousand of Christmas Lights each year, and I knew I had to see it. I’ve been known to take long walks in dark sub-zero temps around villages, to enjoy looking at the lights. The distance is never to great to view a great light display. I once drove a hour out of my way, following a traveling Christmas light show; a cement mixer that ST Griswold covers with twinkling lights, hoping it would stop. [It did and I got a photo of it]. I feel that it is my Christmas duty to enjoy the hard work put into these displays.

That leaves me with my own great sorrow at this time of year. I have never lived in a place where my effort in decorating can be seen by those driving by. This is probably for the best however, because my efforts are really sad. None of my homes have had the type of architecture that is shown in a good way by twinkling lights. I can’t even pull off the simple classic candles in the windows, do to a lack of plugs [yes I know there are battery powered candles, but they don’t match, and go through a ton of batteries]. I tried one year to put lights in a tree that was about ten feet tall, it looked good for a few nights, until a big wind rearranged the lights, and I just couldn’t get them back in place.

Oh I still try, although I’ve been reduced to a couple of blow up lawn decorations, and lighting what can only be described as a three foot tall bush. So no one’s going to come to my house for the joy of a light show. I however will be in my truck, driving far and wide in search of brightly lit Christmas homes. So please do your part, for me, and string some lights.

Memories

Time marches past us, it is said faster as we grow older. I believe that for parents there is an amazing time warp. For us time layers itself with truly unpredictable memories. Beginnings and endings twine together, and as if on some kind of hyper active fast forward your child is an adult. Yet you, the parent have barely breathed.

I started my time trip this morning as I drove by the Marriott in Middlebury, and the memory of walking into the place with my oldest son, just two years ago, on the night before his last high school football game. We didn’t know than that it would be a long time before he would play again. I was headed today for the Vermont’s NorthSouth Senior Football game, to watch for the first time in two years the game without one of my son’s in the field. I don’t mind saying that was sad for me.

I was sitting on cement bleachers watching high school seniors, dressed in white jerseys for the North, and green jerseys for the South. But to tell the truth, for me that field was populated by eight year olds in red jerseys, playing for the Moose. I saw little boys playing a game that would define our family life every autumn, for the last 12 years. It’s funny to realize that I don’t really remember a single touch down, but I remember the pride I felt as I stood on a side line and watched one or both of my boys take the field, and than walk off at the end of the game, somehow one step closer to being already grown.

As if this little memory trip was on roll, it drifted off onto the road home with me. I found myself traveling down Route 30 from Middlebury to Manchester in reverse of a trip I took years ago with my oldest. It has to have been seventeen or eighteen years since my son; who would have been about three, was strapped into his car seat for a trip; that in one form or another he and I would take many times over the years. My sons and I have picked many roads to travel for a road trip. It always begins with “let’s do route” fill in the number and hop in the car. My boys and I have done many drives; like Route 302 through NH and Route 2; both of them, the Mohawk Trail in MA and the great northern route in parts through New England and this summer across WI and MI.

The first road trip, the one that came flooding back to me, was to do Route 30. I have no idea why I choose the route, and realize that it couldn’t have been overly exciting for a three year old. I remember very clearly that this was where my son learned to locate up coming VT villages by spotting a church steeple. It was the game for that road trip, and his first foray into what appears to be a life time of road trips for him.

As I back tracked that route, I could swear that, that car seat was beside me in the truck. I could picture that little boy sitting there, kicking his feet and looking for the next church.

It seemed to me from my memory that it was a long trip, but in truth it’s a short ride. I found it odd that I didn’t remember driving past all the little lakes that lie along the road. Those bodies of water must have been a high point in our trip, but I don’t remember them at all. Instead my memory was happy to see the big run down white mansion of a house was still rather un-changed. A land mark, a memory mark, proof that I really took a drive on that road some eighteen years ago, with a sweet little boy.

I am no longer a young twenty something Mom. My son is no longer a tiny little boy with a bowl cut, peaking out of windows from a car seat. My son is now grown, away in college working on his second year toward some kind of a degree in wild life. He is now just short of six feet and a truly tuff half back on his school’s club team, after not playing football for a year. I’m an older Mom with a few gray hairs showing, and at loose ends as to what to do with what’s left of my life, now that I’ve been retired from being a full time Mom. But, I have my memories.