In the early 1970s, my dad served as pastor of First Covenant Church in Cadillac, Michigan. My mom worked as a public health nurse for Wexford County and took classes at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to become a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. If you yapped with my mom for more than ten minutes, you already knew this about her.[1]They say that people tell you the most important thing in their lives in the first ten minutes after meeting them.
In October of 1975, I sat in our family room and looked carefully through the Sears Christmas gift catalog. In some ways, Christmas in the Anderson house was transactional. One would simply pick something out in the catalog, bring it to the attention of our mom and it would appear on Christmas Eve under the tree.
I had never heard of the Guns of Navarone novel, let alone the movie, but upon seeing the cutaway interior of the mountain fortress in the Sears catalog, I was awestruck. I studied the picture in the catalog like a student studies for an important test. Two mounted howitzers, dozens of plastic soldiers and a working elevator to move soldiers up and down the fortress – so many possibilities for hours and hours of death, destruction, and righteous mayhem!
The Nazis were always the bad guys, even though the Korean War and War in Vietnam had been much more recent. One of our favorite outdoor games to play in the neighborhood in the summer was what we simply referred to as “war.” If you were shot during the game, you laid down, closed your eyes and counted to one hundred. After that, you jumped up and went right back into battle. It was like a childhood version of Valhalla.
On Christmas Eve, we ate Swedish meatballs for dinner and headed next door for the evening church service. I wore a white suit with a red shirt and was at the top of the world. Upon returning and gobbling down Swedish Christmas cookies for dessert, it was finally time to open presents. When it was my turn to open my first present, I zeroed in on the Guns of Navarone shaped box, ripped off the wrapping paper, and was thrilled to find that my dreams had been fulfilled.
On Christmas Day, I set up the fortress in my bedroom closet. I staged elaborate battle scenes there for hours, knocking over the plastic soldiers when they were hit by the good guys, or the bad guys.
Later that winter, during an arctic blast, it got so cold that all of the public schools were closed. My dad went to the local hardware store down the street, Gambles, and bought two ski masks. After loading our second-hand skis in the back of our Ford Gran Torino station wagon, we drove to Caberfae, where we skied all morning together. I remember my dad losing one ski somehow at the top of one of the runs. He hobbled down the hill with one ski, cursing as he went after the runaway ski. I smiled and laughed. So did he when he finally caught up with it.
Now that both of my parents have departed, my love for each of them seems to be entering a new phase. Their absence has allowed to soften some of the hard places that always seemed to get in the way when they were here. It is like the war I sometimes waged against them is finally over.
It is Christmas Eve. I’m in my white suit. Dessert is finished. I am waiting to open gifts that they got especially for me. Thanks, mom and dad! I love you.
References
| ↑1 | They say that people tell you the most important thing in their lives in the first ten minutes after meeting them. |
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