You Call this Christmas?

December 1968: Schiller College, Germany

It was cold and I was excited to be going back to my family and my sailor boyfriend on the Navy base in Rota, Spain. Warm weather, Christmas cheer, parties. I'd just been back for Thanksgiving, so I knew the drill -- travel orders, passport, space-available military flight from Rhein Main in Frankfurt. Easy peasy.

The dorms closed and I took the train to Frankfurt. The terminal was packed with GIs trying to get home for Christmas. It was wall-to-wall uniforms. Just the way I liked it! Everything was great until I discovered I didn't have my passport. 

It had to be in my dorm room at school. I got on the phone and found that I could get in to look for it, but I didn't have money for train fare. One of the guys hitchhiked back to school with me and we turned my room upside down before getting word through a frantic trans-atlantic call that one of my housemates had accidentally taken it with her --- to Florida. No passport, no trip home to Spain. I would have to go to the American consulate in Frankfurt and try to get a temporary one.

My new friend sprang for a train ride for both of us. I put my plea in at the Consulate but found that everything was shutting down for the holidays. There would be no hope of getting the new passport until they reopened after Christmas. 

Back at the terminal, I fell in with a group of guys, me in my cute little mini smock-dress and my backpack. I had all the attention and admiration I could soak up. They bought me food and drinks, entertained me with stories and jokes, and at night they surrounded me while I slept on the floor --- to fend off the wolves, they assured me.

One by one my companions said good-bye and boarded planes for the States. By the end of Christmas Eve there was almost nobody left except a skeleton crew in the snack bar and in the office. Christmas Day I spent reading my book and had an ersatz Christmas dinner (sort of turkey or chicken?) in the snack bar with the kitchen workers. At least they let me have it for free.

Things powered up again on the 26th and flights began to leave. Space Available is always chancey, and I got bumped twice. The officer who bumped me the second time felt sorry as I stood there crying, and gave me a $20 bill. That was a lot of money in 1968. It didn't get me home that day, but it did mean I could have whatever I wanted in the snack bar.

Finally, on the 27th, newly minted temporary passport in hand, I was on the way to Rota Naval Station on a C140 transport. Seats? Naw, just the netting along the sides with lots of enormous containers down the center. But I got a box lunch to eat on the way. 

My first Christmas away from home felt like a disaster at the time. I missed my family terribly. I had felt all grown up when I went off to college, but there was no place I wanted to be more than around the Christmas tree with my parents and sisters and brother on that December 25th.

By the following Christmas, I had married that sailor boyfriend and we celebrated our first holidays together at his new base. It was many years before I spent another Christmas with my entire family. 2019 marks my 70th Christmas on the planet, but none has stood out like that first lonely Christmas in the airport.

Out of the House and Into the Streets

Stadt Theater, Bremerhaven, Germany

So this is it. This is how it works in the real world. I've spent most of the past 5 months hibernating, squirreled away in my house, surrounded by all the things I love, battling demons and scratching out words, trying to make sense of something, anything. And then the sun shines for a few days, and the temperature warms up and what? I shake off the lethargy and stretch and yawn and drink some coffee and next thing you know, I've got car keys dangling from my index finger. 

I could never figure out how a person could be agoraphobic. I have been on the go since I got my first permission to ride the bus by myself. I wanted to be with my friends and go places. If I was stuck in the house, I was on the phone talking about future plans. I was the girl, 50 years ago, who would put on a nice dress, flip my hair and put in the little clippy bows above each ear, smooth on stockings ---- yes, with garters, because pantyhose hadn't been invented yet ---- and go downtown on the streetcar, with my best friend, to that upstairs restaurant kitty-corner from Karstadts department store, and order coffee and pastries, just like grown-ups. Then we would stroll down the street admiring the window displays until we reached the Stadt Theater, where we would attend a matinee performance of an opera or symphony concert. How very ladylike can you get at 13? Okay, this was in Bremerhaven, Germany. I doubt we would have done it in the States. But it was emblematic of my passion for being out and about with friends.

Fast forward five decades and here I am, glued to the couch for an entire winter. I don't want to go see friends ---- I don't want to answer the phone. I make myself get out for a few meetings, and once a month or so push myself into the nearly overwhelming company of a couple dozen women and a table full of potluck food. It doesn't help that Jill is a congenital introvert who depends on me to blast her out of the house in the best of times. And the longer I stay at home, the harder it is to get out. So now I see how that fear develops. Even today, when the sun is shining and my countenance is cheerier, I have to assure myself that I can always leave, I'm always at choice, I don't have to stay, it's okay to come home.

This morning, I joined up with a couple hundred of my closest friends to be educated about the pressing issues being presented in the North Carolina legislature, now that it has changed hands. There were some people I actually know, and most I did not. I went to the wrong church first ---- and didn't use that as a reason to turn around and go home. I allowed myself to catch the spirit, to remember my convictions, to rekindle the connection I have with others who feel, as I do, that there is injustice afoot that must be stopped. I even leaped up from my seat and went to the front when the call went out for volunteers from the throng to be the visual representation of diversity in this movement for fair play and justice. I didn't veer off to the parking lot when we moved two blocks to the legislative building. I found the offices of my representatives and spoke my name and left my concerns, and yes, I felt good afterward.

Will it make a difference? I don't know. I believe that efforts like this make more of a difference than sitting on the couch forwarding cartoons on facebook. What I know for sure is that it makes a difference to me. And I guess that's really what counts.