Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”

            My most memorable Christmas got jump started with a tragic accident ten weeks prior to December 25th, an event that led to “Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”  I was eight years old, the age of accountability according to many theologians.  I was enrolled in Miss Lola Gibson’s third grade class on “schoolhouse hill” in Piggott, Arkansas (pop. 2,776).  Although the tragedy occurred over fifty years ago, the date is indelibly inked in my mind: it was October 10th, a Monday and the start of a new school week.  I enjoyed attending elementary school, but I hated facing the fact every Monday that I had to ride the school bus.

My readers need to know that, despite my later Harvard education, I was reared a country boy.  My mother, father, and I lived at “two-mile turn,” located a couple of miles outside the city in a grove of trees that I loved to climb.  The white clapboard house that I called home had once been a dance hall popularly known as “The Trees.”  Badly scuffed hardwood floors testified to the stomping and dancing that had taken place over the years.  The building’s original name, however, was far more pretentious: “The Trianon.”  It derived either from a palace (Le Grand Trianon) or a château (Le Petit Trianon) near Versailles, France.  (Which building was referenced was never clear to me.)  Aunt Carrie—for whom Carryville, Arkansas, was named—had owned and (with highfalutin flair) had christened the building à la française.  To her and her heirs, the dance hall remained simply “The Trianon,” with no need for the epithet grand or petit.  Auntie’s aristocratic airs derived from her father-in-law’s having purchased six sections of swamp land a few miles beyond “two-mile turn”; those 3,000+ acres he subsequently drained and turned into a series of tenant farms that surrounded the ville (village) that his son incorporated and named after his wife, my Aunt Carrie.  At her death my father inherited The Trianon and converted it into a comfortable three-bedroom home. In short, my surroundings were, from my eight-year-old perspective, idyllic.

Although the home’s setting was pastoral and peaceful, my mother suffered serious stomach ailments that October.  She had traveled to Memphis over the weekend for tests at the Baptist Hospital.  Dad hurriedly made breakfast that fateful Monday morning.  When I went to turn the volume down on the television set so that we could say grace over the food, he cursed because he thought I was trying to turn the volume up.  He was so worried that Mother might be suffering from cancer that he lost his temper.  He was trying to get me fed and out of the house so that I would not miss the school bus into town.  He was in a rush to drive the two hours to check on Mother.  I was a sensitive lad, and I got my feelings hurt big time.  I was sulking by a giant oak tree in the front yard when he rushed out of the house to drive to Memphis.  When he saw me leaning morosely against the oak, he was moved to pity.  He knew that I hated riding the bus, which was rife with bullies; he may have felt a twinge of guilt for having lost his temper at breakfast.  Even though he needed to drive in the opposite direction to get to Memphis, he said, “Come on, son.  I’ll give you a ride to school.”  I was thrilled and immediately forgave him.  When we arrived ten minutes later at the school house, he kissed me on the lips, told me he loved me, and said that he would see me soon.  I replied, “I’ll see you later.”  Nevertheless that was the last time I saw my father alive.  The next time would be when I stared down at him in his coffin.

Dad was killed in Memphis two blocks from where my mother was staying.  A car driven by a young man struck my father’s car when Dad abruptly changed lanes.  The impact threw Dad from the car; his head hit a concrete curb, and he died instantly.  My mother heard the sirens and thought, “Oh no, someone’s been hurt.”  That someone was her husband, and she became a widow with an eight-year-old son to raise alone.

That autumn was extremely difficult, not only emotionally but also financially.  Money was tight.  Mother had used the small amount of insurance from Dad’s death to buy a new car to replace the one destroyed in the accident.  She told me that I could choose an item from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue for my one Christmas present.  If it didn’t cost too much, she said that Santa would bring it to me.  Knowing that there was a Santa Claus was something that gave me the will to go forward, and I spent night after night in November turning the pages of the catalogue before I finally settled on what I wanted Santa to bring me.  It was a plastic dinosaur set that cost around ten dollars.  Mother said she would let Santa know.  I was thrilled.

To say that I believed in Santa with all my heart would have been an understatement. I knew that Santa existed because one Christmas Eve a couple of years before I had heard sleigh bells jingling outside my bedroom window as I struggled to go to sleep.  Aunt Lee entered the house right after that to say that she had seen Santa riding by in the sky.  She asked breathlessly, “Did you hear his bells?”  I replied, “I most certainly did!” That was the main reason why I chose to ignore the mean boys and girls at school who kept suggesting that Santa Claus wasn’t real and that reindeer can’t really fly.

December finally came, and soon classes would end for Christmas break.  One day Mother came to pick me up after school.  As I rushed to jump in the back of her station wagon, she ordered me to get in the front seat next to her.  Although she was quite insistent, I loved riding in the back and chose to ignore her urging.  I jumped in the back.  It was there that I saw it:  a package that Mother had obviously retrieved from the post office.  The paper was torn on the side, and I read three words that changed everything: PLASTIC DINOSAUR SET. My eyes filling with tears, I exited the back of the car, moved to the front seat, and sat stunned next to Mother.  The mean kids were right after all:  there was no Santa who lived at the North Pole; there were no flying reindeer with bells.  Adults made the story up.  The tale of Santa Claus was like the myth that my dad would always be there for me.  To keep my heart from breaking, I consoled myself that at least I knew I would get exactly what I wanted on December 25th. If only I had known what was in store. . . .

Rather than spending Christmas alone, Mother and I drove to her sister’s place.  Aunt Beth had a big house and a feisty French poodle named Pepe because he was as black as pepper.  Everyone felt sorry for me, and so I was privileged to sleep in Aunt Beth’s giant four-poster bed.  I could not have been more excited when she awakened me on Christmas morning.  Strangely, she just stood at the door to the bedroom; she was not smiling.  It was Christmas, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Aunt Beth seemed distressed.  “Oh, Madison,” she sighed, “Santa brought you a plastic dinosaur set.  He even took it out of the box and set it up under the tree.  Unfortunately, Pepe mistook the animals for his chew toys.”  I jumped out of bed and ran to the tree in the family room.  There I found my chewed-up plastic dinosaurs.  I crumpled to the floor in disbelief.  How could I go on living?  Was life going to be a series of disappointments and heartache?

Children endure loss and disillusionment in a variety of ways.  Many become angry and act out their anger in hurtful and often self-destructive ways.  Others turn inward, becoming withdrawn and introverted.  A few deal with their hurt by asking searching questions, seeking reassuring answers, or focusing on things that bring a degree of solace and happiness.  With loving encouragement from relatives I pursued this last course, becoming ever more inquisitive and bookish, and pouring my soul into learning to master the piano and organ.  What is more important, I began reflecting on certain big questions:  “Where do we come from?” “Why are we here on earth?” “What happens after we die?” “Why do bad things happen to good people such as my father?”  For eight years I asked myself and others those questions.  Then one day two young elders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints met with my mother and me and bore a powerful witness:  “We have answers to the age-old questions:  Where do we come from? Why are we here?  Where are we going?”  To their astonishment, they discovered they were talking to an adolescent who was primed and ready to listen to, question and challenge, and then pray about their answers.

The silver lining to that very bleak holiday season when I was eight was that my sixteen-year-old heart was open to the truth that we came from God and can return to Him.  William Wordsworth captured this doctrine when he penned:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

          Hath had elsewhere its setting

               And cometh from afar;

          Not in entire forgetfulness,

          And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

               From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

               Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

               He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

     Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,

          And by the vision splendid

          Is on his way attended….

            Yes, the silver lining was that my “growing Boy” heart accepted the message that we have a Father in Heaven from whence we came.  Furthermore, He gave his Only Begotten Son so that we might live again.  There is a plan to help us return to God.  It includes exercising faith in His Son, repenting of our mistakes, following the example of Jesus by being baptized, receiving the Holy Ghost, and persevering to the end.

Years have passed since I gained my own witness, and over time my purpose on earth has become that of sharing my testimony that Christ is the reason for this holiday season.  He is the ultimate gift.  I share that witness today with no embarrassment but with the knowledge that some will accept it and others will not.  That is part of God’s plan, too:  we all have our moral agency to embrace or reject the plan of happiness.  I have chosen to accept it, and that decision has made all the difference.

            End of Blog #3 (19 December 2016)