For the past couple of weeks, another server and I have been checking out the Tacky Lights Tour houses here in Richmond. The first night was a Friday, and I’d had a particularly bad week and an even worse closing shift, so she helped me finish up my sidework and silver rolls and sometime around midnight, we headed out on a quest to find some holiday cheer.
Not only did we find cheer, but we found, I think, the source of the global warming we’ve been hearing so much about. These houses are crazy. Most of them have the entire house and any trees/fences/bushes/random cars outlined in lights and inflatable and plastic light up displays scattered across their lawns and rooftops. At one house, there was a light show timed to music. I took some video of a couple houses with my friend’s phone (wow, ten years ago that would have been an insane statement), which she was supposed to send to me. She did not. As consolation, I did find this video on the local newspaper’s website.
Since that first night, we’ve been wandering around after each shift we work together in search of more and more lights, spending an hour or so driving around before she takes me back to my car and I head home to the kid, who isn’t the least bit interested in taking the tour with me. We used to go (in Des Moines) when he was small, but somewhere the decorations lost their wonder for him. Not for me.
When I was a kid (yeah, it’s one of those stories) my grandparents used to load us into their stationwagon after the Christmas Eve service at church. They’d hand each of us a candy cane and a mug of hot chocolate, pop in an 8-track of Christmas music (yes, I'm that old), and drive us around town for hours while my parents wrapped presents. We would ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at every house that even bothered to put a lighted toy soldier on the porch. We were pretty easy to please. And a little high on sugar and caffeine and the knowledge that toys were being placed beneath the tree in our absence.
It was a tradition we held onto through the years – through our parents’ divorce, through our teenage years when we could hardly stand to be in the same room together, let alone a cramped car, and into our adult years. Even after my grandfather passed away and my grandmother stopped driving. Even after my son was a toddler and my dad and I would load him into the car, pick up my sisters and my grandmother and roam around town looking at the lights. Even after I stopped believing in the idea of a savior.
I haven’t made it home for the holidays the past couple of years, so I’ve missed out on the Christmas Eve service and the light tour. I guess it’s made it a little easier for me in some ways – not having to feel out of place at church, not having to tell my grandmother that I no longer believe in God, that I haven’t for some time and never wanted to offend her but can no longer lie and say I do.
But the truth is, I know I wouldn’t have felt out of place at church. Not at my grandmother’s church. They’re good people. Charitable people. Disciples of Christ, who honestly believe in the teachings. They would have welcomed me, embraced my heathen soul, and loved me just the same as they did when I was a toddler and the little old ladies would kiss me on the top of my head as we sang “God Be With You” as we left the chapel.
And after church, as we rode around and the glow from illuminated snowmen and reindeer evoked memories of years past, I would have felt the same kind of joy, the kind that comes from being with the people you love, and I wouldn’t have felt the need to tell my grandmother anything. Because in those moments, I would have believed, not in God but at least in some force greater than myself, and to paraphrase the words of that great Christmas icon Ralphie Parker, to be peaceful in the knowledge that all was right with the world.
A couple of weeks ago, as grandmas do, mine passed away. My father had called to tell me she wasn’t doing well, and though she was on a ventilator and couldn’t speak, he put the phone to her ear and I got the chance to tell her that I loved her and wished I could be with her then.
I can’t say I wasn’t prepared. She’s been in poor health for years and in the last few months she had steadily declined. And she had been starting to suffer the effects of dementia, becoming crabby and sometimes mean, complaining all the time, disparaging everyone, spouting off about how letting my nephew play with dolls was going to turn him into a homosexual and snapping at me when I told her I thought that would be just fine. The truth is that she wasn’t the woman I grew up with anymore. And I had already begun to grieve.
A few days after I spoke to her, as I was heading to the restaurant for a shift, my cousin called to tell me she had died. There was nothing I could do. My family was twelve hundred miles away. So I drove the rest of the way to work and served sweet tea and biscuits and went about the night and the next few nights the same as I had for months now.
Years ago, when my grandfather passed away, I still believed in God and heaven and found comfort in the thought that I would be with him again some day in some form or another. But that comfort is no longer there. I haven’t quite known how to feel and because of that, I just kept moving on, feeling sad and a little disconnected, but moving on. Telling myself that this is how life works, that someday it ends, that grandmothers pass away. Feeling guilty about not feeling worse.
The first night my friend suggested we look at lights, I have to admit I wasn’t that interested. It was already late and I’d had a long week. I just wanted to go home and fall asleep in front of the television. But she insisted and since she was helping me finish up my work so we could leave together, I could hardly say no. So we drove into the residential areas after work and found the first house on her list. It was well after midnight and the streets were empty and still – just us, thousands of twinkling bulbs, and a midi-playing snowman.
As we sat there, it all hit me at once. But instead of thinking about loss, I was feeling that excitement again, that joy, remembering all the years I had the privilege to spend with my grandmother, and feeling the love that she gave to me.
I’m sure my friend was just trying to cheer me up a little – that and she really wanted to go see some lights and didn’t want to go alone – but she can’t have known what a wonderful gift it was to me, how these little drives through the suburbs these past days have been the best present I’ve received in a very long time.
Not only did we find cheer, but we found, I think, the source of the global warming we’ve been hearing so much about. These houses are crazy. Most of them have the entire house and any trees/fences/bushes/random cars outlined in lights and inflatable and plastic light up displays scattered across their lawns and rooftops. At one house, there was a light show timed to music. I took some video of a couple houses with my friend’s phone (wow, ten years ago that would have been an insane statement), which she was supposed to send to me. She did not. As consolation, I did find this video on the local newspaper’s website.
Since that first night, we’ve been wandering around after each shift we work together in search of more and more lights, spending an hour or so driving around before she takes me back to my car and I head home to the kid, who isn’t the least bit interested in taking the tour with me. We used to go (in Des Moines) when he was small, but somewhere the decorations lost their wonder for him. Not for me.
When I was a kid (yeah, it’s one of those stories) my grandparents used to load us into their stationwagon after the Christmas Eve service at church. They’d hand each of us a candy cane and a mug of hot chocolate, pop in an 8-track of Christmas music (yes, I'm that old), and drive us around town for hours while my parents wrapped presents. We would ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at every house that even bothered to put a lighted toy soldier on the porch. We were pretty easy to please. And a little high on sugar and caffeine and the knowledge that toys were being placed beneath the tree in our absence.
It was a tradition we held onto through the years – through our parents’ divorce, through our teenage years when we could hardly stand to be in the same room together, let alone a cramped car, and into our adult years. Even after my grandfather passed away and my grandmother stopped driving. Even after my son was a toddler and my dad and I would load him into the car, pick up my sisters and my grandmother and roam around town looking at the lights. Even after I stopped believing in the idea of a savior.
I haven’t made it home for the holidays the past couple of years, so I’ve missed out on the Christmas Eve service and the light tour. I guess it’s made it a little easier for me in some ways – not having to feel out of place at church, not having to tell my grandmother that I no longer believe in God, that I haven’t for some time and never wanted to offend her but can no longer lie and say I do.
But the truth is, I know I wouldn’t have felt out of place at church. Not at my grandmother’s church. They’re good people. Charitable people. Disciples of Christ, who honestly believe in the teachings. They would have welcomed me, embraced my heathen soul, and loved me just the same as they did when I was a toddler and the little old ladies would kiss me on the top of my head as we sang “God Be With You” as we left the chapel.
And after church, as we rode around and the glow from illuminated snowmen and reindeer evoked memories of years past, I would have felt the same kind of joy, the kind that comes from being with the people you love, and I wouldn’t have felt the need to tell my grandmother anything. Because in those moments, I would have believed, not in God but at least in some force greater than myself, and to paraphrase the words of that great Christmas icon Ralphie Parker, to be peaceful in the knowledge that all was right with the world.
A couple of weeks ago, as grandmas do, mine passed away. My father had called to tell me she wasn’t doing well, and though she was on a ventilator and couldn’t speak, he put the phone to her ear and I got the chance to tell her that I loved her and wished I could be with her then.
I can’t say I wasn’t prepared. She’s been in poor health for years and in the last few months she had steadily declined. And she had been starting to suffer the effects of dementia, becoming crabby and sometimes mean, complaining all the time, disparaging everyone, spouting off about how letting my nephew play with dolls was going to turn him into a homosexual and snapping at me when I told her I thought that would be just fine. The truth is that she wasn’t the woman I grew up with anymore. And I had already begun to grieve.
A few days after I spoke to her, as I was heading to the restaurant for a shift, my cousin called to tell me she had died. There was nothing I could do. My family was twelve hundred miles away. So I drove the rest of the way to work and served sweet tea and biscuits and went about the night and the next few nights the same as I had for months now.
Years ago, when my grandfather passed away, I still believed in God and heaven and found comfort in the thought that I would be with him again some day in some form or another. But that comfort is no longer there. I haven’t quite known how to feel and because of that, I just kept moving on, feeling sad and a little disconnected, but moving on. Telling myself that this is how life works, that someday it ends, that grandmothers pass away. Feeling guilty about not feeling worse.
The first night my friend suggested we look at lights, I have to admit I wasn’t that interested. It was already late and I’d had a long week. I just wanted to go home and fall asleep in front of the television. But she insisted and since she was helping me finish up my work so we could leave together, I could hardly say no. So we drove into the residential areas after work and found the first house on her list. It was well after midnight and the streets were empty and still – just us, thousands of twinkling bulbs, and a midi-playing snowman.
As we sat there, it all hit me at once. But instead of thinking about loss, I was feeling that excitement again, that joy, remembering all the years I had the privilege to spend with my grandmother, and feeling the love that she gave to me.
I’m sure my friend was just trying to cheer me up a little – that and she really wanted to go see some lights and didn’t want to go alone – but she can’t have known what a wonderful gift it was to me, how these little drives through the suburbs these past days have been the best present I’ve received in a very long time.
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