Sunday, December 26, 1999

Christmas is a time for memories past

By Matt Markey
Outdoor Writer

Christmas morning was flush with the expected excitement, pandemonium and controlled chaos that has become its tradition. As usual, the only quiet time, the only moments that could support any kind of peace or reflection were the ones spent in church, where everyone still has to be reasonably reserved.

But lost in the Christmas rush, that train-wreck pace that propels us into the holiday exhausted and spent, both literally and figuratively, are a lot of those subtle, impossible to see from the surface kind of messages.

There is the spiritual side of the holiday, the foundation of Christmas and its real reason for being. But beyond that, and the numerous ways people of different faiths choose to celebrate the day or honor the birth of our Lord, Christmas brings other gifts.

It's a concept that seems lost, for now, on the four kids raiding under the tree at my house. For them, the Barbies, the Pokemon cards, Blue Clues and new bikes seem to be the gifts they will remember. But that is likely not the case.

Too long ago, there was this pup tent a certain 10-year-old really wanted. He made lists and left them where his Mom would repeatedly come across them. He wrote Santa letters, and even made an in-person request when the jolly old fellow was taking visitors at the Buckeye Mart store.

That tent was important. It would mean countless evenings of backyard camping with flashlights and comic books and popcorn and a plastic Thermos filled with hot chocolate. He just had to have that tent.

So when it didn't come on Christmas morning, there was momentary disappointment. Distracted by all of the wonderful things he did get, this kid forgot about the tent he thought he couldn't live without. Soon, he would forget about most of the presents he did get, as well.

The message to the kids yesterday morning was to enjoy the gifts you received. Show sincere gratitude to those who were so generous to you. But remember that the gifts you will cherish the most, the things you will hold on to the longest, are not made in China, and don't require batteries.

I thought of a few items I hold in that regard. There is the Winchester 12 gauge shotgun my Dad hunted with in the glory years of pheasant hunting in Northwest Ohio, in the late 1950s and early 1960s when a limit by 10 a.m. was the norm.

When the birds became hard to come by, and the surgery schedule kept getting more demanding, he gave up on hunting and passed the Winchester on to me. There was no wrapping paper, no bow, but just a few words telling me it was a good gun and I would come to like its lightweight barrel by the end of a long day of walking the fields.

There's also this fishing rod I will never use. It belonged to my uncle Arnold, a mountain of a man whose deep voice, gruff delivery and sheer size scared us to death when we were kids. He worked hard managing steel mills around the country, and when he went fishing he used the best &endash; custom made rods, top of the line tackle.

A number of years after Arnold died, my aunt Wanda gave me one of his special fly rods. Coming from Wanda, who I admire and respect more than any woman on the planet, except of course my own Mom, this meant so much. It is priceless, not for what it is, but for where it came from. They make better fly rods today, but they don't make any that Arnold used to wrestle Dolly Vardon trout out of glacial lakes in Alaska.

There are pictures and notes and school papers and other treasures that fall into the same category &endash; gifts that were never of value until many pages had flipped on the calendar. The kids will understand, some day.

There is one other item I would put in this group, in my collection of gifts for the ages. A few years ago, we received ornaments for the tree, each one etched with one of the children's names. They were lovely, but as my then six-year-old daughter first examined them, she got that look &endash; you parents know the one I mean.

She went to the playroom, and emerged about 30 minutes later with a handmade paper ornament. The lettering was sloppy, the colors overlapped and smeared, and the glue was still wet on the edges.

With no fanfare, not a word spoken, she hung it on the tree and then slipped off to play with the others. The ornament said, in crude off-centered lettering: "Caitlyn." It was for her other sister who, several years before, came into the world too small, too weak, and months too early to have a chance to survive.

The kids never saw her, but they just knew that she went to be an angel without ever coming home with us. That treasured ornament has a place of prominence on our tree every year because, as a certain six-year-old reminded us that day, "we can't forget Caitlyn." She was a gift too.