A new Christmas tradition December 13, 1985

  

Friday the thirteenth and Christmas practically knocking on the door.

I’m on Toms River starting a new tradition of bringing my mother north to see the graves.

Last year we both shed tears as we passed the old places, landmarks my mother got used to seeing when she was still free.

Down here there are very few buses and so almost no independence, yet also less of the danger that haunted her when living in the north, punk kids from Paterson throwing things at her out of spite.

Freedom has its attractions and going home for Christmas means a lot.

I’m down here with work at Willowbrook and a weekend schedule only hours away, which I know will have been dragging by Sunday night.

Still, there was just too much “right” about last year, my mother getting to see her father’s and sister’s graves, and the inside of the church that protected her for so many years.

I could not ignore the expectation I heard in her voice on the telephone as if over time we’ve reversed roles, with me becoming the parent and she the impatient child waiting for Santa Claus.

I guess neither of us can escape the traditions of Christmas we acquired when living in the old house, and when Ted bought it and married, the apartment on Trenton Avenue, the church – if not across the street as it once was – within an easy bus ride for her to go to mass each day.

My mother had friends, too, people whom she had come to know and trust, some of whom would see her at the bus stop and drive her to church on particularly closed days, who even invited her to dinner, people beyond our family – and therefore special.

It was painful for her to tear herself away from the north when Ted took grandma south, and she has longed to move back permanently ever since – an impossible idea since she has no place to live, no job, therefore no salary, and more importantly, she would leave behind nobody to take care of grandma.

Perhaps if I was wealthy, if I some how managed to gain success, a pipe dream at this point, yet a dream I cherish.

I would love to be able to buy the old house and give it to my uncle Ritchie and my mother to live in, have them take care of each other the way brother and sister should without the weight of worldy responsibility perched on their shoulders.

That old house symbolized for me all the pain and joy of my life, and life with my family, and I still feel the horror I felt when Ritchie got tossed out of it in 1972 to pave the way for Teddy’s marriage – only to have Ted abandon the house five years later in his desperate need to find “a normal life” in the suburban setting of Tom’s River, forcing my mother to go with him.

The old house will always been home to me, and not living in it, I feel as homeless as my mother and Ritchie are.

This trip north helps restore at least a little of the old Christmas tradition for a short time, until the clock strikes midnight and the carriage turns back into a pumpkin and the steeds back into mice.



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