by Jim Bessey

Created on: December 20, 2010

Home for the Holidays

Christmas was almost here, December 1999. My brothers and I were worried about our parents, both in their late seventies. Mom was sharp as a schoolgirl, but barely able to navigate the living room. Dad was spry as a teenager, but sometimes couldn't find his way to the mailbox.

Some days he knew who we were, we three balding grown-up copies of the little boys he used to take fishing at dawn on Saturdays. Most of the time he knew Mom was his darling wife. It confused him when his blushing bride had to hang onto the stove for support.

"What's the hold-up with dinner, honeydew?" he'd call from the couch, watching Let's Make a Deal, not even lunchtime yet.

* * *

The snow was crisp and crystalline in rural NY that Saturday, a week before Christmas. The winding driveway was packed-down white with snow-pillow bunkers along its edges. Ed Teller* negotiated the slippery glaze carefully, headed for the mailbox. He liked to get the mail. He liked the Christmas cards from far and wide. He liked the PennySaver, too, and sometimes skimmed the For Sales on the long walk back to the house.

A light breeze teased his snow-colored hair. The biting cold made his weathered cheeks glow red and chapped his thin lips. His shallow chest and narrow shoulders stayed warm inside his prize possession, an official NFL Buffalo Bills stadium parka. The keys to his other prize possession, a faded blue Chevy Silverado, jingled in his fingers deep inside his left pocket.

Ed reached the roadside, grabbed the tin mailbox firmly for support, checked the lake road for traffic, and eased the lid open to gather today's delivery. A stack of cards, thick as a novel, in envelopes of white, red, and green. He sorted them as he headed back up the lane.

Inside their warm and tidy cottage, wife Ruth as dozing. Usually she'd watch Ed's trip to the mailbox.  Sometimes he'd just keep walking, wandering south on their quiet road as his mind wandered who-knows-where. Middle-son Phillip lived three miles down that way, and sometimes Ed went that far. Ruth always called ahead, warning Phil's wife Debra to keep an eye out for Ed.

* * *

No one really knows for sure how our brains do their magic. How memories are stored and sorted, then retrieved as needed from billions of secret synapses. How a tiny current and a tangle of chemicals make us aware of Self, of time and place, and give us hopes and dreams. It's a worthy mystery, pursued by the greatest minds in medicine; but still a mystery.

Many things

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