Christmas Letter 2023: A Christmas Carol

I must admit, I was haunted by memories this year. Not bad memories, mind you. Mostly wonderful ones. This is what happens when you empty the house in which you raised your children for over 24 years. That purge was one heck of a reckoning.

Some things seemed sinful to discard: the handwritten letters from great aunties in Ireland who passed away decades ago. The tome of the kids’ fingerpainted monsterpieces. And photo negatives, (oh my Lord, the negatives!), strips and strips of forgotten, half-lit half-thoughts kept for years in deteriorating cardboard boxes just in case I would ever need to …what? scour through a lifetime of singular images to find the few that if developed would bring renewed meaning to my life?

I was relentless in my purging, and the ghosts of the past flew out of every drawer, every cupboard, every corner of every closet; they laid in dusty wait under the beds, and they haunted the in-betweens, the slid-unders, and the can’t-reaches of every inch of that house. But here’s the phantom who made me pause: Opening the piano bench, I found the Christmas tune book of my childhood. I knew it was there. It’s there every time I open the piano bench, which is once a year at Christmas. I can’t allege that I am a pianist, but as a child, oh how I loved playing the piano. Music was a lyrical, fanciful gift my parents gave me.

I played the piano gleefully throughout my childhood until that misanthropic antagonist, adolescence, appeared. Inexorably, Rick Springfield and Journey recorded on a mixed tapes (I found those in a dusty box, too!) became more important than Bach and Chopin flowing through my fingers. So like every self-absorbed teenager, I tucked in the piano bench and ran off with my friends. (That’s where we leave this scene. Fade forward 15 years.)

We bought a used, upright piano when we were first married, and I took lessons again. My teacher was a sweet Filipino lady with a crisp accent who chided me lovingly as a flubbed my way through fingering drills. That was the same year I became pregnant with my first child. I remember practicing while my belly grew, having to keep scooting the bench further back from the piano and stretching my arms a little farther to reach the keys. The growing baby measured the space between the piano and me. I love that memory.

Then the babies came, and I stopped playing. Music still filled the house, mind you. For over 20 years, our house on Country Hills Road was a mecca for traditional Irish music in southern California. Once a year, we hosted the Southern Californian Tionól, which is a gathering of Irish musicians who commune to play tunes and socialize and debate about God-knows-what. We’d have 60 people in the house for the autumn weekend. I loved these musicians; they were gentlemen all. The post-concert after-parties were mighty, and, with Fezziwigian jollity, the craic ran high. Sometimes a musician sat down at my neglected piano and gave it new life. Our children were raised scurrying between the musicians’ knees and under their fiddles. The house glowed. Like the piano lessons my parents gifted to me, we gifted this to our children.

Myself, I rarely played. Only once a year, at Christmas, I’d trill away at “O Holy Night” for an hour or so. I’d never improve because I started from scratch each year. Invariably, someone would call for me, and I’d leave mid-tune. (That’s where we leave this scene. Fade to the Present.)

This spring, I moved into a three-bedroom condo. Against one wall, I placed the piano I bought over 25 years ago. It needs to be tuned. Nevertheless, I have begun to play again. A dear friend gifted me a battered copy of Bastien’s Piano for Adults Book 1, which led me to purchase a clean copy of Bastien’s Book 2, and I am slowly, ever adagio, remembering: plinking and plunking my way through G7 and E minor chords. My new house is becoming a home.

Cut to a moment from the recent present; this happened just last week. I’m practicing away, and I see written in small type on the bottom of Bastien’s Book 2, page 26, this musical term: rubato. It means: “time is ‘borrowed’ or that some tones are held longer than their actual values while others are curtailed in order to allow more freedom and spontaneity.”

It occurs to me that memory is like this, is it not? Borrowed, held, curtailed, free, spontaneous, not measured as an actual value. So is love, I suppose.

This Christmas Letter is an Ode to the Ghosts of Christmas Past.

To my dear sweet father, who passed away at Christmastime two years ago, who I can still hear singing opera arias and Irish tunes and “O Holy Night.”

To Rick Springfield and Journey and to Bach and Chopin, who crooned and tuned me.

To the musicians who graced our home on Country Hills Road and made it glow.

And to Brian who graduates from UC Irvine this month with a major in Anthropology and a minor in Archeology. He wants to dig. He wants to preserve forgotten pasts and carry them into the present, to transcend memory so that we recollect who we truly are.

This Christmas Letter is an Ode to the Ghosts of Christmas Present.

To my mother, sister, and brothers, who encourage me to unshield my eyes to the brightness that surrounds me.

To my Rose sisters across the globe, who after 30 years continue to apotheosize beauty.

To my faithful friends, who walk by my side through bustling high school hallways, around spritely neighborhood farmer’s markets, and along windy beach trails.

And to Therese who is blossoming in Boston, midway through her studies of Advertising and Communications at Suffolk University. She wears her charisma like an immense flowing robe and sits atop a throne of abundant cheer. She wants to work for a non-profit eventually so that she can attend to the children of Ignorance and Want.

This Christmas Letter is an Ode to the Ghosts of Christmas Yet-to-Be.

To friendships yet to be forged, link by link, and craic yet to run high.

To paths yet to be travelled and stories yet to be penned.

To music yet to be heard, yet to be played, yet to be sung.

And to Ronan who has begun his journey at Cal State Fullerton, majoring in Computer Science. He sees the world differently than I do, as though through a diaphanous veil between the analog and digital worlds. He lifts a resolute finger that teasingly points to the generational bridge between my past and his future.

This Christmas, we wish you a clarity that diffuses the Dickensian fog of memory

so that you may reawaken the gifts your parents gave you.

We wish you a reckoning of your half-lit, half-remembered past to your bright and intentional future.

We wish you rubato: time that is borrowed, held, curtailed, freed, made spontaneous,

and most importantly, unforgotten. 

Merry Christmas 2023 from the McKeagneys