Merry Christmas

He stood at the door, the long silk tie neatly knotted at his neck felt formal, out of place; made him feel a little like running away. He exhaled the breath he had been holding, moved the wrapped gift from his right hand to his left, and pushed the doorbell.

He had not called on her as often as he knew he could have, visiting less and less over the last few years. He had had the time. He hadn’t had the courage. She opened the door, and smiling, she greeted him with a slight nod.

Looking into her eyes, he bowed at the waist, remembering this used to amuse her. As he did so, his tie oddly dangled as gravity worked its magic making it appear that he was somehow tethered to the ground.

He noticed the that the corners of her mouth lifted as she bent her elbow, her hand coming up reflexively to rest on his outstretched palm. He kissed her hand lightly and stood up straight. She appeared a bit shy, maybe blushing a little. She glanced around behind her, then invited him in.

He followed her, distantly registering that the walls she led him through were the same. They looked as if time had not just stood still, but had been thrown into reverse; this space had not been touched by the present. He hadn’t just stepped over a threshold, he had been transported into a time capsule.

She slid the familiar heavy wooden double doors open. The room he entered in her wake was what one might have called “nicely appointed” a couple of centuries ago. Damask drapes in a soft yellow, the pale blue tufted velvet chair, the crease-lines of the roughed-up leather love seat. Ceramic and brass knick-knacks scattered over the mantle like kids playing freeze tag in the park across the street, the blackened brick of the cold fireplace fenced off by the sooty mesh screen.

There, to the right over the mantel, hung the sketch of an angel in a frame of flaking gold leaf paint. She appeared to be tracking the progress of the anniversary clock below, its round weights rotating back and forth; the gold hands untarnished under the glass dome relentlessly marked the passing of time on its face.

It was eons since he was that young man meeting her eyes with promises of forever, her eyes making those same promises. Eons ago, their beginnings. This scrap of then – this scrap of them – was buried in his heart.

He turned back from the mantel to find her sitting on the velvet chair, absently pulling the green and red ribbon from the bright holiday wrappings on the gift he brought. He and their granddaughter spent an afternoon “making something nice for Gramma.” He wanted to give her something they made together, made with their hands, something made with love. He wanted to give her a piece of his present, something to hold her focus, if only for a moment.

She lifted it up out of the box. The crystals of the ornament in her hand spun magic of the sunlight coming through the southern facing window. The walls and ceiling transformed into an enormous palette of dancing colored prisms. She was mesmerized.

“Merry Christmas. I…”

He spoke the words softly but too slowly, and they fell into the abyss and were swallowed up by the room itself. The sentiment he meant to express hung unfinished in that space, in that air between them. Had her eyes flickered some bit of recognition? Had she started at his voice?

Probably wishful thinking; just his imagination. After all, she had not turned to face him; and now, he knew, she was somewhere else, somewhere, but not here in this room with him.

The gift he brought, created with love and wrapped in hope, his now, was filled with quiet despair at the knowledge she had once again slipped away.

His gaze was drawn back to the mantle, to the angel, his angel, where she hung like the star over some Bethlehem stable, keeping watch over the clock turning below. The clock and the angel melded into one image in his mind, inseparable in that space.

In reality, he knew they were separate; that her now and his now were not the same. He had moved forward, she had not. She moved in her own time, on her own journey – through darkness, and light, and darkness again.