Our own private Idaho

A year ago at this time, I was preparing for a lengthy train ride from Seattle to Oxnard, California, where I was to spend Christmas.  My brother and his wife had recently purchased a fairly large boat that they had moored at the harbor in Oxnard, and most of the family was converging.  My brother and his immediate family stayed on the boat, and the rest of us settled into near-by accommodations.

The weather was warm; we took the boat out to the Channel Islands; we enjoyed each other's company.  It was hardly a traditional family Christmas, but it was an enjoyable family gathering.

This year is different.  Sunday, I fly from Seattle to Sun Valley, Idaho.  Not to ski (sigh), but to launch myself on a two to three hour drive (weather permitting) north to Challis, Idaho -- a small town in the middle of nowhere.  And not even to Challis, but to a house located about twenty miles up a small road from Challis, adjacent to a National Forest.  Here, in isolated splendor, I will find enthroned my sister, sharing the house with her friend Andy.

Snow is predicted all the way from Sun Valley to Challis; highs will be in the 20s and lows near zero.  I have almost definitely decided to spend Sunday night near the airport, and set out on the drive to Challis first thing Monday morning.  The Idaho Highway Department  warns of herds of deer on the highway north; my sister herself says that animals on the highway are especially dangerous at night, and that her son managed to run into an elk some time ago while night driving.

I'm adventuresome, but not a total idiot.

So, for a lot of fuss and bother, not to mention expense, I'll end up spending only Christmas Day itself, as a complete day, at my sister's house, although I'll be there most of Monday, the 24th, as well.  But we will be a tiny gathering, not the usual gathering of the clan that I'm used to at Christmas.

Until my mother died in 2003, virtually every Christmas saw all my family together, except for times when it was absolutely impossible for someone to attend.  She never played the guilt card to command our presence; she simply had a knack for causing us to want to be with her and with each other.  It helped that most of us were still either single or had significant others who were happy to join in our family celebrations.

Since then, it's been different.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

But my mother's absence isn't the whole story.  My brother and sister have each had children, and some of those children have had children.  Families like to devise their own rituals, not rely slavishly on the rituals of their own childhood.  Sometimes we can still all get together, as we did last year; more frequently, only some of us can get together.  And this year we are more fragmented than usual.

My brother and his wife live in the Los Angles area, and want to be with their daughter and granddaughter, who in turn have ties in the L.A. area with whom they want to share Christmas.  My eldest nephew is married and in San Francisco; his wife's family in the Bay Area, like ours, has strong family traditions.  My second oldest nephew and his daughter are in Thailand; they have come back for visits twice already this year, in addition to last Christmas.

It's all understandable; it isn't really tragic (Christmas with my sister in a rural winter wonderland is hardly something to be sneezed at). But for those of us who find certain types of change unsettling, it feels a bit sad.

No matter how old you are -- but especially when you're young -- you subconsciously assume at any given time that, with minor adjustments, the future will be exactly like the present.  Everyone will stay the same age.  Everyone will continue to have the same interests.  Ability and willingness to join together in the same family unit we enjoyed as teenagers will not change.

But of course things do change.  Not always for the worst; often for the better.  But for those of us who were very happy in our childhood, change always seems suspect.  As Lord Marchmain's mistress noted in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited:

“Sebastian is in love with his own childhood. That will make him very unhappy.

That's me.  But not "very unhappy."  Just wistful. And I try to remember that someday, the year I got caught in the snow storm on my way to Challis will also be part of "the good old days."