The Gift Of The Gift Of Bûche de Noël
A Christmas on which I realized that my children are making their ways in the world
I’m sitting here by the fire, old Roscoe snoring on his pillow by the tree, some debris of Christmas still scattered around the living room floor. It was a day of plenitude. Though it is true what they say about Christmas losing its magic when your kids stop believing in Santa Claus, I must say I don’t mind everyone waking up at a sane hour on Christmas morning. Our youngest, Nora, is 14, so we all exchanged and opened presents like grown-ups. Then we dressed and head off to church. It was cold this morning, so I wore the raccoon fur ushanka I bought in St. Petersburg, and which it is almost never cold enough to wear here in Louisiana:
The bumper sticker came as a gift from a reader of my blog. Isn’t it great?
We came back home and had some time to appraise our presents before getting started cooking. My big present from the family was a pair of AirPods Pro, from Apple. I never thought about getting anything like that, because Apple headphones don’t fit well in my ears. Well, little did I know that Air Pods Pro is made to conform to the inside of the ear. I tried them on and connected them to my iPhone. The sound of music is magnificent. I’m listening as I type this to Arvo Pärt, which is an extraordinary experience on these headphones. I’ve never owned a pair of headphones as fine as these. Yet I have to admit that my hearing is not as acute as it once was. It is disheartening to know that one will never hear music quite as clearly again. Reconciling oneself to diminishing returns is what it means to get older, I suppose. Still, I am grateful for this unexpected present, which delights me.
A present that wasn’t for me, and that I did not even know was coming, delighted me even more. The image above is of a bûche de Noël, a traditional French Yule log, made of sponge cake rolled around a filling and frosted with buttercream. We had that one with our Christmas dinner, because my daughter Nora made it. She even made the meringue mushrooms that decorate the log, and the sugared rosemary and sugared cranberries. Here’s what it looked like sliced:
Nora is only fourteen. I would struggle at my advanced age of fifty-three to attempt a dessert like that. Not Nora. She is a courageous baker. It thrills me to see her throw herself so fully into baking. Nora takes it quite seriously. She isn’t showy about it, and doesn’t like to talk about it. She just gets in the kitchen and does it. Nora has enjoyed baking for a while now, but at the beginning of the Covid lockdown, and after watching an episode of Chef’s Table featuring the New York-based pastry chef Christina Tosi, Nora the Baker really came alive. Every day for a while she was producing something new and delicious for us to eat, from sourdough bread to cakes and cookies of exceptional quality. Her stuff is so good that people around town pay her to bake for them, and a professional baker has asked her to join her kitchen as an assistant once Covid has passed.
What a joy to watch one’s child discover their passion. My son Lucas, who will turn 17 next month, has always been a hard worker. We moved to Louisiana in the winter of 2011, when Lucas turned eight. One day, my dad got a crew of men together to split firewood. Lucas joined them, and worked so hard for so long that he won the genuine respect of the men. My father, who died in 2015, respected nothing more in a man than his eagerness to work. Lucas stole his heart.
Well, this autumn Lucas got his first job. He works in a restaurant. The owner later told Lucas’s mother that they have been stunned by how hard he works, and how reliable and competent he is. Lucas takes real pride in a job well done. I can see that he is learning the skills necessary to succeed at anything he does, but I think his mother and I are also seeing the birth of a small businessman.
Our oldest, Matthew, is 21, and an undergraduate. He wants to go into museum work one day. His student job has been laboring in the Natural History museum on campus, organizing the work of Ted Parker, an LSU ornithologist who, at the time of his death in 1993, “was widely regarded as one of the great field biologists of the 20th century.”Matt has had over a year of hands-on work with Parker’s notes, papers, and photographs, organizing them for LSU and the scholarly community. He goes into the museum to work even when he doesn’t have to, because he loves the work that much. Matt is not especially passionate about ornithology, but he is passionate for science and the organization of knowledge. I can tell that he takes real pride in making Dr. Parker’s work more accessible to scholars and scientists. He has always had a good mind for how systems work. One day, if he has the opportunity, he is going to be a very fine museum curator, because he loves it, and is really good at it.
So, though the magic of watching my little kids go crazy on Christmas morning for what Santa left is something I do miss, I was surprised today by how Nora’s bûche de Noël made me ponder the present that she and her brothers have given me of late: the gift of seeing my children start to come into their own. It’s not that I’m so happy that their grades are good (though they are), and it’s not that I’m especially grateful that they’re good kids (though they are). I’m lit up like a Christmas tree tonight because these three are finding their passions, and making their own way in the world. Could a father ask for anything more?
I’m going to need to keep this short tonight, because my poor old laptop really is on its last legs, and I haven’t fully set up the replacement I bought in the spring, but haven’t had the heart to use. I’m a creature of habit, and don’t give up things I love so easily. The forest green L.L. Bean cable knit wool sweater my folks gave me for Christmas one year when I was in college had huge holes in the elbows, the one on the right sleeve running all the way up the arm, when my wife finally said, “OK, enough.”
I’m like that with this MacBook Air, which I’ve been working on since 2016. Four years doesn’t seem like a long time to have a computer, but I have made this laptop work hard. I’ve written two books on it, and heaven knows how many words online. The keys for A, S, D, H, and N are worn through. I would keep going on this machine forever, but it’s not going to make it. Tonight it crashed, and took an hour, and multiple attempts, before it finally came back. I don’t like typing on the keyboard on the updated MacBook Air that I bought, and anyway, this old dog still hunts, and has been a good friend to me. I was the kind of weird kid who felt guilty for not playing with certain of my toys, as if I had let them down by getting tired of them. Maybe I’m still a bit like that.
There is nothing to do here this weekend except read books, drink hot tea by day and hot toddies by night, and watch movies with the kids. Bliss. But the shadow of melancholy falls heavily across this holiday season. My mother is not sick, but her pulmonary health is fragile, and I fear that if she catches Covid, she’s a goner. She does not take the precautions someone in her condition should be taking, but I can’t control her. How weird it is to be in the position of lecturing my mother about taking unnecessary risks. Maybe she figures that life is too lonely with the people she loved the most either dead or moved away. Maybe she figures that there’s not much point in living if you can’t really live — or, to be precise, live like you want. Who knows, maybe I would feel the same way at her age, if I were in her condition of isolation. But as long as I have books, I’m okay. I don’t read to escape the world, but rather to enter into it more intensely. With books, I am never bored or lonely. Well, maybe lonely a bit. You know what I mean.
Whatever. I texted Christmas greetings to an old friend from Baton Rouge who is living in Brooklyn, and asked him if he had come home this year, so we could get together somewhere. No, he said, he’s locked down in Brooklyn. “This Christmas is more to be endured than celebrated,” he said. He lost his dad to Covid earlier this year, and had it himself. Terrible.
I need a cheerful seasonal movie that I haven’t already seen more than once. This weekend, I might up and watch The Grand Budapest Hotel for the third time in two years. I love it so much. Four Weddings and a Funeral is not Christmassy, but is festive all the same — but I’ve seen it four or five times. The Apartment has a Christmas element, and is a fabulous Billy Wilder movie … but I’ve seen it several times. I might like to give Fanne & Alexander, the Ingmar Bergman movie, a try. I haven’t seen it since 1990, and recall that it has rich Christmas interiors. But it’s a Bergman film, so it will probably be depressing. Any recommendations, y’all?
I did get a bit of e-mail commenting on my Christmas Eve newsletter:
Couldn't help but tear up reading your stories about Christmases past. The only person left of my parents' generation is my beloved uncle, the husband of Mom's late sister, who will be 90 in February.
When Dad died and I had a chance to look through the house (heavily limited by legal proceedings as you'd imagine from the sad story about Dad's last years) I got a box of old family photos that Mom had taken from her mother's house when Oma died. My younger siblings would never have wanted these things, they were born when I was 21/23 years old, by which time many of these precious people had already died. They never knew them; I did.
I brought the box into the living room yesterday, intending to show my kids all of their extended family, at least on my mom's side, so that they would know where they come from. Looking through that box brought back memories of my childhood, not rich in money, but fabulously wealthy in the things that matter. Oh the Christmases! At least two dozen people crammed into Oma and Opa's modest living room, mingling much closer than guests would be comfortable nowadays, children all over the place - behaving well, because they knew Oma was quick with a fly swatter if they stepped out of line. But the love! It was everywhere, it saturated that house. When I was a child it seemed that every Christmas would be like this forever, but it's gone now, these people are just ghosts in my memory.
Christmases are different these days. I've got no relationship with three of my siblings; they cut off all communication during Dad's difficult last years and replaced it with lawyers and spite and hatred. My other sister lives in Philadelphia, I'm in Vermont; even in an non-Covid year the distance is too great. My sons, who live in northeast Pennsylvania, drove up yesterday in violation of all kinds of government edicts, but it is good to see them. Our governor, the one who tasked schools with interrogating students post-Thanksgiving about their holiday festivities to ferret out disobedient families (a man clearly ignorant of 20th century history) and who warned us all that any Christmas get-together was courting death, well, we didn't invite him. He'd have spoiled the day anyway ;)
I liked the gravestone. I've told my husband I've already got his planned: John never remembers things that I say to him. It's not a faulty memory, it's that he is not listening and I can tell he's not listening. In fact, it's really obvious he's not paying attention, and then he gets annoyed when something happens and he didn't know ahead of time and doesn't believe that I've told him, usually many times. Anyway, one of his favorite lines is "First I've heard of it", so that's what's going on his gravestone.
Oh, a little of advice from me before I go to bed: Order some Birra Nursia, from the little Benedictine Monastery in Norcia, the mountain town where St. Benedict was born in the year 476. It is excellent beer, and it helps the monks a lot. Drinking that big bottle today gladdened my heart, and sent me off to bed for a superlative nap.
