It was Christmas morning 1962 in Dayton, Ohio. Despite the foot or two of snow visible through the picture window, inside was warm and comfortable. More importantly, the tree was packed with presents as Santa had come the night before (he really did, I saw him with my own eyes!).
Like any 5-year-old who, the night before, had been hiding behind the couch and literally saw Santa stuff presents under a tree already teeming with presents, I was beyond excited. But there was something more adding to my anticipation… whispers I had been hearing about something special for me… something I was really going to like!
Mom and Dad began handing out presents. They always started with the gifts from Santa and proceeded from oldest to youngest. Being the youngest boy and only 5, this was an agonizingly slow process. I watched as each person was handed something and immediately began to tear open their present. Finally! It was my turn and Mom handed me my gift from Santa! I ripped open the paper only to find a pair of bright red long johns that, with my glow-in-the-dark orange hair, made me look like a cartoon elf. I wasn’t at all amused but I accepted the “Santa’s little helper” jokes from my brothers good naturedly.
Now it was time to get to the meat of the present opening. I was gleefully bouncing on my knees with excitement. I was handed my first present; it was a tiny box wrapped in blue paper. I didn’t know what to expect but I had noticed there were a lot of tiny boxes under the tree so I began shredding the wrapping paper. I got my first Matchbox car, a jeep! I had never seen anything so perfect and my imagination was already in overdrive! Oh, the adventures I would have! And then I was handed another one and another and a set of 4 and another one and then a carrying case to hold them all. The only thing missing were popsicle sticks with which to create some roads and my Lego’s for constructing a garage!
My mind was spinning with the possibilities. I wanted to go play so badly! Not wanting to be rude, I looked up to see my second oldest brother Don standing over me beaming with his obvious delight at buying me the best Christmas presents EVER and I asked “Is that all?”
And that’s when everything went south. Don began yelling at me and calling me “ungrateful” and “a spoiled brat” and, well, other names I can’t print here. For a brief moment I was confused and then I realized he didn’t understand what I was asking, I was asking if I had opened everything else because, well, I wanted to go play with what he bought me. Something inside of me triggered and I decided not to explain myself. He was viciously angry and I didn’t want to make things worse, which I was sure I would somehow do.
A year later, Mom and “Dad” divorced and we moved to a new neighborhood. I quickly made friends with boys my age who, happily, had their own collection of matchbox cars! Man, the roads we made in the dirt! The tunnels we dug and the popsicle stick bridges we made!
It didn’t take Mom long to remarry and my new “Dad” was pretty cool. He owned a house up in Fairborn, OH and, while living there, I learned to hunt rabbits (which mom cooked!), to swim on top AND underwater and I had my first paper route. That was the 1st and 2nd grade!
I don’t remember when my matchbox cars got put away. In 1964 we moved to Jacksboro, Tennessee and between shooting muskrats for a nickel, hiking up to Eagles Bluff and diving to the depths of Maddie Hollar and sneaking into caves, I can’t recall playing with those little cars but I do remember guarding them with my life!
There were many moves after Tennessee. When you’re a military brat, moving becomes a way of life. For each move we had to pack our “personal box” which contained the things we valued most and those matchbox cars, a few dozen baseball cards which included a signed Hammerin Hank Aaron card which I got at my first Cincinnati Reds baseball game and my beloved little brown teddy bear, Pookie. Those were my most prized possessions and always what I packed first.
By 1974 I had chosen to join the Army. Five days after my 17th birthday I would find myself in basic training. Between my “swearing in” ceremony, where I took an oath to the constitution and my departure date, I had 3 days to say goodbye.
Before you knew it, all my training was complete and I was getting shipped overseas. I was both excited and scared. I was excited because I knew I was doing the right thing but scared because I also knew I may not come home. They always give you leave before sending you off to war and I had two weeks to spend with my friends and family. On the last weekend my family had planned a cookout and all my brothers, sisters-in-law, nephews and nieces were coming. It was quite the to-do!
As we all sat down to eat some steak, ribs, burgers, hotdogs and everything that goes with them, Don made another nasty comment about my being spoiled. I ignored him. After we all had eaten, my Dad and all my brothers were standing around and Dad handed me a $20 bill so I could buy things like a pillow once I was “in country” (you can’t take those things with you) and Don followed that act of kindness and love with another snide comment. I briefly contemplated addressing the issue but this was a happy time and I really didn’t want to get drug into some drama and make discord everyone's last memory.
Between 1974 and 1997, Don had made many other snide remarks about my being spoiled or my being ungrateful. I never responded to any of them. But what really got me was when I returned from Colorado in 1982. Don had been tasked with cleaning out the spare room and he had taken the cardboard boxes containing all my stuff and put them in the crawl space under the house. When I retrieved my stuff, all of my old baseball cards, the photos from my days in the Army were covered in mold, Pookie had rotted and my beloved matchbox cars rusted! I was heartbroken.
It was between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1997 and my dad, oldest brother Harry, Don and I were all gathered around the dining room table playing a card game quite popular in the military called Pinochle. Dad and Harry were joking about my run of good luck and Don, again, brought up that episode from 35 years earlier with a malicious comment about my being spoiled. Again, I had the opportunity to address the issue but I didn’t. I saw no benefit to engaging him.
The last time I saw Don was in 2014. While we talked on the phone a few times a year, we’d not seen each other in nearly 15 years and during that time he’d lost one eye to cancer and was currently struggling with an aggressive form of lung cancer. I had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and was given just a few years to live. In the short time we had together, past wounds seemed unimportant. Don passed just a few months after our last visit together.
No, I never did lift the pain he’d carried all those years. The question is why?
A few months after his passing, one of our brothers told me about how that episode at Christmas in 1962 had bothered Don till the day he died. I listened quietly but I offered no explanation to him either.
Truthfully, while I never offered an explanation to Don, I did wrestle with whether or not Don deserved an explanation and with my not giving him one. My experience is that, whether family or stranger, once someone labels you and starts calling you names, they’re incapable of listening to you and any words you say will fall on deaf ears or worse, be twisted into something you never meant. Still, there were sufficient opportunities to mend an old wound that I didn’t take and that did bump up against my personal values.
Recently, the members of a men’s group I belong to had “Unfinished Conversations” as our weekly topic. We each told our own stories; I told this one and I was taken to task for it. Rightfully so. Truthfully, Don had a violent temper that often led to physical confrontations. As a kid he was my bully and I can’t count the beatings I endured at his hands. He became the person I dreaded seeing most. Even as adults when he, his wife and kids would come to my house, I always dreaded his visits. However, he was family despite who he was, his wife and kids were still important to me so in order to keep the peace, I put on a happy face, set some boundaries with everyone and endured.
Honestly though, those are excuses and they’re excuses because I let his actions influence who I am… to take away the better part of me and I struggle with that. Today, I do wish I had brought up the conversation and taken that pain away from him. It would have been easy.
I also realized there’s one other conversation I need to have and maybe someday I will be given that chance. Unfortunately, you can’t have a conversation until the other person is ready and they can’t have a conversation they don't know they need and once I’m gone they'll be unable to have... such are the lessons of the passage of time.