The picture is from last year, but some things recur. The forecast here for the next few days is snow, with warmer temperatures--just below freezing. Then the sun will come back out and the temperature will drop again. Some days, I'd take the cold if it means sun. Other days, I'm okay with the snow (and the hassle of driving in it) for those few degrees of "warmth."
Speaking of trade-offs...last night, I happened to hear the verse of "White Christmas" and think of my mother at the same time. And things I'd known, intellectually, about her life came together in a new way.
My mother always liked White Christmas--the movie and the song. In elementary school I learned a silly version (substitute "pink purple polka dotted" for "white" and you'll get an idea of its intellectual heft). When I sang it in front of her, she had a fit at the travesty against "that lovely song." I assumed that her attachment had to do with the war years and her fondness for Bing Crosby's relaxed "everyman" singing style. And it probably did.
But last night I had a smack-the-forehead moment. The verse starts this way: "The sun is shining, the grass is green." Oklahoma in December often looks like that. Thunder Bay in December hardly ever does. So it makes sense that "on December the 24th," she would be "longing to be up north."
Not that she would have changed her choices. With her mother's blessing (and presumably that of her father, too), she chose to go to graduate school in the U.S., marry an American, live in the U.S., and pursue her mathematics career there.
But in choosing to live far away from her parents, she--well, she chose to live far away from her parents. She traded close involvement in their lives for the professional opportunities that came from leaving the Lakehead. As they aged, more responsibility fell to her, and handling it from 1200 miles away was difficult.
At Christmas, this most sentimental time of year, it's natural that she'd wonder, just a little bit, if she had made the right choices. Even though by 1970, when I was singing the parody of "White Christmas," her mother had been essentially "gone" for 10 years and had died 5 years before. And especially even though my mother rarely, if ever, acknowledged doubt or tolerated indecision.
My mother herself has been "gone" for some ten years. Fourteen years ago, with her support (and that of my father), I moved to a new home to pursue professional opportunties. I never seriously considered living near them. I made a similar decision 5 years ago, when I chose to move here instead of living nearer my father.
As my mother's health failed, I was 800 miles away. In my father's case, I lived 1200 miles away--the same 1200 miles, in fact, that separated my mother and her mother.
Would I change either of those decisions? Not on your life.
But at this most sentimental time of the year--as I recognize that ten years can feel like a split second, as I feel sometimes more emotionally connected to my mother than ever before--I think about the trade-offs.
Was the sunshine worth it? Or would the few extra degrees of warmth have been a better choice? As I said, some things, some questions, recur.
