eThoughts : Letters to the Family

Part of the series Letters to the Family™ (© 2006), a division of Book-In-A-Drawer Publications.™

My mother, brother, sister, and I didn’t much get together except on holidays or birthdays. We are all independent souls, yet all of us like to truly belong—to be a part of something we could call family, even if we didn’t get together regularly. But Christmas was different, we made the effort and we let our hair down. There were never any fights and there was always friendly bantering and friendly barbs—we do like to make fun of each other.

I don’t know how it began, but we all seemed to have our places in mom’s house, and we stuck to those places throughout the years. And I don’t know how it began, but somewhere along the line we took up throwing Christmas wrap at each other—storing and waiting until some luckless soul was not paying attention. My children and Janis’ child took up the tradition as well (Tom does not have children)—gleefully embracing going wild inside the house and clobbering their elders with wadded paper.

So here we were on our annual occasion and we traded gifts, we ate like pigs, we threw paper and barbs, and we thoroughly enjoyed enjoying. As independent as we are, we also delight in being mischievous and we love to see others enjoy.

At some point during this particular Christmas, we began talking about dad and his ways. He had passed away more than twenty-four years earlier and we had not much discussed him around each other, except in passing and usually with our own bias. Of course dad would have been four different people had a sketch artist or personality psychologist put him together from our descriptions. In fact, it became clear to me that we all had different ideas about who we all were, who we are, and who we would likely be. And we all believed we were right. But about dad, we could probably agree that solitude was one thing he most craved, except he also delighted in being mischievous. If you put him around small animals or small children (ones he could play with and go his own way) or if he did something that no one could figure out how he did it, his eyes would light up like God was beaming through. As I recall, on this particular occasion we learned from mom something we had not known about dad during his military years. In fact, in sharing our individual perspectives this particular Christmas, I like to think we all added a piece of humanity to a soul who was in desperate need of some human recognition—even if he now lived on only in us.

I wrote the letter because our opinions about each other don’t really matter—what matters I think, is our granting and respecting each other’s humanity. That is hard, especially when all of us learn to criticize ourselves and each other. When such criticism rides point, few will continue to listen. When we no longer listen, we sever consideration. And when we sever consideration, we isolate ourselves.

Mom is now more than four years gone and my siblings and I no longer get together on Christmas. But we talk, more than we used to, which wasn’t much to begin with, but it is still an improvement. Criticism is still lurking beneath the surface, but it’s not the firm ground it once was—at least I think. I know for me that there is nothing my brother or sister could do that would cause me to denounce my connection with them. We’re an odd lot for sure, but we’re Gibbs and Gilberts and those people who are our ancestors were not stupid or weak people. We have that and that’s a much bigger gift than the weaknesses we all share. It took some learning to figure that out—it can be tough to see who’s who at the costume ball—but it was a worthwhile learning. Somehow I think mom and dad would both smile at that, and share a moment of contentment and a sense that living and loving and being exposed were not so bad after all.

December 27, 1994

Dear Mom, Tom, and Janis:

Well, Christmas is done, the wheels have had another turn, and gifts and memories are the realities we have once again. The gifts are good—some are around for years to enjoy and to remind us. Others are soon taken over by entropy of the physical or mental kind. But the memories of the heart, where such things are less subject to the laws of entropy, seem to always remain.

There are the memories of Mom in the kitchen, at the table, and in her chair, of Tom in the kitchen, at the table, and on his couch, of Janis in the kitchen, at the table, and in her chair, and so on and so on.

There are the memories of opening gifts, making fun, remembering other Christmas days, throwing papers at the unwary—there are many memories.

We all look older, and somehow not. We all look wiser, and somehow not. We all have our opinions of each other—based solidly on our opinions of each other. And we are both right and wrong, I suppose, in our little creations of each other.

It has been a lot of years now, and not so many. And there have been a lot of faces that have come and gone, and yet, not so many.

And on this Christmas, as on others, and as another New Year approaches, I am reminded of a face that is missing, and yet not, from our gathering. This year, as in others, I heard another story that I did not know, another perspective that I had not seen, in the life of a father, a husband, a man—someone who I suspect would rather have had a few more playfully mischievous moments as memories than some of the memories that stalked him, whether created by him or foisted upon him.

And so it is for all of us in one way or another. We all have a collage of events to be interpreted and integrated. We all have joys and sorrows, successes and failures that stalk us, whether created by us or foisted upon us. We all have our memories of others and memories of ourselves born sometimes on holidays and in family gatherings—memories of each other that seem to have a life of their own, even if some of us are not here to share in them.

Well, to you Mom, and Tom, and to you Janis, to whomever you think I am and to whomever I think you are, and to Dad, who despite being gone for almost twenty-five years, is still being freshly created, interpreted, and integrated, here’s to us all—the Gibbs and the Gilberts in us, and not in us. Thanks for this Christmas and all the others. May we all have a beautiful and peaceful New Year.

And most of all—here’s to a few more playfully mischievous moments as memories…

Love, Travis