Now that I’m in PA school, I sit at my desk and study. A lot. I also sit there and daydream and waste time and generally do anything but study. I recently hung this picture near my desk. It means I get to look at it quite a bit. I think I was 24 in that picture. If it’s from the Christmas I’m thinking of, I missed Christmas that year because of my job. I was a flight attendant with a crazy schedule who just wanted to be at home with her family. I worked a two-day trip on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to Tampa. The pilots took us all out to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner on Christmas Eve. Even though we were stuffed with dinner, they insisted we get cheesecake to go, and they paid for the whole crew. It was a bright spot in a miserable trip. I woke up Christmas morning, ate cheesecake for breakfast in my hotel bed, and cried. I couldn’t believe I was spending Christmas alone.
Christmas. Nannie’s favorite holiday. Wait, that’s not right. Her favorite day. Ever. She lived to make Christmas magical. She had 13 grandchildren, yet each of us felt like her favorite. She knew how much I loved her Christmas decorations, so she made sure to have the tree up before Thanksgiving Day. Every year she would say, “I went ahead and got the tree up because I know Christen likes it up before Thanksgiving.” She said it like this was the first year she decided to do it. But it was every year. The recognition and feeling so known in such a seemingly odd way sticks with me.
It wasn’t just the presents either. It was being 5 years old and sleeping 4 deep on hideabeds with my cousins while bells and hoofs rattled the roof. It was the whispers about Santa. The joy of waking up Nannie and Granddaddy before sunrise because we just knew Santa had come. It was being made to wait in the hallway for what felt like hours while the parents huddled in the living room to catch us on video in all of our bedhead glory. It was sitting on the back porch and swinging with her as she asked if we got everything we asked for. It was the big lunch or dinner and then cramming 20+ people in the living room to open presents. Sure, the presents were great, but the joy of watching Nannie beam over each grandchild’s happy face was so much better. She wasn’t effusive. When you said “thank you,” she would just sweetly dip her head as if to say “you’re welcome.” Magic. The day was magic.
That Christmas of the cheesecake and tears in Tampa, I knew I only had the 26th off. I got back to Houston really late on the 25th and drove 4 1/2 hours to my grandparents’. And you know what? Christmas at Nannie and Granddaddy’s House was magically on the 26th that year. They waited for me. She insisted they wait on me.
My sweet, precious Nannie’s mind was stolen away by dementia. One of the last things I had a chance to tell her when she was still making memories was that I was going back to school. I told her about quitting my landman job and going to UT Tyler to finish some prerequisites. She and my Granddaddy were so supportive. Over the next couple of years, unfortunately she didn’t remember what I was doing. Despite the illness taking her memories, she retained so much of who she was. When I would visit, I always told her about school, and I got to share the exciting news that I was accepted to PA school. Even when I knew she didn’t remember what I was up to, she would dip her sweet little head and say, “very good.”
It’s the words that I hear in my head.
She was quiet and steady and a women fully devoted to God and her family. I hope to be her one day, and I think I know what she would say.
“Very good.”
