Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
December 22, 2024 | "Nostalgia and New Beginnings: 2024 Christmas Story"
Returning home for the holidays is a journey filled with nostalgia and unexpected changes. Imagine coming back from college only to find that the house you left feels both familiar and different.
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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Fr Don Wolfe. Living Catholic is a fresh look at issues confronting each of us today. This show deals with living Catholic, what that means for Catholics, as well as the impact on the rest of society. You certainly don't have to be Catholic to enjoy this show. And now your host, Fr Don Wolfe to enjoy this show.
Speaker 2:And now your host, father Don Wolfe, welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Oklahoma City and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. Today, as we come up upon Christmas, it's time for our annual Christmas story. And so here it is. Remember, it's just a story.
Speaker 2:It had been a rough semester. After two years of college, I'd transferred out of state in order to pursue my degree. The engineering school in St Louis had the reputation that was important and the professors to make it worthwhile. I figured I could get what I needed in state the first two years and then make use of the refined offerings there in the Gateway City. But it was tough. Being on my own took on a new level as I made my way there, so far from home. It wasn't like I was away for the first time, but the miles added up for me in ways I hadn't thought of before. There were no relatives close by nobody I could rely on, like when I was at state college and home in an hour's drive. St Louis was a day's drive and as far as someplace new, it could have been on the far side of the moon. As far as I was concerned. Everybody laughed there when I told them that for us, being in St Louis was going back east. But it was that for me, Everyone there was different. The world was different there, which is why it was so great to be back home.
Speaker 2:Finally, for Christmas, I drove in on the night of the 22nd, a Wednesday. The guys I came back with were all anxious to get started, so we piled into the car and left after our tests on Tuesday evening and drove through the night. They pulled into our driveway at about 3 am. When you want to get home, it's what you want to do. Spending the night in the dorm after tests and making a day-long drive beginning in the morning light sounded crazy. We were all too anxious to wait, so we didn't. As they let me off, I fumbled with the key to the back door and went in. It was the same old house with the same smells, but I'd been away all semester, so it was different too.
Speaker 2:When I first left for college and was gone for my first eight days away the longest stretch I'd ever been out of the house before I got back home and every part of the house seemed different. Of course, when you're not there to track, not there to measure the microscopic changes that go on. The sum when you walk in is different. Eight days then, and I noticed now it had been four months. I'd gotten used to being surprised, but it didn't make the differences any less.
Speaker 2:My brother met me as I came in. He'd slept on the couch just so he could. Hey, he said, dad said you should take John's bed. Well, I mean you should go ahead and sleep in your regular bed and John will sleep with me, so go on in the bed's made. It was good to be home again.
Speaker 2:When I left for college, my younger brother, the one closest to me, slept in my bed, the single, where he'd moved out of the big bed where he and my other brother slept. It was a big upgrade. Until I came home. Then we went back to the regular arrangements they slept in their big bed and I in mine, the single.
Speaker 2:After the rush of nonstop studying and finals and the trip back, I shucked off my clothes, lay down and went to sleep immediately. It was the smell of breakfast that woke me up. It was great to be back home. Well, sit down and have something to eat. We had scrambled eggs with some kind of sausage in them. I wasn't really used to that. Well, yeah, I'd had sausage and eggs my whole life, just not fixed together and then put on my plate all at once in one scoop Well, two scoops All part of the new regime there. They tasted pretty good.
Speaker 2:I wasn't complaining, well, except of course I was. I didn't like the change around the house she brought. I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say other than to get used to the new way things worked there. And besides, we were at the table, the boys and dad, and we knew that change was in the air. It was a bigger deal for me than for them. They'd been living there the last four months. This was really the first time I felt it. I guess I was the difference at that moment. Here's some toast with your eggs. It's pumpernickel. I got it at the grocery store on Friday. It's good with eggs because it goes with the sage flavor we put in the sausage we made this year Sage Pumpernickel. What kind of place had the dining room turned into? I thought trying tagliatelle affungi was a big deal when I went with the guys to Luigi's. And now there's some sort of kitchen revolution happening at home.
Speaker 2:Dad had gotten remarried just before I left for school in August. In fact, it was the weekend before I took off for St Louis. They married on Saturday, we helped to move on Sunday and then I left on Monday. Lickety split, everything was done and then I was gone. They'd picked up their new life with her there, getting used to her ways while I was getting used to dorm life on Shepley Drive and learning to navigate the hill.
Speaker 2:Millie wasn't anything like our mother. That's not an accusation. Well, it's not exactly an accusation. Mom had died three years before after a four-year struggle with cancer. All of us were devastated, dad most of all. Later on I'd find out that all of us had walked around numb for the first year and then, as if we were trying to make our way on the bottom of the ocean, weighed down with tons of water on us for all the next year. I'm not sure we were different than any other family trying to mourn and get on in life after the death of a parent, but the pain we had was real for us and we felt it intensely. Get your clothes on. We've got to move the cattle off the wheat pasture at home and then get them over to the hundred-acre field, so we have to put up the electric fence. Today that was Dad. Coming home meant just that I was home and all the rhythms and cycle of being home were in place. It was time to work. You better be home for dinner on time, don't be here at 12, 10 like yesterday. When dinner's ready, it's time to eat.
Speaker 2:Millie could have been Mother Teresa with all of her attributes and insights, and we'd still been on edge. To her credit, she didn't pretend like she was going to come in and fill the shoes our mother wore. She was a lot smarter than that. But that was the problem. We all wanted our mother back. We didn't want anyone else. That wasn't possible. So we wanted the fragile eggshells of what was regular for us to be what we could stand on for just a little while longer.
Speaker 2:Having her step in to clang the cookware and move the furniture of our lives was just one more tough change. To accept. Cookware and move the furniture of our lives was just one more tough change to accept which is another way to say that none of us liked her much and it wasn't her fault. Well, it wasn't all her fault. It was hard to talk about, so we didn't All of the therapeutic things. That should happen, where bright people exchange the curated feelings arising in their souls as they slowly healed from their losses. That didn't much happen with us. Each of us had our coping mechanisms. After all. We did get along with our lives, since the cycle of life doesn't stop for anyone. For all of us, it involved getting busy with the next thing to do and getting through the day, but getting along with things seemed to be the hardest of all for Dad. The rest of us could slough off the changes we had to endure as simply part of life. When isn't there change, no matter how wholesome life is? All we had to do was get used to the new landscape of the future.
Speaker 2:But for him, he had never imagined a life without his wife, and now he had it. He had never imagined a life without his wife, and now he had it. Staring at the new isn't like standing on the abyss. That's what he had to do look into the great void of his life to find what was there. So he got married again.
Speaker 2:That makes it sound like he stumbled for a moment and woke up in a nuptial mass with a new ring. It wasn't by accident. Like most things in life. He had a room full of voices running through his head at the same time. He'd never imagined living alone. And suddenly he was alone. His kids were a concern for him. There were still four of them at home and they needed a mother, especially the last two, who were just seven and eight when mom died. It was only fair to have someone for them, and I'm convinced that he also had simply never figured how he could navigate the world without someone to care for and to be with.
Speaker 2:It's not quite the same as the fear of loneliness. Call it apex marriage. I mean. He'd gotten engaged when he was just out of high school. They dated for a couple of years and then they got married. It had been his entire adult life. Not marriage was as unthinkable as not working or not eating.
Speaker 2:And that's when Millie entered the picture. I never thought until this moment, really, what it must have cost her to enter the picture. She left her house and her rhythms behind to try and live in a new place and take on a new family. Her husband had died some years before. What she knew of life circled around him, no doubt, and now she was circling around us. That couldn't have been much fun for her. I wonder if she had any idea what she was really getting into. I suppose it's a vain question. No one knows what he's getting into about anything. Why should we have expected her to be different?
Speaker 2:As I got up from the table, I asked the obvious question when are we going to put the tree up? There in the corner of the den a couple of the presents were already stacked up. It seemed to be overtime when it came to getting ready for Christmas On the farm. Of course, there are no wreaths on the door, no lights on the eaves or decorations put on the window I mean, who would see them? But it looked like nothing had been done to get ready at all and it was just a couple of days until Christmas, wasn't it time? My brother looked at me for a half second and then went into the room. Millie answered right away we've already got the tree, don't you see it? That's what we're going to do this year. She walked out from the counter and went over to the corner and lifted up a little ceramic figurine. It was an eight-inch triangle-shaped cedar, tree-looking piece, all green with red dots painted on it. See, she said that's the tree. It's already here With a Christmas tree. You got needles that take weeks to get them all vacuumed up. It dries out and you have the smell, plus all the time it takes to get the decorations down from the attic and to put them on and then to take them up again. There's too much to do around here to worry about all those things. We won't have to worry about any of it.
Speaker 2:I went into the bedroom, put my work clothes on. What that means is I put on the jeans and the shirt that had gotten too worn out to wear anywhere else, and since we were going to be out all day long, I put on the long johns I had in the dresser. The only thing to take real care about was our work shoes. They were right there where I'd left them when I'd left the house in August. They fit just right. Like always, getting back to the barns and fields was like putting on a close-fitting glove. It felt a little cold at first, but it was like having a second skin.
Speaker 2:Dad and my brother and I headed out the door to the pickup and then off to the field. We dropped the wire gate and climbed out to load up the steel posts. That was the first step setting the posts along the perimeter. It was going to take a while. The field was a half a mile long and about three quarters of that wide. Dad stayed behind to dig the corner posts while my brother drove the pickup down the line and I dropped the posts at intervals. We'd come by later and drive them into the ground and put the insulators on and then mount the wire.
Speaker 2:All of it was second nature to us. We'd done this every year in seven or eight fields, so there wasn't much planning involved. All we had to do was get busy. My brother was behind the wheel. He drove east, then south and then back west following the line of the fence that we were going to set. We ran out of posts at the southwest corner and drove back to the barn to get the rest we needed. Can you believe that? No Christmas tree. That's weird.
Speaker 2:My brother was the one who had to live with the changes around the house. I was a tourist to the everyday. Yeah, he said it's a little bizarre with the things she wants to do. And then we talked about football and school. My brother had a job with a bank and had just these days off right before Christmas. Like with me, the work around the house never ended, no matter what other things we had to do. You never leave the farm once it gets into your blood.
Speaker 2:At noon we made our way back to the house. We had lasagna for lunch Millie's version was pretty good, I have to say. Dad talked about how we were going to move the cattle the next day, how he wanted us to be sure to get the horses in the lot that evening so they'd be ready to bridle up the next morning. In our house there was never any silence at the table. In fact there was no silence at all anywhere. We talked mostly about work.
Speaker 2:After lunch we got back out to the field, stretched and set the wire, and it had everything going. By four o'clock Dad hooked up the charger to an old car battery and it was clicking out of its rhythmic locks, strong and ready. In reality. Once a cow or two was shocked by getting too close to the wire, they stayed away from it. So it really only had to be strong for the first week or so. After that it was mostly decoration, and besides there were maybe 60 head and they had the entire 100 acres to graze on. They had lots to attend to without worrying about that last green blade under the wire. But of course they were cattle, so you don't depend on them to follow logic very closely, and thus the strong charge at the beginning.
Speaker 2:By 4.30, we were heading back to the barn. Dad drove and my brother and I sat on the tailgate and let the toes of our shoes touch the weed as we went across the field. What are we going to do Christmas Day? Nothing much had been said about the 25th. Normally we were at one uncle's house or another. It wasn't clear what this year would bring. She said we'd just stay at home. Dad said she was tired of cooking and we'd have sandwiches or something. I guess that'll be Christmas this year. I guess that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 2:We pulled into the barn and unloaded what was left of our tools. If you'd been with us all day it would have looked like endless work. We'd strung out more than a mile and a half of fence and had gotten it all done in a couple of hours. But we were used to it. When you work together like we had for a lifetime, there's not much to it other than just getting it done. In fact, it felt good to be together. The last four months had disappeared.
Speaker 2:In an afternoon I was back home. At least this hadn't changed. Get the milk cows up and get started with the chores. We might get through early if we get started now. That was Dad's way of giving us a reward. If we got started early, we'd be back home at about sundown and before it got cold I'll take the old Alice up and put it in the garage. It's supposed to be getting really cold later on this week. It needs to be inside where we don't have to worry about it freezing. Drive the pickup up when you get finished. That's how things were done around our house.
Speaker 2:It was terse and direct, masculine. In the barn we unloaded the last of the tools. My brother then said I'm sorry, let's go get a tree, let's go. I said it was that direct, no discussion or reasoning. We'd both decided the status quo wasn't going to change until we did something. Christmas required a tree a real tree and decorations and something to put presents under and a manger scene next to it. Not having one was not going to do for us, it was easy. Not having one was not going to do for us, it was easy.
Speaker 2:We loaded up an axe and a saw and drove out to the open field. Next to the open grass, next to the field to the east, there were scrub cedars growing there and we found a small one. It's where we'd gone each of the last five or six years. There was nothing to it. In ten minutes we'd cut it down and drug it over to the pickup. It was short work to take it into the barn, square the bottom and then build a stand for it. We brought it into the house with about the same subtlety as if we'd shot a wild boar and carried it in on a spit. It was a triumph, a prize. We set it next to the bookshelf where the ceramic tree was we had misjudged. In the open air the tree looked tiny. When we drug it into the house it took up the whole corner of the room. But that was a small price to pay. At Christmas it seemed. Erring on the side of too much is the right thing to do. Maybe too much is the heart of Christmas itself. Millie wasn't around at that moment. She'd gone into town for groceries and didn't get back until about evening time. By then the tree was there and the girls had begun to put some of the ornaments on it. She came in, stopped for a moment and then went through the den and into the bedroom and that was it.
Speaker 2:The next day was Christmas Eve. We got the cattle moved to the new field, aided by the horses of course. By lunchtime everything was done and the fence was on. We went into town to do a little Christmas shopping. For some of us it was the beginning of taking care of our presents. For the rest, it was mostly a chance to get out of the house for a little while, like normal. That day we opened our presents when my aunt and uncle came over. They'd been regulars on Christmas Eve since my mother had died, so it was good to have them there with us. We stayed up and talked until late and then all of us bundled up and went into town for midnight mass. By the time we got home it was almost two o'clock am, but that was fine. Christmas was just like it should have been.
Speaker 2:Millie never said anything about our Yule rebellion. In fact, she never mentioned it directly at all to us. It wasn't until years later I even began to consider what it might have felt like from her perspective. We certainly imposed our expectations on her and never once gave her a moment's consideration. Our decision-making was more by telepathy than sedition and more by conviction than consideration. We just did what we thought was the right thing. It never occurred to me to imagine there might be another way to see this, and I have no idea what my father had to do in response. Another way to see this, and I have no idea what my father had to do in response. As we found out later, millie had a way of making you pay for your faults, and I have no doubt he paid for ours.
Speaker 2:But on that Christmas Eve we were able to hold on for a moment to a world that was slipping away from us. It wouldn't be many more, and Dad would be gone too, and then everything would slip through our fingers. I hadn't for one moment thought of a Christmas tree and thought that it meant anything at all until it wasn't there, and then, more than anything, it was the only thing I wanted. I suppose it's not too different than all those who've had the chance to listen to the words of the man who grew into the Christ from the infant born in a stable. They didn't know what they wanted until he could fire their imagination about what they were promised and what they could expect.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we just don't know what a gift is, until we have to give it. After all these years I wish I could have known. Maybe I could have given her a gift is until we have to give it After all these years. I wish I could have known. Maybe I could have given her a gift too and left her less cold and embarrassed than that first hard Christmas we had together. Maybe there could have been something for her there under the tree Back in just a moment.
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Speaker 2:The the. Welcome back to our final segment Faith in Verse. We have a poem today called San Diego Morning. Welcome back to our final segment Faith in Verse. We have a poem today called San Diego Morning. It was a San Diego morning as the fresh breeze blew, sun-washed blue skies and heavy dew on the blacktop. Even a few white birds wheeling above the trees highlighted wings like darts of clouds where there is but blank space and open air.
Speaker 2:December here, 62 degrees this morning, like July in Coronado, a breathtaking view, if only, of green mesquite and faded blackjack. Oh sure, the temps will fall all day and the west coast moment will crater and all will return to default. But for these hours this morning, there is another hint hidden here. Today is always more than expected and life is always larger than the calendar. In December, that's San Diego Morning. Thank you, the Thank you. We're coming to the end of the year. I hope that it is a time for all of us to be able to reflect on the goodness of Christmas and its presence in our lives. I hope that in the time to come we can spend some time together and I look forward to having you with us here on Living Catholic.
Speaker 1:Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.