Martha Thurston
Christmas traditions exist in so many different ways and vary from family to family. Over the years, I watched as my family’s Christmas traditions merged with others and soon morphed into something very different from where they began.
This year, despite attempting to refabricate some traditions from my sons’ childhood, our Christmas completely derailed from the tracks. In its place, we are learning that Christmas is more about family than traditions. Traditions are those things that families do together. They are not a hard and fast rule. It’s all about the memories, not necessarily the activities.
On December 16th- the last day of school before winter break- our school has a school wide sing-a-long. It was the first school activity that my grandson was in, and I convinced his father to have mom come there for their switch off for the weekend. I had to work a little later, mom would get to see her son perform, I would get to say goodbye to both of my grandchildren, and my son would leave me with the Suburban to drive home while he would take the motorcycle for the quick drive back. It seemed like the perfect plan until my Assistant Principal came running down the hall to tell me that there was an urgent call on Line 3 for me. Our world changed in an instant.
A semi-truck turned left in front of my son and his motorcycle slammed into the back end trailer of the truck. He tried everything that he could to avoid a collision, even laying the bike down and trying to skid under the trailer, but at the last moment, the bike jumped up and he slammed head and chest into the metal docking bar of the truck. His grandfather’s bike was totaled. He was unconscious.
He survived the impact. We are not sure how. We know that God must have had him in His hand. People began to pray almost immediately, including the superintendent of our school district who stopped his meeting to pray. He ended up with a concussion that has caused him to lose short term memory (not remembering the next day the events of the day before). He has a fractured rib, chest bruising, and a collapsed lung. He has a long road of recovery before him as there are still problems being found that weren’t evident right away because he was unconscious and unable to tell them. He has nerve damage that has caused decreased sensitivity from mid-chest down. He still has no use of his right hand which doesn’t surprise me considering that the right side of the handlebars were completely gone.
We had planned to have his children here for Christmas Eve, but he was in so much pain that he would cry because he couldn’t interact with them, so they went to mom’s house. Their Christmas presents are here waiting for their return, including Santa’s gifts. Cookies are still waiting to be made. Candies and goodies that I planned to make with them are still sitting waiting to be made. Will we make them? I doubt it. Cookies may get made in February or March. We will munch on the goodies (candy covered cookies and pretzels) when they do come back to spend time with their dad. Traditions are not set in stone. They are merely the outlet we use to create memories that we treasure for years to come.
