A picture is worth a thousand words. Several years of pictures sing volumes into the spirit of a man. I have more than 40 years of Christmas and Thanksgiving pictures that I rotate on the big screen with Christmas music and this year something hit me.
My Grandpa Lewis smiled big and he meant it. My Dad stays stoic and serious reading something I asked him to look over for me. My mother smiles big too. I know she means it, but truth be told, she is like me, there is a lot in there that no one gets to know. Sue is very happy to be there, wherever there is. Tricia doesn’t smile at all; she is the smile to everyone in the room and in the picture. She is the smile that is always in the room with me.
The thing that I can see clearly, is that there is a difference between a smile and joy.
Every year, my wife has a “Cookie Day” it is like Willy Wonka and the oompa loompas invade my house. I watch as kids who have been here for years and who are starting to decide on careers and school and bigger things come in sit down, and make a snowman out of a candy cane. They make up games and laugh. They drink soda and coffee and eat freshly decorated cookies. They have fractured tacos and eat and just enjoy each other. As they see the camera turn on them, they change in an instant to a moment of silly defiant mockery making faces and acting out what is really in their hearts, joy.
We talk to them, we being Tricia aka Mrs. Lewis or the Cookie lady to some, and each of them has a story.
One story goes like this: My Dad lost his job and hasn’t been working for some time, my mother is pregnant and we aren’t really going to have Christmas this year. Mom and Dad need to use school savings for food and bills. Things are going to work out though and I am going to be a Trauma Surgeon. What the...? I love this girl. She has it all, angst, fears, trials, Smiles and Joy. You don't get that by yourself, it's given to you.
Another is a beautiful young girl that is a little confused about who she is really. But she is for the time being very happy if not a little uncomfortable. She’s older than most of the others, but not really, not on the inside.
There are even some who lost their father tragically when they were very young, and they have survived and fought against the despair that must threaten them every day. And I have never witnessed bigger brighter smiles.
Some of them organize a small contingent and take to the streets, Christmas Caroling. Who Caroles anymore? Angels.
Then the pictures start rolling by on the big screen as Stille Nacht Heil'ge Nacht plays inside and out of my house. A fire burns in the fireplace and I watch as the central theme of Christmas dances in the eyes and the hearts of these very incredible people.
And I hear a voice in me that says “look at the faces.” I am, I respond quietly. “No look at all of the faces!” So I concentrate and watch them one after another after another. They are all smiling or smirking, eating and laughing while pointing.
Then I see it. I see what the voice is trying to get me to see. There is one picture, then another, then another and the same thing in it. The same person and I can almost feel thorns and roots and weeds wrapping themselves around him. He smiles, but only on the outside, I think.
So I keep watching, and listening, and then a little boy with denim shorts and a new baseball glove comes on the screen, his plaid hat askew on his head, and a pacifier in his mouth. That picture is followed by a snap shot of three little boys playing in a box pretending it is a fort that cannot be breached. Next is a baby picture of my youngest in a car seat with his typical smirk and gleam in his eye. And then finally a boy wearing deep blue feety pajamas and the brightest blue eyes you have ever seen, he turned 22 today. Then the voice I love to hear whispers to me “only on the outside.” And all at once I am filled with joy, and I get up from my seat and kiss that smile that is always in the room with me, and the weeds start coming off, even if only on the inside. And I feel like a smile.
