A Christmas to remember?

December 22, 1980

The count down to Christmas continues, the final push in a long series of days that make up the Christmas season, three more precious days of madness before the whole thing concludes with the fat man sleigh bells.

Only I’m not as pressed as the world is, going from the madness of school to this semi-retired stage between semesters when I have time to clean and relax before the madness starts again.

There will be new obligations and new disasters to deal with come the New Year.

For some reason, I keep thinking back to the Christmas I spent in Portland back in 1971, that last gasp in a long criminal road trip before we made our way back to New Jersey to turn myself in and start my new life as a model citizen (ha!)

I guess this is relevant since that was the Christmas John Lennon released “Happy Christmas,” and I was caught up with his Imagine album ( I still can’t believe he’s dead, and still feel as if I lost a member of my family when he died.)

My daughter, Ruby, loved that album, even though she was not even a year old. She rolled around the big room in our apartment in her walker, rushing to the radio whenever one of Lennon’s songs came on – as she also did for Paul McCartney for songs from “Ram.”

It was a time when Louise and I had to make up our minds about the future. Portland had not been the nirvana we’d hoped. Mike and Marie – scared about the potential that the FBI might finally catch up with them – vanished around Halloween, leaving us with no natural allies.

The Lewis family with whom we’d developed some kind of unreasonable feud had moved out of our hair to a new apartment in a remote part of town.

I remember the huge Christmas tree we had acquired and how it barely fit in the main room despite the high ceiling. I remember Louise cooking a turkey for our dinner and inviting our few remaining friends to come share it with us on Christmas Day.

Louise even invited her secret lover – with whom she had cheated on me – who told her then that he was moving back to Idaho, although at the time I didn’t yet suspect anything between them and wondered why she was so upset when he told her he had to go. Being a blind as I was, I merely thought him as a good friend.

It was a mystery seeing her cry like she did under the glittering branches of that huge tree, and this man trying to give her comfort, and me being too stupid to understand what exactly transpired.

I remember feeling a strange sense of relief that Christmas, but we knew the quiet spell could not last, and were already discussing our return to the East. But later, I knew Louise had other plans other than just the trip, and what she wanted back east had nothing to do with me.

In 1971, I had nothing to hold me in Portland, not even a job – although I had worked a number of jobs our first time there, including temporary work through Manpower, and then several other jobs in New York while waiting for Ruby to be born.

Part of the reason for leaving New York was how dangerous it had become. Hank moved out before we left because he’d been mugged too many times and feared he might get killed if it continued. Louise feared for our safety, too.

But jobless in Portland was little better, and part of my longing to go back was to find a job, although I still hadn’t then made up my mind to settle my legal troubles.

It was also risky to remain because I had lost my wallet and my phony ID, and so risked getting stopped by the police and hauled back East to justice as a wanted felon.

By the time we did get back, everything fell apart, and by Christmas 1972, I was alone again.

I kept thinking of our previous trip through Portland in August 1970 when Louise was still pregnant and we hoped Hank – living in New York at the time – would help us, and how we made our way east, only to long for Portland again, and once in Portland, longed for New York again – an endless cycle of coming and going Louise continues since the last I heard of her she had taken Ruby for yet another trip to Portland.

Now, almost decade later, I still feel the loss, the lingering sense of the unresolved, of something should have done and did not, and may never get to do, thinking about that Christmas 1971 as if it had been my last chance