Loading up the car with gifts, luggage and dogs, we would hit the road on Dec. 24 for a 200-mile drive from Maine to my mother-in-law’s house in southeastern Massachusetts, or, in her later years, to her in-law apartment in Rhode Island.
After spending Christmas Eve there, we’d hop into the car on Christmas morning for a 90-minute trip to my parents’ home in central Massachusetts, where we’d spend the night. We'd meet friends for brunch on the 26th. Often, we’d then head back to pick up my mother-in-law Georgiana, who returned to Maine with us.
A week or two later, we took to the road again to bring Georgie back home. Or we would drive 100 miles to Portsmouth, N.H., where we sometimes handed her over to in-laws who drove Georgie the rest of the way back to Massachusetts or Rhode Island.
I remember how, in those days, Liz and I used to speak longingly of what it would be like to have a relaxing Christmas at home, minus the hustle-bustle of hauling seemingly everyone and everything across much of New England over the course of three days or more. It’s not that we didn’t want to spend time with our parents. Quite the opposite. Yet getting there and back became more problematic with each passing year, as our own aging made these long excursions less appealing.
Then, my father died in 2003. Georgie passed away in 2009. And my mother Rita died the following year.
Now, at long last, Liz and I spend the holidays quietly, at home in Maine. We do enjoy the tranquility. But how I wish I could make that maddening, tiresome, inconvenient trek to southern New England one more time, to spend another Christmas with parents whose absence is especially painful when the holidays roll around.
I wouldn't even grumble. Not for a second.
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