If only in my dreams...

25 DEC 2004

It was required for me to go to work that day. On every holiday I would email my address book, "Happy/Merry (insert paid holiday here). We work so you don't have to."

The Lieutenant had to fly that morning so he made me promise I wouldn’t open presents without him. I waited patiently for his return. We distributed presents to the company and we went back to our Christmas tree and opened presents. Santa (Jeremy) brought me a robe. A purple robe that I wear all the time.

Jeremy and I went to dinner in the Dining Facility. They had turkey, cranberry sauce, ham, breaded shrimp, steak, potatoes, rice, steamed vegetables and gravy. We got our plates of gluttony and set them on the table. We walked passed buckets filled with ice and bottles sparkling apple cider with a real cork. Each of us grabbed one. We also noticed tables of pie.

Apple pie, cherry pie, pumpkin, mince meat, pecan, the list continues. What better to go on pie than whipped cream? At each table there was a can of whipped cream. The kind you shake and it makes the cool noise when you press the nozzle at an angle. The kind you always sprayed into your mouth while your parents weren't looking. Did our eyes deceive us? Real whipped cream?

There was one Facility worker that was in charge of replenishing the empty cans with full ones. Jeremy and I had two cans between us. There was more whipped cream on our pie then there was pie. That was the first bit of whipped cream that I consumed since Thanksgiving the year prior.

I awaited my turn to call my mother and father.

I called my father first. I was in our company phone booth for at least 20 minutes fighting all the other soldiers that were calling their families and waiting for a phone line to the United States. When someone picks up the line on the other end that is your signal to close the phone booth door and start the 15 minute time limit. I sang a song for my father:

I'll be home for Christmas. You can count on me.
Please have snow and mistletoe and presents on the tree.
Christmas Eve will find me where the love lights gleam.
I'll be home for Christmas. If only in my dreams.

After my father wiped the tears from his eyes he wished me a Merry Christmas.

Repeat scenario for my mother. Only while I was singing to her, I cried. I told her I wished I could be home for Christmas but it just wasn’t in the cards. She understood.

I was home for Christmas in my dreams.

I was six years old again. Coming upstairs from my room and seeing my Christmas presents wrapped in the paper I chose out, The Flintstones with a blue background. I remember seeing the rainbow quilt that my mother made at my grandma's house so we thought Santa brought them to us. I was so excited to get a new quilt that I wrapped myself in it. I remember nothing else from that Christmas but the wrapping paper and the quilt.

Abruptly, I awoke snuggled up to the rainbow quilt.