all you wanted

"I didn't know that it was so cold and you needed someone to show you the way."

There once was a little girl. And I do mean little. Although she was nearly sixteen years old, she was barely five feet tall and didn't even weigh a hundred pounds. She was a quiet girl, thoughtful, intelligent and full of wit. She lived in an old, creaky house out in the country with her mother, her father, and her baby brother.

This house was old. And creaky. It was built before modern luxuries like electricity and indoor plumbing were commonplace this far out in the country. So the after-the-fact wiring was shoddy and the plumbing was loud.

One cold, windy winter the day, the little girl was at home with her baby brother and the lights went out. Inexplicably taking the radiator with it. The little girl knew that the house would be freezing in a few hours (thank goodness for weather proofing). She needed to get a fire going in the large fireplaces that adorned nearly every room in the old, creaky house. The little girl put her baby brother in his quilted outerwear, put him down in his crib, and grabbed her father's big axe and wood splitter.

About two hundred feet from the back door of the old, creaky house were stacks of large wood. That would needed to be chopped before it could be burnt. So the little girl set to it. She chopped and chopped, until her little body was exhausted. She decided to sit down for just a moment. The little girl sat on the large tree stump she had been using as a chopping base. She rested her head back onto the high wooden fence the wood was stacked up against. And as one might expect dozed off right there in a matter of seconds.

The little girl sat there asleep. Her dreams slowly turned from trudging in stacks of wood across a snowy field to sitting on the sand beside a beach with the sun warming her back. But her beach dream was interrupted. There was suddenly a boy there, maybe five years old. A boy whose face looked so familiar though she couldn't quite place where she knew him. And he grabbed her hand and began pulling her away from the sun. His hand was so cold.

The little girl grudgingly began to stir on her tree stump as the boy in her dreams pulled her farther away from that warm beach sun. She woke with the sudden realization of how cold she was. Her fingers and toes were numb. And when she tried to get up, her whole body ached of cold. The little girl clumsily grabbed as many pieces of wood as her nearly useless hands could maneuver. The walk to the house was torturous but she finally made it.

As the time went on, her baby brother grew. And as the time went on, a sense of deja vu would sweep over the little girl when she looked at his little aging face. Tragedy struck when he was five, and her brother died in a car accident. As the little girl, now twenty years old but still just as small as before, looked into the little coffin her brother lay in at his funeral she could not believe her eyes. She suddenly realized that there lay the boy from all those years ago that dragged her back to life in her dream.

"So I took your hand and we figured out that when the tide comes I'd take you away."

roses

"Cause with my family, we know where home is. So instead of bringing flowers, we the roses."

There they were. Betsy, Darlene, and Little Ann. Betsy was the oldest. And she had always been the busiest. Today she was in her usual pattern of directing then doing. She would literally go tell you to stir the cake batter and then 30 seconds later come take the bowl right out of your hand and stir it herself.

Darlene was the middle child yet somehow had managed to be the star of the family. She was always certain to be the center of attention. Today she was talking endlessly about the tiff she'd had at the grocery store last week with one of the stock boys. And as usual was busy making herself look busy, but not really doing much.

Little Ann was the youngest, hence the "Little". She was a quiet, gentle soul. She never complained and always smiled, an amazing feat with these sisters. Today she was vigorously peeling potatoes and patiently nodding to Darlene's long-winded tale.

My aunts. My dad's sisters. He had been the oldest of all, and he often talked about how he had helped raise them all after their father died. Dad was only 15 years old. Me and Dad were kind of alike in that sense. Except my mom left us when I was 13. Today he sat in the living room with the aunts' husbands, watching some predictable old movie. Probably Shaft or something Pam Grier related.

And there were more. There were cousins and baby cousins out in the backyard and all through the house. My little brother had just called to tell me when his bus arrived. I came in with my arms full for my aunts. Needed items from the grocery store that I had to stop at before driving my rental car to the house.

Today everything seemed normal. We were all in our usual patterns. But everything was about to change because Little Ann's husband had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer. His first treatment was tomorrow and we knew they both needed us.

have yourself a merry little christmas

"Through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow. But 'til then we'll have to muddle through somehow."

Rose wasn't sure how long she had been sitting in the car. It had probably been a while, judging the amount of snow that had accumulated on the windshield. It was that obstruction to her view that finally drew her out of her daze. Here she was. Home for Christmas for the first time in four years.

And amazingly the house looked the same. Too many lights outside. The same single reindeer lit up in the front yard. A tall tree showcased through the front windows. A big wreath with a bright red bow on the front door. The same as the last time she was here. The same as every Christmas she could remember. The sight of it had been so overwhelming that she had paused after parking her car to take it all in.

Rose could imagine her mother and big sisters in the kitchen cooking up a storm. Her brothers watching football. Her dad pretending to help out by cleaning up, but really just watching football. But she knew it wouldn't really be the same. Her eldest sister Lily was married now, and had a two-year old son. Her other sister Violet had just been laid off. Her big brother Jeremy was engaged and her little brother James was a junior in college. She had missed their lives, and they wouldn't be the same as this house. There were new faces in there, new dynamics she wasn't a part of.

Rose stared in disbelief. How could she have been so stupid, so wrong for four years. All those times that she had volunteered to work Christmas at the hospital so that the people with families could go home. She had sacrificed for colleagues' families but never for her own. Rose became even more ashamed thinking of how her attendee had practically forced her to go home.

Here she was. Home for Christmas for the first time in four years. She was joyful. She was in need of the break. She longed to reconnect with her family. And she was afraid of the unknowns that waited inside. But mostly she was tired of being lonely and was ready to get out of that car.