By Tim Rohr
12/17/2000
I still don’t know if that little fir tree was growing in my neighbor’s yard or on an easement. But regardless, there was one less tree for him to look at the next morning and one little tree in our living room.
That was the Christmas of 1986 and my wife, Leone, and our new son and I were living in St. Augustine, Florida where Leone was attending a culinary school. Both of us were thousands of miles away from the nearest relative.
Like many young families, our early days were very meager. Our furniture consisted of two folding beach chairs and a shelf made of boards and milk crates. Two sleeping bags and a blanket on a stained and worn carpet sufficed for a bed.
And here it was Christmas and since spending $20 for a tree meant giving up a week’s worth of food I opted to engage in a little transplanting activity. We stuck Christmas cards in its branches and threw on a little tinsel. It didn’t look too bad. We set it up by the window, the only window, which we covered with an old sheet lest our neighbor discover where the missing tree went.
Christmas Day came. A cold one for Florida. Leone and I managed to buy each other and Timmy a present. I supplied the music with my guitar and Leone somehow miraculously multiplied the “loaves and fishes” in the kitchen.
It was a sad little scene in a way, far from home, not enough money to even make a phone call, three small presents under a bent little tree. All we needed now was the “ox and ass” and we probably could have passed for another poor family a couple thousand years earlier, also far from home with no money for a phone call.
Today, Timmy is 15 and we have added eight more children to our family. Again a new one, only a month old, graces our home at Christmas time. And again, we are far from home, even farther now. But not really. This place, Guam, has become our home, and our friends, our new family. And though we have enough money to make a phone call, we still buy each other only one present.
Of course we miss our kin and we can only hope that the Lord will allow our parents a few more Christmases that we might celebrate the Happy Holy Days with them once again. But for now, a vast expanse of water and a very large investment in Continental separates us (11 times $___?).
Meanwhile, I rejoice in the fact that I have a family of my own to spend Christmas with. And while it’s always nice to do something special for the Holidays I’ve learned to recognize Christmas every morning of the year in the faces of my just-awakend children. For there, in their tiny innocence and behind their sleepy eyes abides the Christ-child who, I believe, longs to bring each one of us finally home to celebrate the eternal Christmas. I wonder if when my time comes, he’ll ask me about the tree?