December 17, 1999

Home for holidays has a new meaning

By TOM KELLY
The Real Estate Advisor

It clearly will be a different Christmas.

I can't remember the last time a Christmas play was not on the domestic calendar. It seems that our children's intense high-school basketball games have replaced the casual, error-prone annual holiday show wrapped around cider and seasonal sugar cookies.

More importantly, returning "home" will be awkward and curious. I have referred to the house I grew up in as "my parents' house" and its surrounding community as "the old neighborhood" for more than 25 years. Although the memories of that place are dear and precious, home is where we now live and where our four kids were born and raised.

When my dad died a little more than a year ago, mom sold the large family home of 46 years and moved into a nearby condominium, keeping the dreams of the area yet leaving the emptiness and upkeep of an old structure. Only one of seven children remain in that area and visiting siblings shuffle between his home and mom's "step-saver" condo.

How will we properly prepare for this wondrous time of year without a Christmas performance featuring a multitude of colorfully clad, holly-sprite performers including at least one off-key Kelly kid? And, how will I respond to the reality of not being around the fireplace that first delivered Santa? How much will our kids miss the huge backyard, driveway basketball hoop and cozy sidewalks surrounding my parents' home?

My first experience of a Christmas play (the nuns of the Blessed Virgin Mary loved to labeled it "the children's holiday pageant") occurred just five blocks from that house. The extravaganza was -- and still is -- viewed from an oh-so comfortable Samson steel folding chair in the rear of a packed hall and around parents darting toward the stage with powerful cameras anticipating the perfect Kodak moment when their Freddy -- only a blur from four rows deep in the student band -- clangs the symbols to mark the surprise conclusion of "Angels We Have Heard On High."

I thought about those Christmas plays this week when I considered the number of such events my parents -- with seven married children and 17 grandchildren --have witnessed. I can remember standing on those steel chairs as a small child, looking toward the entry/exit for my father to come flying in the door late from work, his necktie flopping about his chest as he lunged in the darkness to find the seat my mother carefully guarded with her folded overcoat.

"Did you remember the camera?" she would whisper so all around her could hear. "And what about the film?!"

The crowd -- and everyone knew everyone -- would begin schussing my mom, index fingers on lips, with the not-so-subtle: "Jane, we can't hear!"

My dad would respond with an answer-all "relax!" He then miraculously would expose a tiny camera with the huge flash that looked like a pie tin with 40-watt bulb in the middle of it that simultaneously lit and blinded the hall and all of its spectators.

When the last carol was sung and the final nativity scene photographed, the venue would shift to the parish hall for conversation and cookies.

"Didn't Michael look just like Joseph?" Sister Mary Arcadia asked me nearly 40 years ago.

"I guess so."

The scene had changed little, except for the quality of camera and the nuns. Substitute Jodi for Jane, me for my dad, and you had virtually the same Christmas pageant environment of 40 years ago. I often came flying in late from work and even used "relax" (I am somehow allergic to "chill") as a semiconscious response.

I failed to ask my dad if he missed the Christmas play -- or the thought of sitting in those folding chairs? What became of the rolls of film he shot from that archaic camera?

I will ask my mom next week. I'd like to know, before my kids ask me the same questions.

However, the ones regarding Christmases in our family house will have to wait. The subject is simply too close to home -- especially at this time of year.

Previous columns:

• Buying and selling over the holidays, 12-10-1999
• New loan removes need to refinance, 12-03-1999
• Scenes from the NAR expo, 11-25-1999
• A look at the future of housing, 11-19-1999
• Your guide to mortgage insurance, 11-05-1999
• Who needs HUD?, 10-29-1999
• A closer look at inspections, 10-22-1999
• HUD earns its criticism and praise, 10-15-1999