Dreaming of a White Christmas

Life is full of surprises, even when a gal is 80 years old.

Six old people sat around the breakfast table, men and women ranging in age from 68 to 89, enjoying bacon and eggs in the comfort of our Texas retirement home while 50 cars smashed in the blizzard in Oklahoma, Daisy’s grandson on the way to Pennsylvania was stranded in Little Rock, and snow isolated my friend in New York. None of us could remember a white Christmas in Dallas.

Wednesday was a balmy 74 degrees. Temperatures fell on Thursday. It was cold and rainy by 11:30 when Jackie took me to Christmas Eve dialysis. Even during holidays, dialysis is required three days a week. When I stepped outside afterwords, I was hit in the face by icy wind. I was grateful when Jackie, not I, drove home on the wet streets.

The night became bitter cold, wet and windy. Family parties were canceled. Friends who were to pick up a handicapped oldster for church on Christmas Eve called to say they could not come. Those able to drive themselves decided not to venture out on slick streets.

On the way home from dialysis, Jackie stopped at Cici’s and picked up a three-foot-high stack of boxes containing pizzas. The residents at our retirement home gathered in the dining room for a pizza party. Some of us missed being with children and grandchildren, but we had the companionship of each other. That was enough to make a Merry Christmas.

I woke up Christmas morning listening to Bach on the radio and looked out my bedroom windows. Snow! Dusting the railings on my balcony and, down below, covering the roofs of the houses behind my building. When I put on my quilted winter jacket and stepped out of my apartment to go to breakfast, it was like a Christmas card with snow on the hedges and grass of the courtyard. Snow in Texas!

I am 80 years old, and for the first time ever we had a White Christmas in Texas! Somehow that sight brought smiles to every old face in the dining room as we called to each other (most of us are going deaf), "Merry Christmas."

The snow was not enough to make driving hazardous. Not nearly as dangerous as the rain and wind the day before. The sun came out, and the snow melted by noon. Still, we had a White Christmas – sort of.

Wonders never cease.