This Christmas has left me a little down, and I probably should just go to bed, but I don’t seem to be able to. I’ve been reading through BT and ET, and wandering around my mother-in-law’s house, instead. Once again this familiar memory from my childhood drifted into my mind. I think I’ll write it, and then go to bed.
It must have been in the mid sixties. (My childhood memories have a certain fuzziness about them.) My family had gone up on Christmas Eve to visit some older friends who had built a small cabin in the Poconos. We were driving home late on a snowy night. My folks had put the rear seat of the VW down and my older sister and I slept under piles of covers.
I woke up and watched the snow through the back window. My parents were quietly talking and my sister was deeply asleep and snoring softly. As we climbed through the mountains, I would see the sky, then the darkened houses and businesses, then the sky again.
The VW chugged up a long climb and when it reached the top and my view leveled off, I saw a sign. “Welcome to Bethlehem.” We began our long descent into the valley, and I saw darkened houses, some with a few candles in the window, and closed businesses, their owners long gone home to be with their families on Christmas Eve.
Halfway down the hill we passed a steel mill, its huge doors wide open in defiance of the cold, the snow, and the season. A huge bucket suspended from the the ceiling poured out a vast river of molten steel that glowed orange red against the blackness of the night and splashed into molds on the floor far below.
Then our Beetle fought its way to the top of the rise, crested the hill, and coasted down the other side, and the steel mill was gone.
I awoke on Christmas morning in my own bed. I suppose my father had carried me upstairs and put me to bed without my waking up. I have never asked my family about that night, about Bethlehem and the steel mill. I do not know if I dreamed it, or it was real. I only know that it is one of the strongest memories I have of Christmas as a child. Now I do not want to know any more about it. The image is firmly attached to Christmas for me, and every Christmas I try to find time alone. When I do, I am a child again stretched out under old, woolen blankets in the backseat of that ’63 Beetle, peering through the rear window as the river of molten steel silently pours from the heavens in Bethlehem. And I am filled once again with mystery and wonder.
