the Christmas Star

The Christmas Star

Elizabeth Ryba ©2010

My father pointed towards the midnight winter sky and whispered a secret to me, “That is the Christmas star Elizabeth.”  A single chilly moment captured in time; it is the only memory of my father’s voice.  Within that same winter season he returned to the stars.

His life was buoyed by constant struggle.  A twist of fate when he was a young man scarred his spirit so awfully.  It’s as though he lost part of his soul that night and spent the rest of his short life trying to fill the emptiness that remained.  Alcohol was often his escape.  Finally, on December 23, 1981 he was released from that struggle as well.

My mother and I stayed up late that night to watch Superman.  She fell asleep before the movie ended and I full of boundless energy waited for my father to get home.   I remember watching Irv Weinstein on the late news and then turning the volume down when the TV station signed off.  I read my mother’s magazines, looked through the pictures in her bird books, and played with the pups.  It didn’t seem that too much time had passed before I heard a knock at the door.  My mother woke up at this sound.  Wrapping her night robe tightly around her, she told me to open the door.

In slow motion my mind replays this scene, now, as it does every time I am waiting for someone to come home.  I wanted to see my father on that porch, where he had shown me the Christmas star.  My mother had said he went Christmas shopping that night.  I couldn’t wait to see him with arms full of presents.  Both he and my grandfather looked a lot like Santa Claus.  However, the two men standing on my father’s porch were certainly no harbingers of holiday delights.  From my six year old height, the officer at the bottom of the stairs was eye level and, unfairly, my eyes fixed upon him.  He bowed his head, and removed his hat to shield himself from my stare.

The snowflakes were remarkably noticeable as they laid to rest on those officer’s shoulders standing on that porch…

As the years moved on, other than one casual remark, my mother never spoke of him and I, regrettably, never asked.  Bringing the horses in one night, I pointed out the moon’s brilliance.  I asked her if she thought there really was a man on the moon?  With a twinkle of amusement she said, “That’s where your father said he was from and where he would go back to when he died.”

I delighted to gain this insight.  The few memories I have of my father all take place in the night.  Afterwards, the stories I heard of him confirm these memories.  He rarely slept at night and often was found outside in the morning sleeping on the ground, or in the snow covered in newspaper.

Perhaps this is where my bouts of insomnia come from?  Circling and pacing, I always find myself at the window facing east.  Watching the night sky, I feel connected to everything.  The beauty of the Universe smattered across the expansive backdrop of forever.  This restores my soul each night.

The moon and the stars…they are my father’s eternal landscape.  They are the hope for each of us, no matter how lost or how broken we think we may have become.  There, in the infinite of all that there is; there is a place for all to put down their kryptonite and find themselves once again.