Christmas Day...

It’s Christmas Day, little sweetheart! Happy Christmas! I’m on my own but I’ll always remember our Christmas together with your folks.  

I’d gotten you a couple of things. As always, a little something from our London friend, Joy’s, jewelry shop in Newburgh Street near Oxford Circus. And I’d remembered that you’d said something about wanting a pink angora sweater, so I found a nice one for you from Karen Millen. You’d completely forgotten about it, so you were delightfully surprised.

Your mom made a point to give us a couple of gifts together, and because she knew we liked watching movies and shows together - “watching a story with my partner at the end of the day”, you used to say - she bought us a box set of the first season of Gabriel Bryne’s show “In Treatment”, with the instruction that we were only to watch it together. I loved that.

As everyone opened there presents in the living around the tree, you sat right next to me on the sofa and watched me especially carefully as I began to unwrap another present from your mom and dad. When I slipped the gift paper off, there was a small square box. I opened it to find what at first glance looked like an antique pocket watch but upon closer examination turned out to be a compass. I looked up and your dad said to me, “so you can always find us”. I burst into tears.

I’d lost my mother just a few months before. I’d been in London when I got the news and you and your mom had gotten me back to New York and then on to Detroit, where you met me and stayed at my side for that entire week as we planned the funeral and everything. It was the most extraordinary thing anyone had ever done for me and now this. When I turned the compass over, I saw that that very phrase “so you can always find us” had been engraved by your mom. Later she told me that when she had shown it to you before Christmas you had said to her, quite presciently, “oh, mom, you’re just going to make him cry”. The beautiful compass remains here, little sweetheart, on my mantle with many pictures of you and other treasures.

So many memories, my little sweetheart. I’m so very grateful. And I love you forever.