Christmas Eve Chili

by Tracy G. Rasmussen

"Don't push it," my mother said to me that afternoon. Her voice crackled on the phone with the static of the storm that was icing and blowing and snowing somewhere west of New England. "Wait for the storm to pass and then come home. You'll be here on Christmas. That's what's important."

Maybe, I said to myself, as I hung up the phone and looked out the window of my Boston apartment, up at the gathering clouds. It wasn't snowing. And if I left now -- right now -- I might beat the storm to New York and be home in time for the chili, cornbread, and tree decorating that had become my family's tradition for Christmas Eve. Besides, my mother was a weather worrier, calling us in from the snow before the first flake hit the grass and handing us umbrellas when clouds were tinted any shade of gray. What I didn't tell her, she wouldn't worry about. And when I walked in the house she'd see that I was an adult who could make decisions for myself.

And so minutes later I was in the front seat of my 1974 Oldsmobile Omega that had been given to me by my grandmother "Ging Ging" the year before she died. It was an armored tank of a car with doors that closed with a decisive thunk and an engine that roared with power, plus a muffler that probably needed replacement. I worried less about cars than I did about the weather. A pig-headed certainty was another of Ging Ging's legacies. So that's how I came to be on the Massachusetts Turnpike at dusk with snow and ice hammering at my windows, the heater flashing on and off and an ominous pause whenever my wipers hit the top of their arc. I fed the car some extra gas, trying in my pig-headed certainty to outrun the storm, and turned the radio up to drown out the thunking, thudding, and roaring of the storm. The storm, though, was having none of that. And so that's how I came to be on the side of the Massachusetts Turnpike at dusk with a car that was slightly chilly on the inside and so frozen on the outside that the windshield wipers simply stopped working.

I sat there in the dark. In the silence. In the chill. I sat there thinking about the chili and church and my father announcing somewhere around 8:00 PM that it was time to haul the tree down from the attic, put it together, and decorate it. One sister was in charge of the lights, another in charge of finding the colored nibs at the base of the branches to match the colored holes on the tree trunk. The twins would hang the ornaments on the lower branches. We'd toss handfuls of tinsel on the tree, and Mom and Dad would admonish, "One strand at a time."

I'd be hanging ornaments on the upper branches, taking photos, and singing loudly and somewhat off-key to the Sing Along with Mitch Christmas album. Only I was sitting on the side of the Massachusetts Turnpike slowly becoming a drift of snow.

I got out of my car and surveyed the wipers. I took off my mittens and mopped the wipers clean and blew some hot air on them. They didn't move. Not a centimeter. I wrapped my mittens around the bases and waited a minute or two before trying again.

Nothing.

I was going to not only celebrate Christmas Eve in the breakdown lane, but quite possibly Christmas Day. In fact, I was -- at that moment -- pretty convinced that I'd be sitting here in this exact spot until the spring thaw, which in Massachusetts happens sometime around May. Why didn't I listen to my mother?

Ging Ging, of course. Ging Ging, for the entire time I'd known her, had done exactly as she pleased, when she pleased. And it was clear that I possessed that act first, think later mentality.

So as my car got whiter on the outside and colder on the inside, I had a little chat with Ging Ging. We talked about why I was here on the Massachusetts Turnpike in the middle of a blizzard and how I was so pig-headed that I thought I could control Mother Nature and that no one really was to blame except for me.

But, I argued back, I really just wanted to be home with my family for Christmas. I wanted the chili and the artificial tree and the arguments about clumps of tinsel versus strands of tinsel. I had ventured out in the snow, it turned out, not because I was proving to my mother that I was old enough to make up my own mind, but rather because I missed my parents, and my sisters and my brother and the chili and cornbread and the Yule Log burning on the television deep into the night. The snow might keep me away, but my mother was right. Christmas was Christmas, whether I was there or whether I was celebrating with them in my heart and in my memory.

And with that realization the windshield wipers miraculously moved back and forth and back and forth as I held my breath watching my own personal Christmas miracle. They cleared the snow from the front of the car while I went out and cleared it from the other windows.

I thought about my family the whole way home. Now they'd be complaining that Mom made them go to church an hour early to get seats and then make them give up their seats for elderly latecomers. Now they'd be stirring the bubbling chili in the pot. Now they'd be slathering the cornbread with butter. Now they'd be getting the tree from the attic.

Each mile I slid closer to home I thought of all the things about Christmas that I loved and that would always be a part of me. The windshield wipers kept rhythm with my memories as the wind pushed the car onward.

Two and a half hours later I walked in the door, shaking snow from my hair, and announcing my arrival.

"I'm sorry I came out in the snow," I said, hugging my mother who stood in the kitchen pouring eggnog and arranging rum balls and spritz cookies on a Christmas tree tray.

"We saved you some chili," she said.