First Christmas Alone
I’ll never forget the first Christmas I spent on my own.
After graduating from the Naval Nuclear Power Training pipeline in September 2002, I had a full four weeks of leave. Dad flew to South Carolina, where he helped me pack up my few belongings into a sedan that he helped me purchase, and then drove with me from Goose Creek to Minot, via Norfolk. There, we spent a day with my sister Lara and went to the beach with my then-18-month-old niece Hailey.
Dad, Hailey, and me in Norfolk. October 2002
After spending a few weeks in Minot (a town where I no longer recognized anyone and nobody recognized me), I got back in the sedan and drove the rest of the way—solo—to my new duty station: Naval Base Kitsap Bremerton, across the Puget Sound from Seattle.
When I arrived, I learned the USS Carl Vinson was out to sea, so the Navy flew me to San Diego, where I caught up with the aircraft carrier. We got underway on Thanksgiving Day, as she steamed back towards our base in Washington (if you’re confused as to why the Navy would fly me and a dozen other sailors all the way to San Diego, when they could have just asked us to wait a few more days until the Vinson was back in port, well…same).
The Vinson’s next underway was scheduled for mid-January 2003, which meant we’d get to spend the holidays in port, however, since I’d just expended all my available leave between duty stations, I would be spending Christmas alone. I spent the weeks leading up to Christmas 2002 scouring the malls around Silverdale and the base NEX (Navy Exchange—a kind of general store), shopping for gifts for my family. Among the purchases I made were a Carl Vinson captain’s ballcap for Dad: navy blue with the golden “scrambled eggs” along the bill, a DVD of Gone With the Wind for Mom, a book about selling your photographs for Lara, and for my niece, a Lilo & Stitch lunchbox/canteen set. I bought a set of Christmas cards from Hallmark, with the intention of writing a personalized Christmas greeting to each recipient.
Christmas 2001. Mom, me, and Lacey
I was missing my family, missing the traditions of home: decorating the tree with Mom and my sisters, the scent of peanut butter blossoms baking, frosting star and tree-shaped sugar cookies, wrapping gifts in front of the fireplace, while watching our worn VHS copy of A Christmas Carol. As it was 2002, and the collected filmography of the world was not yet amassed to an Amazon server, I drove myself to a local book shop and purchased a mass-market paperback copy of the 1843 Charles Dickens novella for $3.95. I immediately set about reading it, which took me all of one afternoon on duty.
On duty days that December, I would typically muster with my division at 0800 for “Cleaning Stations,” where I would spend an hour scrubbing toilets, sweeping the deck, and taking trash out to the pier, then I’d be free to go back to my rack to do whatever I wanted until my watch began. In that surplus of free time, before TikTok, I read plenty: Anna Karenina, Sartre’s essays and plays, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, the poetry of cummings, and of course, Dickens.
my copy of the book, purchased in 2002
In 1986, Dad purchased a VCR and quickly learned that he could tape TV broadcasts to save and watch whenever he wanted. He got good at pausing the recording during the commercials, so we wouldn’t have to review the ads every time we wanted to watch a show. One of the movies he’d taped was the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol, starring George C Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. The George C Scott version became a holiday favorite of mine—despite my generation’s supposed predilection for The Muppet Christmas Carol.
Several scenes from the book, which were not included in the 1984 film version of A Christmas Carol, sparked my attention. In Stave Three “The Second of the Three Spirits” (a.k.a. the Ghost of Christmas Present), for example, after Scrooge visits the home of Bob Cratchit, but before he drops in on the Christmas party of his nephew Fred, we read a scene in which the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to a number of settings, including a miner’s simple hut, and a lighthouse keeper, before the ghost and Scrooge fly out to sea:
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and, passing on above the moor, sped—whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
…
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the lookout in the bow, the officers who had the watch, dark, ghostly figures in their several stations, but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for one another on that day in the year, and had shared to some extent in its festivities, and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.
—from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1843
scene from 1984’s A Christmas Carol the Ghost of Christmas Present chastises Scott’s Ebenezer Scrooge
A tear came to my eye as I studied these pages from my neophyte duty of telephone watchman, and when I returned to my rack, I began writing my Christmas cards. I went through the deck of twenty cards and hand-wrote the above passage by Dickens in each one, addressed to my Mom and Dad, to my sister in Norfolk, to my other sister in Grand Forks, to my aunts, uncles, cousins, to my Grandmothers—for this was at least decade before we lost either of them.
Christmas 2002. Dad wearing the Carl Vinson hat I bought for him.
On Christmas Eve, I walked to a Catholic church, Our Lady Star of the Sea, which was not far from the base, to attend midnight mass. Thinking back on it now, this may have been the last time I attended Christmas services. On Christmas morning, which was holiday routine on the Vinson, I rolled out of my rack, dressed in my working blues, and wandered down to the galley for a breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs and sausage links. The messdecks were quiet—with only a few sailors eating their chow. Occasionally, a sailor in their dress blues would walk by with their visiting parents, giving them an informal tour of the ship.
Christmas 2002. Lacey, future-brother-in-law Adam, and Hailey
I showered, dressed in my civilian clothes, and disembarked for the base. I then wandered over to the Bachelor Enlisted Quarters (BEQ) to see if I could rent a room for the night. It was quite a deal at the modest price of $25, but the double rooms were always split with another sailor, a stranger who was also seeking a quiet place to rest his head, a place where he could drink and watch TV, or in my case, write poetry or work on art projects. On this Christmas, however, since the base was so quiet, I was able to get the room all to myself for no extra charge. I had a bottle of Captain Morgan and a jug of orange juice, my Dickens, and a calling card that I used to telephone Mom, Dad, Lacey, and Lara, and my grandmas.
They each told me they loved the Christmas Carol passage I sent to them.
And, in case you missed it, I produced a Holiday Special starring friends Shimmering Cinnamon and Uncle Jonny. Do enjoy at this link: https://youtu.be/mw8uO0BfYOA?si=0G4_TJqJzK-Vvuih
