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| Coming home, Christmas 1979. |
On Monday I began a new culinary adventure. We make sauerkraut every year. We chop and salt and mash cabbage into a five gallon bucket and let it ferment and it always turns out great. The batch we made this year was especially good because we chopped up a sweet onion and added it to it. That batch is finished and has been either bagged and frozen or freeze dried for storage. At a family gathering a few months ago, Sarah told me about fermenting things in mason jars. She bought a kit and was trying out fermenting garlic and other vegetables. That sounded like a good thing to explore, so I ordered some special fermenting lids and on Monday I started a batch of garlic and a batch of sauerkraut. The garlic is in a pint jar. The sauerkraut is in a quart jar. It was very easy to do. The kraut should be ready in a few weeks. The garlic takes longer. They say it is best after three months and even better after a year. I can hardly wait to see how it all turns out.
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| A sunrise last week. |
Last Tuesday, December 12th, was a day that I commemorate every year as a personal observance. On that day I paused and sang, as I have for the last forty-four years, I’ll Be Home for Christmas. The reason for that goes back to the time I was on my mission in 1978 and 1979.
Christmas 1978 was very hard for me. I was in Japan, ten months into my mission. It was the first time I’d ever been away from home for Christmas and I was very homesick. The Japanese don’t really observe Christmas – at least not in the way I was used to. Most of the Japanese are not Christian so, although there were decorations and Christmas music playing in the shopping streets, it all felt empty to me. It was just window dressing with no substance to it. At that time I was serving in the city of Minō in the hills above Osaka with my companion, Elder Pew, and the other companion set, Elders Wadman and Morris. A few days before Christmas, I received a box from home with cookies and a few wrapped presents in it. I shared the cookies with the other elders right away and then arranged the wrapped gifts on my desk and waited. When Christmas morning arrived, I opened them and found a cassette tape of Mormon Tabernacle Choir music, a book, new socks (a blessing since my old ones were worn out and it was impossible to find socks sturdy and big enough for my feet in Japan), and some long underwear (also a blessing because it was very cold and damp). After we had all opened our gifts and eaten breakfast, we rode the train into Kobe to the Mission Home to attend a Christmas Mission Conference. All the missionaries in our mission, about 400 of us, were gathered there for a turkey dinner, which was a great treat. The turkeys (shichimencho in Japanese, which means “seven faced bird” – don’t ask me why) had been specially shipped in from America because the Japanese don’t eat whole roasted turkeys. After dinner, we got to watch a movie – Mary Poppins. This was back in the days when watching a movie meant a big projector and reels of film. Despite all of that, I went back to my area that evening feeling pretty low. I missed my family. I missed all the traditions that I loved so much. But Christmas passed and Oshōgatsu, the Japanese New Year, arrived. New Year’s is a big holiday in Japan. They celebrate for a week and have all sorts of interesting foods and customs. My spirits quickly recovered. I kept on trying and doing my best to be a good missionary, and the months rolled on.
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| Me in Minō, winter 1978. |
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| The genkan, entry way to our apartment with all our worn out shoes. |
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| Elder Morris and Elder Pew. |
A year passed and it was December of 1979. Now I was serving in the city of Okamachi, a crowded area of Osaka next to the big airport at Itami. I was almost at the end of my mission. I was sick with a bad case of bronchitis and had a terrible hacking cough. In spite of being sick, my companion and I tried to keep to the schedule and work hard. Wednesday, December 12th, was our weekly Preparation Day, the day in the week when we did our laundry, shopping, and wrote letters home. That morning we had the little kerosene heater on full blast in the main room of our small apartment. It was our only source of warmth, but even with it burning, our apartment was still very cold. The four of us – Elder Tingey and Elder Shirley (the Zone Leaders), Elder Tanaka (my companion, who was Japanese), and I were all dressed, lying in our futon beds, wrapped in blankets trying to keep warm while we wrote our weekly letters home. As we wrote, we were taking turns singing Christmas songs. Elder Tanaka didn’t want to sing. I think he didn’t actually know any songs, and he couldn’t carry a tune anyway. On his turn, Elder Shirley sang Up On the Housetop. Elder Tingey sang next and he gave us a rousing rendition of Santa Clause is Coming to Town. When my turn came, I sang I’ll Be Home for Christmas. I had a nice voice back then and I didn’t cough once while I sang.
You can count on me.
Please have snow
And mistletoe
And presents on the tree.
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams.
I'll be home for Christmas,
If only in my dreams.
When I finished, there was silence. Everyone had stopped writing. Then Elder Tingey asked me to sing it again. Just as I started, the telephone rang. Elder Tingey got up and answered it. It was our mission president, President Stout, and he asked to speak to me. As Elder Tingey handed me the phone, my heart was pounding and my mind was racing. Telephone calls like this usually meant a special transfer was happening. I’d had phone calls like that before. I hated being transferred. And here it was, just thirteen days before Christmas and I was so sick and I had so little time left on my mission and I wanted to spend it in Okamachi. The President chatted with me for a moment. He asked me how things were going, how my companion was doing, then he paused and asked, “Elder Howe, is Christmas an important holiday for you and your family?” I said, yes. He then said that, although I still had three weeks left on my mission, he needed someone to accompany an elder who was going home before Christmas and would I like to be that person? I hesitated a moment before answering, yes. I didn’t know it then, but the Zone Leaders had called the President earlier that week and told him they were concerned about my health. This was the President’s way of providing me a graceful way to go home a little early. I was in a daze when I hung up the phone. My flight was on Saturday! I had planned to go to the shopping district in Osaka sometime before my scheduled release day to buy gifts and souvenirs to take home. I didn’t have time to do that now. And I had already made plans for Oshōgatsu to visit some dear friends, the Akasaka family in the city of Akashi, and the Nakamoto family in Nishinomiya. When I called them to tell them I was going home, they all wept. I wept too. I called my friend Elder Williams and he was sad that I was leaving. We had become good friends, having started our missions together and also suffered through several of the same companions (forty-five years later, we are still friends). I had such mixed feelings roaring through me. I was excited that I would be with my family again, especially for Christmas. But my heart also ached at the thought of leaving Japan, realizing I would probably never return there again. I would never again see people I had grown to love.
The days between Wednesday and Saturday passed in a blur. I packed a box with my books, letters, and other items, and shipped it home, knowing that I would arrive there long before it did. I went to visit a few of the local church members and the people we were teaching to say good-bye. I sorted through my pitiful clothing and discarded everything that was worn out and tattered. I only kept my gray suit, two white shirts, a few pairs of undergarments, and two pairs of socks. I threw away my bad shoes and kept the good ones that I only wore on Sundays. I gave all but two of my neckties to the other elders. That Friday evening, I went to a baptismal service at the Okamachi chapel. By then word had gotten out that I was going home and the members presented me with a thank you placard. We said some tearful good-byes. As I was leaving the chapel, I heard an elder from one of the other districts who had recently arrived in Japan commenting on how cold it was and how cold his hands always were. I gave him my precious pocket hand warmer and told him to pass it on to some other elder when his time was over. I like to think it is still in circulation among the missionaries there, an antique legacy from long forgotten Howe Chōrō.
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| The thank you placard the members gave me. |
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| A pocket warmer like the one I had. |
On Saturday morning I rode the train to Kobe and met with President Stout. He spoke kindly to me and told me that I was a great missionary and that I had served well and the mission and Japan would miss me. Then the president’s assistants drove me to the airport. My face was wet with tears as the plane took off and I looked out the window and bid Japan sayonara. Because of time zones and crossing the International Date Line (Japan is 17 hours ahead of Los Angeles), I took off from Osaka at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 15th, and landed in Los Angeles at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, December 15th, so I got to live part of that day twice. I actually came home to a new home that I’d never seen before because my family had moved from Naperville, Illinois, to Sylmar, California, while I was in Japan. There was a joyful reunion at LAX! My heart was bursting with love as I embraced my family. When I got to my new home I went to bed and slept for two days. It took several weeks for me to recover from my cough. That unexpected Christmas turned out to be very merry for me. I was so happy to be home with my family. That’s why I sing I’ll Be Home for Christmas, on December 12th every year. It revives the memory of that day and the love I have for Japan, and how good it is to be home with my family for Christmas.
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| My welcome home at LAX. |
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| With my parents. |
❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄ ❄
All week long preparation for Christmas continued. Miriam and Hannah baked. We have to have a big supply of cookies on hand because we will have a houseful. Certain cookies have become established traditions at our house. We have quite a list: peanut butter kisses, frosted orange cookies, lebkuchen, Bombard cookies, double chocolate mint cookies, Greek anise crescents, buckeyes, ginger spice cookies, and more.
The first of the holiday guests arrived on Wednesday evening. Over at the Shillig’s house, Chase and his children arrived late Wednesday night. His wife Jaime will arrive this week sometime. They are actually the Shillig’s guests, but the back and forth between our households is fluid enough that we count everyone together.
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| Sunset on Tuesday. |
Wednesday night, after Stacey and I were in bed and asleep, we were awakened by noises upstairs. Miriam and Hannah were walking around which, in this old house with its squeaky floorboards, can be clearly heard downstairs. I looked at the clock. It was 11:30. Then they came downstairs and asked us if we were awake, which we were at that point. They said they were watching the Geminid Meteor Shower out Hannah’s bedroom windows and we should come and watch. I knew the Geminids were going to be at their peak that night. Unlike most meteor showers that originate from comet debris, the Geminids are the result of debris left behind by an asteroid named 3200 Phaethon. The particles that form these meteors are much denser than those from comets, and they appear as if to radiate from the constellation Gemini. [Here is a link to an article about 3200 Phaethon https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/rock-comet-3200-phaethon-geminid-meteor-shower/] So we got up, put on our robes, and went upstairs. We saw a few meteors, but the sky in that direction was veiled by thin clouds. We decided to go outside. We went downstairs and put on boots and went out into the back yard. The sky overhead and to the west was very clear and the stars were brilliant. There was no moon, it had already set. Jupiter was especially bright, hanging upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear. We stood there in the freezing cold – it was 19° – and watched for fifteen minutes as meteor after meteor streaked across the sky. It was beautiful. But the cold was too much and we could not bear to stay out longer. We came inside and went back to bed. My cousin Micki is on an adventure in Norway right now to see the Aurora Borealis and she got to watch the Geminids flash through a glowing green sky. Lovely signs and wonders in the heavens.
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| A photo from my cousin Micki in Norway. |
Friday was an errand day. I did a trash run. I went to Wellsville to Runnings and bought chicken food and other items. I went to the hardware store to get a part for our broken dishwasher. On the way home I stopped at the creamery for milk and ice cream. When I got home, I unloaded all the feed. I always feel a sense of accomplishment after errands because I don’t like driving or shopping. And hefting bags of feed is hard work. I felt like I deserved a reward so I treated myself to a dish of ice cream after lunch.
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| My treat - peppermint and pistachio ice cream. |
Friday evening we were eating dinner, it was Hannah’s homemade Pizza Night, when we got a text message with some unwelcome news from Josiah. He and Vanessa were driving from Rexburg down to Geoffrey’s house to spend the night and then Saturday morning Geoffrey was going to take them to the airport in Salt Lake so they could fly here. Well, near Ogden they were in a four car accident. Their car was totaled. The initial report was that Josiah was okay but it looked like Vanessa had broken her wrist. They were taken to McKay Hospital in Ogden in an ambulance and their car, with their luggage still in it, was taken to a tow yard. I felt sick when we got the news. Geoffrey drove up right away to help them. He and Josiah managed to locate the car and recover their luggage. At the hospital, they determined that Vanessa has three broken bones in her hand. They also gave her a CT scan just to make sure nothing else was wrong. Finally, Geoffrey took them to his house. They cancelled their morning flight. They are there for the time being. Vanessa has to see a hand surgeon to determine if she needs surgery. If she does, they will not be coming here for Christmas. We’re still waiting for the outcome. It looks like they might be the ones singing “I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams” this time.
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| My paper white narcissus in full bloom now. |
I took a walk at sunrise Saturday morning. It was cold and there was a heavy frost, but the sky was beautiful and I had to go out and be in it. When I returned home, Stacey and I drove up to Wellsville to get the things I forgot to get on my Friday errand run and to return the wrong part I got for the dishwasher and get the right one. Oh well.
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| Sunrise Saturday. |
Saturday was our Branch Christmas Dinner. I sent out an invitation to all the branch members two weeks ago hoping to bring in some of the people we don’t see at church very often. The dinner turned out fine. We had pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, cheesy potatoes, and holiday desserts. The food was delicious and plentiful. The decorations were festive. There were thirty people there, some of them members we seldom see, so that was good.
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| First arrivals at our branch dinner. |
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| In line for food. |
The weather has been fairly mild all week, at least for December. There are only a few crusty patches of snow in the most stubborn spots. Tomorrow night we have a chance to get an inch or two, but after that the weather will be warm enough to melt it all again. So it looks like our chances for a white Christmas are not very good this year. And I don’t mind. I know it’s pretty and it makes things seem more Christmassy thanks to Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby, but they didn’t have to trudge through the stuff to carry water to the barn every day. If we have snow, fine. If we don’t, fine.
The level of merriment here will grow this week, but by how much depends on whether Josiah and Vanessa will be here. The Fosters will arrive on the 22nd. The Thayns won’t be here until the 24th and are staying on through New Year’s. It will be very jolly here and that’s as it should be – ‘tis the season.
