DECADES PASSED, THEN A STEPSON CAME BACK IN MY LIFE

Mystery solved, love restored, & family is reunited for Christmas

We had one Christmas.

It was 1982. Two families, one Jewish (the Kayes) and one liberal Protestant (the Morrises) became one when I married Larry Kaye in February 1982.

It happened quickly, probably too quickly. I was newly widowed and Larry was newly divorced when we met the year before.

I tried to get to know his son Jeff, who was 10.

I went to Little League games and Cub Scout meetings. Jeff was a quiet boy and I wasn’t sure how to connect with him. He was going through more changes than a child should have to. His parents divorced and both parents remarried. Then his father learned he had a rare heart condition, cardiomyopathy.

That Christmas, both families came to our home, a huge red moreor-less-restored Dutch Colonial in Portland, Ore. Photos show all of us — Larry (inset) and Jeff, Larry’s parents, his sister and her partner, my brother, a family friend, my parents, and me — goofing for the camera.

The champion goof was Larry, who even on a bad day was infectiously silly. It was easy for all of us to forget

Larry had cardiomyopathy because he wasn’t ill and seemed the picture of health.

I had asked Larry’s doctors his prognosis. I remember them telling me he might have 20 good years.

They were off. Way off.

A few months after that Christmas – our only Christmas – Larry died suddenly. In that moment, I lost Larry and I also lost his son. The man that tied us together was gone, and so was my access to Jeff.

A year later, after a lot of thinking, I decided to move east for graduate school.

Jeff’s mother, Larry’s exwife, permitted me to see Jeff one time to give him a photo album – but that was it.

Through the family grapevine, I discovered she had told Larry’s mom she was afraid I was going to kidnap Jeff. It struck me as needlessly cruel and just plain odd but I chalked it up to her own grief about Larry’s death. Perhaps that was why she was holding tightly to her son. I assumed with time it would change. This time it was me who was off. Way off.

After graduate school and a second stay in Portland, I settled in New York to write about theater and continue my career in broadcast news.

While I loved being in the

Big Apple, you are never as alone as you are at Christmas in New York. I told myself that I was paying my dues, working overnight shifts in newsrooms and eating cold Chinese food. I found a way to make my various walk-up apartments special with decorations, lights and music. (I do love cozy). When I could, I went to St. John the Divine on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.

I made friends, mostly writers and performers who, like me, wanted to know if they could “make it there.” We had a lot in common – except I was a lot older.

I always thought of Jeff and wondered if he remembered our one Christmas. Sometimes, in the early years, if I was home for the holiday his