A Christmas wish: Cherish fond memories of holidays
For some reason, Christmas brings back a flood of happy and not so happy memories. Some remember the first time they became aware of Christmas as children. Others remember the first Christmas shared with a loved one, while others will always remember the first Christmas with the new member of the family. Many of us remember the first Christmas without a loved one. We know how hard Christmas is for some people (“Storm adds uncertainty to strong holiday travel demand,” Dec. 21). I have many memories of past Christmases.
When I was in the first grade, we started to prepare for the Christmas extravaganza which would be divided into two parts: Santa’s workshop and a Christmas Nativity scene. In typical nun fashion, the nuns chose the shortest boy to be Jesus, and I was to be one of the toy soldiers. The nuns realized that short Jesus had a little voice and couldn’t project, so they yanked short Jesus and I miraculously was cast as Jesus. My parents were more than a little skeptical. I thought this was a perfect example of typecasting, but my parents thought it was a better example of miscasting.
Every Christmas we would call “the nuns” — my aunts in their convents in New York and Connecticut. When my turn came, my mother would stand right next to me and yank the phone away after a couple of minutes. Long distance was expensive, and we could just as easily communicate by writing letters. My mother came from a family of letter writers. I miss this ritual.
In my 20s, I was a parole agent assigned to a unit of agents at the narcotic clinic. I had scheduled a couple of interviews right before Christmas for inmates referred by the Maryland Parole Commission at the Maryland Penitentiary, the maximum security prison in Maryland. The psychiatrist who would normally accompany me was unavailable, so Dr. Albert Kurland, the director of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and the big boss for the narcotic clinic went with me.
The Pen waiting room was decorated for Christmas and there was a Santa Claus for visiting children. Dr. Kurland accepted both inmates for our program. The problem was that both inmates had psychiatric diagnoses, which would normally have precluded their admission to our program. At the next staff meeting, the young psychiatrists questioned him about this and he explained that the holiday atmosphere had affected his judgment. The young doctors got a kick out of this. Over time, I became aware of other examples of Dr. Kurland’s kindness that went under the radar.
I hope that the boys and girls of Baltimore will get what they want most. I think the rest of us will be satisfied with peace on earth, our nation, our city, our neighborhood and our families. May the new year bring peace and good memories to us all.