The old house

I just learned something horrible.

Our old family home is empty and has been empty for over a year! That's awful. It was a great old place as old homes go. It sits on the corner in a big lot in Hartington, Nebraska. It's a big two story wooden house with lots of windows that my mother used to hate to clean. It's dark gray with white shutters. And it's empty and silent now. That's awful.

Especially this time of year. Add a foot or so of snow and freshly scooped sidewalks which defined the lot and big bushes holding up the puffy white stuff and you have picture-perfect, Christmas card kind of house. The local photographer once braved the snow and the cold to take a picture of it with a fresh, unplowed and unscooped snow--the big flake fluffy kind--making it a the home for the holidays.

Plus we had Rudolph. My mom found a stuffed deer head above the beer cooler in dad's bar. The bar was, and I think still is called, The Chief Bar. During the holiday season, all kinds of little displays showed up from the liquor salesmen. One had a big red flashing bulb. Mom spotted that flashing red bulb and it was gone before the holiday liquor bottles were. She taped it to the stuffed dear head's nose and hung it on the porch. Instant Rudolph, blinking red nose and all.

People from all over drove buy on snowy nights to see Rudolph and her stuffed santa. The Cedar County News did a story about her creativity. It was the perfect touch to the smell of sugar cookies which filled every drafty corner of that big old house. And if you stopped to look at Rudolph, you couldn't miss the floor to ceiling Christmas tree in the bay windows. Late into the night, the snow glistened from the glow of the tree.

But now the house is empty. It's tied up in a typica American divorce tragedy. It stands in darkness. Mom would have hated that.

Mom and dad are gone and I am an old goat who feels awful that one of the most wonderful places ever stands dark and drafty in the cold Nebraska winter.

I hate the darkness, too. Maybe Christmas Eve I will go up there, buy a cup of hot chocolate and a sugar cookie and sit on the old porch railing, whisper Silent Night, and listen to the wind in the trees.

God Bless you Mom and Dad.