One More Blessing to Count

I still cry -- or perhaps tears have only recently come. It isn't so much the story line of the movie as it is its part in the story line of my life. At least that's all I can guess. I don't know how many times I have watched White Christmas, but knowing that it was released in 1954 and I was born in 1956, suffice it to say that I have been watching it forever. I'm not sure my brother was ever that enthralled by it, but I remember watching it with my parents year after year back in those days when it aired during prime time. Later, during a span when broadcasters apparently saw it as more quaint than relevant, I crept out of bed to watch it during the wee hours of the night long after my parents had gone to bed. I can remember stoking the still-red coals in the fireplace into fresh flame and adding a new log or two, and nestling down in front of the hearth with a pillow and a blanket, humming along while Vera Ellen and Rosemary Clooney sang about their lives as Sisters, Danny Kaye observed how The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing, Rosemary lamented how Love, You Didn't Do Right By Me, and Bing Crosby evoked snow almost by magic out of a dry Vermont Christmas Eve singing White Christmas.

I'm sure there have been years when I somehow managed to miss it -- or inexplicably neglected to make time for it -- but those years have been few. Indeed, it was the allure of this movie that that sowed the seeds of intrigue leading to my choice of Vermont for the destination of our honeymoon some 12 years ago. By now we have even managed to watch the movie in Vermont more times than one. "Snow, snow, snow, snow...it won't be long until we'll all be there with snow..."

And so it was that we set aside the time yesterday to slide in the DVD and settle in for the annual experience. It felt like a double delight since we opted to stay home this holiday season. Our own private cinematic taste of Vermont -- the holiday holy land for us far moreso than the North Pole. And true to form, as soon as the General -- against his will -- descended the steps in his uniform for the grand finale of the show, tears starting streaming down my face.

As I say, it's not so much because the show is that touching. Sure, it's warm and tender and touching in many ways, but by now I know most of the lines and the songs by heart. There is even one less desirable one that, through the gift of digital tracking, I now choose to skip right over. If it were the movie alone, its capacity to "touch" surely would have long since worn off.

No, I think the tears have more to do with the thread this single movie weaves throughout the entirety of my life. I can't think of much else -- if anything -- that has endured with me from my very beginning. Year after year, in one location or another; broadcast, videotape, and now DVD; always and reliably there, since I myself was a child on through the time when I had children of my own and now that they are grown. Bing and Danny and Vera and Rosemary have become almost family -- no, more like organs of my body --and this song something like the beat of my heart.

It is, I suppose, simple nostalgia, but it feels like more than that -- a touchstone, perhaps, somehow recalling everywhere I've been, how I peculiarly dream, and who I uniquely am. And I am grateful for it...

...One more blessing to count, in those worrisome nights when I can't sleep, instead of sheep.