Sonja Percy was exhausted. She had spent most of the day overseeing the final time that the family's enormous Christmas tree would be erected in their home of nearly 30 years. Kasie Hines son and his Navy buddies had been granted liberty from their aircraft carrier after their tour of duty in the Suez Canal. Three of the young men had joined him in unpacking and testing the many Christmas lights, ornaments, and other items they had collected over the years.
Sonja had scrutinized the items that she wanted to keep and placed them on the fireplace mantle. She instructed the sailors how to hang the various lights and bulbs on the mammoth tree. The plan was that the three children could remove the items that they wanted and take them back to their own homes.
The four sailors returned the next day to pack up some of the library. The Lasalles had spent the past month marking the printed materials that they would take with them to Alabama. A friend of Chris had already perused the books to identify any valuable items. He found three of Beau Lasalle's books that were first editions. Lasalle still did not know how they came into his possession. He took dozen others that were quite valuable as well.
Lasalle was tickled when he brought beverages in for them and found them thumbing through a number of baby books while giving Jelani the 'business'. The young sailors departed the house after moving most of the boxes to the third stall in the garage where the thrift shop crew would have quick access to them when they came for the Friday morning pickup. Lasalle walked through the house totally surprised at how they had assembled the many moving boxes so quickly with the eight strong hands of the young men.
Chris and Sonja sat down to eat their last quail that had been in the freezer. Lasalle enjoyed the bird while his wife tolerated it. The children had always turned up their nose at the wild birds so they felt free to empty the freezer leaving just one last turkey that they would eat on Christmas Day.
The two of them headed for bed early knowing that they would have to be up late the next evening to meet Dustin's international flight from Brussels. He had garnered the dream job with the Proximus after he completed his undergraduate degree and was certified as a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner. His parent's Will had set aside the major portion of their death benefit to be paid out to him at 25 and 30. He had invested the first allocation and tripled it in three years.
Thankfully his flight was on time. Like his 'surrogate' mother, he retired to his bed for almost two days to get himself on a schedule that his body tolerate. Two days later, CJ and his wife and Olivia and her husband flew in.
The house was again alive with music, loud laughter, and the constant ringing of the doorbell. Many of their classmates stopped in to see their friends and their parents.
The family attended the early service this year. Sonja had begged off singing at this years' services having decided that she would be too emotional to sing. Of course, she was right. Tears started to spill from her eyes as 12 year-old Leah Newton came to the microphone to sing "Sweet Little Jesus Boy".
Leah's mother's family lived on the other side of the Lasalles. Sonja had encountered the then seven-month-old in the grocery store one busy December Saturday giving her mother fits as she tried to shop. Sonja offered to hold the little girl and began to sing the very same song to sooth the crying child. Months later Sonja saw the now toddler in the front yard with her dad. He looked surprise when Sonja called the child by name. She then recounted the December interaction to him. "Do you remember my song baby girl" and she began to sing it again.
"What? Oh, that is where that song came from! My wife played it over and over for Leah's first Christmas.
Almost a decade had passed by when Sonja was in the back yard checking on her raspberry bushes on a warm December Day. She was halted for a moment by a piano playing. A smile came to her face as she realized that she knew the song. It was the same one that she had sang to a crying little baby nearly ten years before.
Leah's mother found the Lasalles before they left the facility. "Hello Mrs. Lasalle. Did you enjoy my daughter's singing our song?"
"Yes Jenny." Sonja replied as she hugged her tightly.
The Lasalles had a light snack along with homemade ice cream made with strawberries raised in the backyard. "Well, my lovelies" Sonja started out. "You know that this is our last Christmas in this house John and some of his friends came over and put up the big tree and packed all the books from that library that we will be taking with us to Alabama. We want you to take whatever you want from the tree, the bookshelves, and the walls. There are boxes, rolls of sealing tape and news wrap on the table in the library for you to package your selections. Whatever is left will be packed and added to the boxes in the garage and taken to the thrift shop on the base at Joint Base Anaconda-Bolling. It was well past midnight when the last carton was taped shut.
Christmas morning found the house bustling once again. Sonja had stuffed the turkey while they were busy carrying the boxes to the garage from the night before. Kasie, Maliki, Jelani and their daughter Christina joined them for dinner.
CJ had collected some of their Christmas photos and sent it to the large TV screen where they could all watch and laughed at so many pictures of all of them in the room. Christopher looked at Sonja with that wide Lasalle smile on his face as he recalled every Merry Christmas that they had spent in the house.
"Anything else City Mouse" Lasalle asked his wife before he headed for the bedroom?
"No, nothing that cannot wait until tomorrow. The children washed all the dishes but wait honey" she said. "Walk with me. Remember the first time we walked through that door over there? How you looked at the garage and just knew you could get a good-sized set of weights in there? When Junior threw his baseball though the window. When the first scorpion ran out of my suitcase in the family room after I had warned you to open it outside on the step in the snow? Where did the time go Butch?"
"I cannot tell you the answer to that question my love, but I do know that I am looking forward to our next Merry Christmas together in our new home."
At those words Christopher and Sonja head toward their bedroom to once again fall asleep in the arms of the love of their lives.
YOU ARE READING
Our Merry Christmas
Hayran KurguWe learned early on just how much Chris LaSalle loved Christmas so it would only be fitting that the day would play pivotal in his love life as well.
