NEW YEAR'S HUGS

Olivia asked me yesterday as we were in the pool on our seventh straight hot summer’s day, “Does every country celebrate the new year?”

Since moving to Brazil all of us, but especially our kids, have had to discover what holidays are the same here, which ones are different, and the ones that lie somewhere in between.

New Year’s might be an in-between. On the evening of our first New Year’s Eve we left around supper time to walk to one of the best restaurants in our neighborhood. On the way a friend asked us where we were going and when we answered he told us that everywhere would be closed because it’s New Year’s Eve. “People spend time with their families, not out at restaurants,” he said.

Sure enough, about three minutes later we walked to a strip of three restaurants near our home. All of them were closed. We should have known better. The entire week between Christmas and New Year’s we found that most places were closed, except shopping malls and big-box stores. This isn’t a bad thing by any means. It’s just different. In America New Year’s Eve can involve family, friends, home, restaurants, and any mix of all three.

For my family New Year’s Eve also meant Dad’s birthday. Sometimes we’d throw a party for him, especially on important birthdays like when he turned 40 in 1988 and the big gift was a CD player. Other years we’d just have grandparents over as my grandma would deliver her patented German chocolate cake to him, Dad’s favorite.

The last New Year’s Eve I shared with my Dad was in 2010. We went to a favorite Mexican restaurant near my parents’ home and gifted him with a bit of a joke: Superman underwear briefs. I don’t think he ever wore them.

New Year’s Day is one of my favorite holidays. Like the Jewish calendar beginning the day at sundown and the celebration and rest that it brings, I love that we start each calendar year with a holiday. A day to do nothing. To relax. To eat muffins in the morning and Jones-recipe meatballs in the afternoon. Watch football on television. And just stay home. I still love New Year’s Day.

But the day before has become a little cursed for me. Yes, there’s a celebration to be had leading up to midnight. Yes, we’ll tune into Times Square, or now Copacabana Beach on the television. We’ll have a toast and a kiss at midnight. And all that is fine.

But it’s also Dad’s birthday. He’s been dead nearly eight years now. When I look back my memories of him are now about the same as my grandparents. That’s not to diminish my grandparents. I was blessed to have four of them who were part of my life growing up. But my Dad died pretty much right after they did. Eight years later I try to think of his laugh, his presence, his embrace, his voice. And it seems so distant.

This morning I was listening to the radio and a singer talked about all the special places in New York City, reminiscing where she grew up and fell in love. When Dad died I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the death of my home too.

The house at 7120 Glenwood belongs to somebody else now. I remember my wedding day, waking up in that home about to start a family of my own, returning back there often with my own family. My Dad, when he wasn’t working was stationed in his oversized recliner.

Inside Kansas City’s Union Station there is a great hall, but if you turn the corner you can find a smaller, quieter space. It was there that I looked in a girl’s big brown eyes as we hugged and I told her for the first time that I loved her.

Across the street from there is the shopping mall my parents would take my sister and I every Christmas week to buy candy and look at the shops. The Mayor’s Christmas tree towers over it across the street with an ice skating rink below. Sometimes we’d even catch a movie.

Not far from there is the outside shopping mall, famous for its Christmas lights. Some years we’d join thousands of others on Thanksgiving night to see them turn on. Other years we’d hear Dad promise that we’d go by there at least once before they were turned off in January.

When I became a pastor I learned about the New Year’s Eve tradition of our new church. A lot of our members were baptized at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The church would always have a huge celebration with this big baptismal ceremony as its centerpiece.

Over the years it turned to a game night and a teen lock-in or sometimes both. Some years I even tried to introduce a talent show, which was a lot of fun, but as with many things, hard to turn into an annual tradition on a night already full of events.

But no matter what my New Year’s Eve held, there would inevitably be a time of lamenting, weeping, and loss. Often alone. How weird is it to excuse myself from a party to go cry? But I’ve done it more than once.

If that’s not the definition of bittersweet, I don’t know what is.

Today is my second New Year’s Eve in Brazil. We now know better than to try to go out today. We’ve got the groceries bought and will have a nice time at home. I’ve even got tomorrow’s meatballs prepped. You can’t find water chestnuts here, so we’re giving palm hearts a try instead. And I’ve already cried. Alone. I probably will again before the day is done.

Dad would’ve turned 71 today. That’s a big number, just as 2020 will be in the coming hours.

No matter how many tears slowly pour down my cheek, how many meatballs I prepare, how often I stare at his painting, see his pictures, or try to force his memories into my head today – he’s still dead.

I think of the outrageousness of the Christian faith that I not only believe God can raise the dead to new life, but that he promises he actually will.

In Brazil a common way to end a message is to say abraços, “hugs.” Dad gave some of the best hugs around, given his size and strength. When I preached my first Sunday sermon as a pastor he was there. And soon after the worship service ended we had lunch and then he and Mom returned home to Kansas City.

The last thing he did before getting into his truck is he hugged me in my entryway longer and tighter than he’d ever hugged me before. I wonder if he knew then just how sick he was. That long embrace was the last time I’d be with my Dad when he was healthy enough to stand up.

And yet with resurrection I believe we’ll one day hug again. And this time I won’t ever want to let go.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Abraços