It seemed to get dark earlier today than usual. Of course, the darkness always settled in early in the winter, but today seemed especially gloomy. The clouds were heavy and a small wind whipped up the leaves that had settled on my scruffy little yard.  I sighed. I really didn’t want to make the trip to see Grandma today, but I knew I should. The more I thought about it the guiltier I felt for even considering missing our date. It was a drive of an hour and a half during which I thought a lot about Christmases past.

I always went to Grandma’s house at Christmas time when I was a little girl. It was a tiny house on a cramped lot in a busy city, but I loved it there, mostly because she always brought out a glass dish full of her favorite seasonal treat—ribbon candy. At her house, I could eat all of it I wanted and most days I’d have one sticky piece after another while Grandma and I would play games or cook or bake. Lately, though, it was harder and harder to find the really good thin, authentic ribbon candy shaped in an endless “S” with two or three colors in it. It seemed to be fading out of existence, just like Grandma was doing.

As I drove toward the nursing home, I felt heavy with emotion. This wasn’t her home, not really. This is where residents shuffled themselves through the hallways in their wheel chairs. Sometimes they yelled out or cried piteously. I hated going there, but I was the only grandchild around and no one else was going to visit her. After all, Christmas was a couple of weeks away and I wanted to preserve one of the last vestiges of nostalgia that I could. She wasn’t doing all that well and I wasn’t ready to let go of my grandma of the past, either.

This would be my first Christmas as a single adult in over 20 years and I wasn’t ready for that. My husband had left because he decided he would rather be living with someone else and although my daughters were older, they didn’t like it nor completely understand. So, they grumbled and fought. They complained about the house we lived in and about what they needed and wanted. They didn’t like the warm winters in Southern California and complained about it not being cold and snowy like it was when they were little and we were one big happy family making snowmen and cocoa at this time of year. They would say things like, “How can it be Christmas when it’s 72 degrees outside?” or, “Why did we ever move here?” I would give them some easy assurance that everything was fine and this was going to be a great Christmas, nonetheless.

By the time I got to Grandma’s room, someone was feeding her a dinner of pureed vegetables, mashed potatoes and something else that didn’t look a bit appetizing. She was perched on the side of her bed and smiled at me when I walked in. I told the attendant that I’d take over and sat down with her. “How are you doing today, Grandma?” I said as I picked up her spoon and dipped it in the potatoes.

When she was younger, Grandma was 5 foot 10 and bulky. Almost all my life she was the tallest woman I knew and had a vibrancy about her that I was drawn to. Now she was smaller than me with pale pink skin and white hair. She smiled sadly, “I’m so glad you’re here, honey,” she mumbled. “Mrs. Peterson, my roommate left a few days ago and I’m all alone. But I think they’ll move someone in here in real soon,” she said in a soft Texas drawl.

“Oh, did her family come and take her home?” I asked

“No, Darlin’, she passed away.” Grandma turned her head a little and nodded towards the empty bed. “It’s just as well. Nobody ever came to see her anyway. But they let me keep her little Christmas tree.” She pointed to a 12-inch tall fake tree with tiny blinking lights next to her bed. “It’s kind of cute, isn’t it?” I smiled hollowly. It all seemed so contrived. This wasn’t where Grandma belonged; this wasn’t Christmas.

Grandma used to be young with fierce red hair and an attitude to match. Winters used to be cold and bundling up by the fire was cozy.  The children used to be small and filled with wonder and easily pleased with inexpensive gifts. I used to be married and have family around. It was all so different this year. I just wanted to go back! Back to when life was simpler and my dad would whoosh me up the steps to Grandma’s kitchen door and inside there’d be cousins and sisters and a big tree smashed up next to the front window. And ribbon candy in a pretty little glass dish on the coffee table, down low where all the children could reach it.

I only stayed a little while after dinner and then headed out to my car ready to drive home again.  I clutched my light coat around me as the wind blew past. It was completely dark and colder now than when I had arrived. “Well, at least it will feel more like Christmas!” I said to myself and thought that maybe the dip in temperature would make the girls feel better, too. I started out for home.

The freeway interchange confused me for a moment, since I was lost in thought about Christmases past, and I found myself headed south when I should have been going north. I was quickly in an area of town that I didn’t know, but I reasoned that if I just got off the freeway, there had to be an onramp close by and I could get going in the right direction. So I took the next exit, but there wasn’t an onramp and I began to wander through town. Follow the main road and head in the general direction you want to go, I told myself. There’ll be an onramp soon enough.

The houses were getting smaller, darker, drearier and more cramped. Corner liquor stores had bars on the windows and cheap flashing lights that spelled out “Merry Xmas”. I was paying full attention to where I was, now, and looking hopefully for an onramp when a young girl on the sidewalk caught my attention. The street light showed me that she was skipping. And singing and laughing and having a great time playing in the wind, apparently without a worry over what she wore or what she owned. The little house behind her seemed gray and forlorn, and there was a splash of warm light spilling out from between the front window drapes that weren’t completely closed. It was only an instant, but I got a sense of twinkling lights and coziness, and yet, destitution.

I didn’t mean to be judgmental, but I knew right then and there that for all I didn’t have, I still had more material goods than this girl did.

Maybe she was anticipating Christmas, maybe there was a great big Christmas tree at her house smashed up against the window. Maybe there were sisters and brothers and a grandma inside playing games; maybe there was one pretty glass dish filled with ribbon candy and they could all eat as much as they wanted. Maybe….

Almost immediately an onramp loomed up on my left and I quickly got back on the freeway heading home. I was looking forward to getting there and seeing my family again. I began to think of a few things I’d like to do for Christmas, like flying with the girls out to my sister’s place in the Tennessee hills for a wintery Christmas and what I could make or buy the girls as presents.

And then, astonishingly, something else happened. It was a flutter, just a bit of fluff, but I saw it: snow. In southern California. It was snowing in San Diego! Little drifts were accumulating along the edges of the freeway and in the median. I saw it illuminated in my headlights for a brief two miles, and then it was gone. But it was enough to remind me that as wonderful as Christmases past might have been, it’s my Christmas present and future that means the most.

Being satisfied with where I am in life—here and now—makes all the difference in the world. When I get home, I told myself, I’m going to hug my children, whether they want me to or not; I’ll ask them to play games, we’ll talk about going to Aunt Terri’s house and then… then I’m going to go out, find ribbon candy and put it out a little glass dish, even if I’m the only one who eats it!

“Ribbon Candy” is a fictional short story written by Jann Gentry (except for the part about snow in San Diego, that really did happen….)