Visitors

Yesterday we said good-bye to our visitors that have been with us for the past week. Chris and Krista returned to Chicago after spending Christmas with us. There is something very special about the anticipation of seeing family during the holiday season. However, as many of you know, the visit is soon over and then you have to say good-bye. I believe the technical explanation of what this feels like is, "It hurts like stink!"

As Krista said to me at the airport yesterday afternoon, "This wouldn't hurt so much if we didn't love each other the way we do."

As the Dufflepuds said in C. S. Lewis' book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, "That's right! That's right! A truer word has never been spoken."

Of course, there are different types of visitors. It hurts when some of them arrive (and stay) and, as I have already mentioned, it really hurts when some visitors leave.

I grew up in a family where you did one of two things on Sundays and holidays. You either received visitors or you "went visiting." Staying home and reading a good book (while not answering your doorbell) was not an option with which I was familiar. This may be why I read so few good books as a child.

We even turned family vacations into extended visits. We would go to northern Minnesota and visit with relatives once or twice removed. As a child I quickly decided that if a relative could not easily be described in terms of cousin, aunt or uncle or long-lost grandparents, then it was better not to ask for detailed explanations. It was easier to limit oneself to, "Yes, I am enjoying school. I learned to swim this year. My sisters treat me well."

If said with an angelic expression, the final statement could result in my sisters actually treating me in said fashion. However, there were never any guarantees.

Once we traveled across the country accompanied by my great aunt while visiting other relatives and friends all the way to California. I am not making this up! I think the only place my parents didn't know someone was in Reno, Nevada, and that was probably due to the fact that you could actually gamble there. The only relatives I had that "threw good money after bad" drove something other than John Deere tractors... and there were precious few of them.

Of course we were also the recipients of visits by distant relatives. Many of them were making the pilgrimage back to Minnesota to show their children where they grew up and, possibly, why they left.

I know this is hard for some of you to believe, but even as a child I was outspoken. Sometimes my parents spent as long preparing me for a visit as they did actually cleaning house or baking special desserts. "Woody, please don't bring up your current politics with them. It wouldn't be nice." Being nice in Minnesota was an important cultural value that apparently had a hard time sticking with me.

Once, when my mother was preparing to receive one of those "relatives-not-easily-explained," she invested special time helping me to understand that our visitor was a bit "different." In my mother's lexicon, being different was tantamount to being an alien from outer space. And, to be honest, he had gone out east to live, so there might have been some truth to her statement.

I will never forget the day when we were returning from Lake City or Zumbro Falls or some other cultural Mecca of the Midwest. For our relative it had been a visit within a visit. In our family this was probably the equivalent of being existentially self-actualized.

I had apparently been at my best behavior. My mother let down her guard and allowed me to sit with our guest in the front seat as she drove. By this time I was enthralled with him. He knew about books and had even read many of them. He had new ideas. He talked to me in a serious fashion and asked my opinion about current events. Finally, I couldn't hold it in. I turned to my mother and said, "Mom, I don't know what you were talking about. He isn't weird."

It may have been the closest that my mother ever came to driving off the road. My guess is that it turned into one of the few visits in her experience that couldn't end fast enough. I certainly do not remember us making any return visits of our own to this particular relative out east.

I trust you had some good visits during these holidays. I hope you have the privilege of saying with us, "it hurt more to say good-bye than it did to say hello." I sincerely hope that you are able to look forward to some special visits in this new year and that all of your good-byes will only hurt because you love each other so much.