Well, they are leaving today after a month-long visit. The time has come, I suppose, but I will miss them terribly. I've gotten used to having them around, and the place will seem empty without their smiling faces. Besides, they haven't been a bit of trouble, and their presence among us only enhanced our family's Advent and Christmas season.
I am speaking, of course, about our stunning array of Christmas photos — sent from around the country by loving friends and family.
Even now I am smiling as I carefully remove each image from our two bulletin boards. We received close to one hundred family photos from friends and relatives this year, and I am amazed to consider the love and care needed to stage, snap, develop, write, address, stamp, and mail them all. For every single one of these cheerful images, there is a parent, usually Mom, working, often frantically, behind the scenes. Like me, she is in love with her children, and the best way she can possibly imagine of sending good cheer to others is by sharing those faces, the most beautiful faces in the world.
There are many different families represented in our collection. Large families with infants teetering on the laps of siblings, small families with one beaming "pride and joy," new families with red-velvet-and-lace garbed "first" babies, happy families with smiling fathers and mothers, dog-loving families with Fido front and center, prosperous families with professional portraits in foil-lined envelopes, religious families with children surrounding the Nativity. Each one has a merry tale to tell.
Some sad stories too lie hidden in these photos. This blue-eyed baby in a cowboy costume lost his only brother this year, a precious ten year old who finally succumbed to a lifelong illness. Will the little guy even remember him, I wonder? And what about the families who should have had newborn infants gracing their photos this year? I cannot help but grieve thinking of the bitter loss of miscarriage. These families have felt the sting of tragedy, yet someone, again probably Mom, found within her the strength to send out not just Christmas cards, but photos. Someone rose above grief and disappointment to share with us her greatest treasures. These images are worth that much more because they are a testament to hope winning over despair.
Many of our pictures have another striking aspect as well. Look, here are the son and daughter of my childhood playmate. With over a thousand miles between us, I have never met these young ones in person, yet, I distinctly recall that very same little girl ringing my doorbell to invite me to play not so long ago. This pile of photos shows my children's many beautiful cousins. Here and there, in eyes and smiles, I catch glimpses of my husband's own large, happy family. What an astounding thing it is to see those faces and forms return to adorn a new generation.
Musing about family resemblance calls to mind these lines from Thomas Hardy's "Heredity:"
I am the family face. Flesh perishes. I live on,
Projecting trait and trace, through time to times anon
And leaping from place to place, over oblivion.
The years-heired feature that can, in cure and voice and eye
Despise the human span, of durance-that is I
The eternal thing in man, that heeds no call to die.
These are thought provoking words, and yet Hardy misses the mark. The "family face," though beautiful and heart warming to behold in these young ones, is certainly not "[t]he eternal thing in man." The legacy we must leave our children is not blue eyes and straight teeth, for these things are passing away with all speed, no matter how many descendants we have. The mark of the "family face" must be left on the only thing that truly "heeds no call to die," their eternal souls.
According to the Catechism:
"In our own time, in a world often alien and even hostile to faith, believing families are of primary importance as centers of living, radiant faith. For this reason, the Second Vatican Council, using an ancient expression, calls the family the Ecclesia domestica [the Domestic Church]. It is in the bosom of the family that parents are 'by word and example . . . the first heralds of the faith with regard to their children.'" (CCC, Section 1656.)
I am deeply grateful that so many friends and family took the time to send a postcard from their Domestic Churches to us this Christmas. Our scrapbook will be as full as our hearts, and we will not forget to pray for these loved ones throughout the year.
