Christmas on Storrow Drive
written by: Wendy Palmer
Divorce wasn’t explained well in the fifties, not to children. I was seven, oldest of three, and no one said a word but suddenly our father was living in a dark basement apartment on Beacon Street in Boston, a half hour car ride away from our house.
Every Sunday he picked us up and off we’d go in his black VW Beetle with the small back window and the directional arms that flipped up outside the car.
We’d go to the Museum of Fine Arts or the Museum of Science or the Harvard museums. We saw glass flowers and dinosaurs, went to the Mapparium and walked inside the world. Sometimes we went to the park, sometimes we just played cards.
He played classical records while he made us Welsh rarebit on toast or tuna melts for supper, then read us a chapter of whatever book was our Sunday book.
After dark, he drove us home along Storrow Drive, the city reflected in the Charles River alongside. Lots to look at, not much to say. Red and white lines of headlights and tail lights traveled with us. The White Fuel sign in Kenmore Square was far enough in the distance to watch the lights gush up through the oil well and burst into a beautiful shower of white three times before we passed it, more if traffic was bad.
Bad traffic was fine with us, especially around Christmas, riding down Storrow Drive singing carols. Dad knew every verse of every song, even harmonized on some. I never asked him how he learned them. He never went to church.
We knew them all, sang non-stop the entire ride, warm and snug in the little black bug, bundled for winter, bumping into each other around the curves in the road, no seatbelts then. Christmas lights on buildings and on the water. It seems it was always snowing.
“Joy to the World” and “The First Noel” have four verses. My favorite, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” has five. “We Three Kings” has five. We each got our own verse in that one, had to sing it solo. I had gold, as the oldest. “Gold I bring, to crown him again, King forever, ceasing never.” “Good King Wenceslas” has five verses too, but that one’s easier since it tells a story. “Silent Night” only has three but we learned it in French and German, too. “O Holy Night,” “Away in a Manger.” A raucous “Deck the Halls.” “Jingle Bells,” of course. “O Come All Ye Faithful,” building carefully to the crescendo at the end. Even now, decades later, I can sing all the verses.
We saw him on Christmas Day of course, he came to our house after our morning Christmas with Mom and brought presents, but it was quiet, our parents barely spoke and sometimes one just left the room. Andy Williams or Perry Como crooned on the radio but the silence was louder.
Unlike the radio, we didn’t suddenly silence Christmas music on December 26. We sang in the car for a few more weeks, especially if it was snowing, barreling along Storrow Drive, the windows steamed with our breath, one little car among many, filled with music.
- Christmas on Storrow Drive - December 26, 2024
- The Actual Date of Christmas - December 18, 2020
