Our Town

My mother and I decorated the Christmas tree yesterday.

We celebrate with less pomp and give fewer gifts every passing year. Lazily erecting a Christmas tree seems the only way to maintain a scrap of the ecstatic joy we felt when my brother and I were little children. That's growing up - clinging to the essence of Christmas when you've grown up to be a bah-humbug sort. It's practically a rite of passage.

It's true that the joy I take in the season has increased ever since I moved to Finland, however. Being close to the people I left behind is an exciting prospect in and of itself.

"Don't clump the ornaments,"my mother said, when she saw that I had placed a snowman too close to a small green sphere. I moved it, knowing that she'd move it herself if I refused.

Moments later, she held up a small reindeer made of clothespins. "1989," she said. "This must be from preschool. Is it yours or your brother's?"

"It must be mine," I said. "I was four in 1989."

"Here's one of Jimmy's," she said, and handed me a laminated paper disk with my brother's picture in the center. On the back it read, 'Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad. Love, Jimmy. 1995.'

I looked at my little brother, asleep on the couch next to us, shirking his duties so blatantly as we slaved to create the atmosphere of Christmas, and I just about cried. Though I didn't, I was close. We grew up. We grew to feel indifferent about Christmas. We grew into adulthood, and my mother now shows us tokens from our childhood, reminding us of how far we've come and how well we've lived. We're lucky to have lived long enough to grow into cynicism.

If it had been my town, I'm sure I'd have written something nearly identical to this piece in the Atlantic. In New England, the love we feel for our little towns is both irrational and immutable. These towns house our best memories, and they embody our first impressions of the world. Though I have often thought that places like Newtown are merely suburbs of New York City, and that the experience, that first glimpse of life is somehow different there than it is here, one person shatters that misconception. She is Pat Llodra, first selectwoman of Newtown, and former principal of my high school. Though I never knew it (and probably never cared to know, since I was inclined to resent principals at that age), she commuted 50 miles to Northwestern Regional #7 every day. I assumed she was one of ours, but she was always one of theirs.

Mrs. Llodra reminds me that, within state lines, 50 miles really isn't so far after all. And if she isn't evidence enough of that, our collective devastation most certainly is. It could have been our little town that was made infamous, that was taken from us in the rage of a single morning.

To the people of Newtown: this tragedy has taken 20 of your children and six of your teachers. Please, don't let it take your town's identity, and don't let it usurp your best memories.