This column was first published in the Dec. 13, 2019 edition of the Whitesboro News-Record. Dates and numbers have been updated for current accuracy.
My wife and I have spent a dozen Christmases together. This year will be number 17.
Our first Christmas was spent in the Neonatal ICU unit at Medical City Children’s Hospital. Our son was born in October. A sick preemie, he had multiple complications and didn’t first come home until the following May.
There were 204 days in the NICU and other lengthy follow-up hospital stays thereafter, so we were there for several holidays. I remember spending Christmas Eve 2007 in his ICU room listening to a Willie Nelson Christmas album and reading him Christmas cards from family members and friends.
The next Christmas, 2008, we had two more preemies in the hospital. Our twins were born early on Dec. 6, 2008. While they did not require transport to Dallas, they did spend the first three weeks of their lives in the Wilson N. Jones nursery.
All the while, my wife Jennifer was concerned the house would not be ready for Christmas. This was to be our first Christmas at home as a family and our home needed to look the part, she said. She wanted lights inside and out.
I promised the lights would be hung by the time she came home from the hospital.
She wanted red C-9s— the old type that are incandescent and really run up your electric bill.
“I’ve always thought they look classy,” she said.
“But you can’t just staple those up like twinkle lights,” I said. “You must have a clip for each light and make sure they are facing the same way. It is a lot of work.”
“I know, but you can handle it,” she said.
My mother found a supply of C-9s at Home Depot and stocked us up. I went to work.
Jennifer had gone to the doctor on a Wednesday with contractions. They admitted her to the hospital. The twins were not due for another nine weeks.
The meds never quelled the contractions. That Saturday, she had a placental abruption. Isabella and Mackenzie were born late that night via an emergency C-section.
Looking back, I realize how high the stakes were. We are blessed to not have had more complications. Hindsight is everything. When you are in the middle of something scary, you just focus on getting through it. You don’t have time to hash out all the variables.
So, there we were that first week in December 2008:
Jennifer was in the hospital with a distressed twin pregnancy. I was taking final exams and covering high school basketball games. Jackson was hooked up to feeding tubes and IV lines at home. I was back and forth and all over the place, and Jennifer wanted her red C-9s on the house.
Twice she sent me home from the hospital just to work on the lights.
We were living in the old Walden farmhouse north of Collinsville. It is single story but has a high, steep pitch. I scaled it. I got her lights hung.
She came home before the girls. We spent Christmas morning at home with Jackson before going to the hospital later that day.
We had one kid at home that year and the girls were fine— no complications to speak of— they weren’t in Dallas, at least. That was an improvement over the year prior. They just needed a little more personal nursing before the doctor would let them go home.
Then, Jackson got sick the day after Christmas. He contracted a blood infection.
We were off to Dallas with him, and he was admitted.
So, we spent the last week of 2008 with one baby in the hospital in Dallas and two babies in the hospital in Sherman.
We weren’t home much that week, but the red C-9s burned through the night on Old Town Road.
Jennifer made it clear that the Christmas tree would not come down and the lights would not be packed away until all three of her babies were home. That way, we could all have a proper Christmas together.
It was a tough week, but on Dec. 31, 2008, I brought Jackson home from Dallas and she brought Isabella and Mackenzie home from Sherman.
We celebrated New Year’s Eve in front of the Christmas tree, and I fell asleep in the recliner with three babies on me.
The following year, we had moved to a two-story house in town with an even taller, steeper roof. Her red C-9s went on that house.
The year after that, we lived in the middle of an 800-acre ranch outside Jefferson, Texas. By then, we had added a fourth baby to the bunch.
“No one can see our house from the road,” I told her. “We are a mile from anywhere, one must be driving up our driveway to see the house and no one comes out here to see us. No one will see the Christmas lights, so why put them up?”
“I’ll see them. We’ll see them,” she said.
So, I put her red C-9s on that house.
After that, there was a two story in Gordonville, a ranch style in Atlanta, Texas and a small rental in Tioga.
We moved around a lot and those red C-9s came with us. A strand would die and get repaired. Bulbs would burn out and we’d have a hard time replacing them with new ones late in the season— stores sold out and all. Fuses would blow and that was an even bigger pain.
Some years they’d have icicles dangling under them. Some years not, but the red C-9s have always been the trademark.
Until 2015, I’d always put them on houses we didn’t own.
We bought our home in October of that year and the red C-9s came with us.
That was the year my grandmother was so sick. She passed away four days before Christmas 2015.
I remember vividly thinking about her as I was hanging the lights that year.
Along the way, we’ve been told about the new LED technology.
“You can run all of your outside lights on one electrical outlet,” they say.
“The electric bill is cheaper,” they say.
“The lights are more durable. You don’t have to replace bulbs all the time, and— besides— that old technology is being phased out,” they say.
I’m not sure who “they” are, but they say it.
It is 2024 and the old red C-9s came out of storage and went up once again. I don’t think there is one strand from the original batch bought back in 2008 still left and burning. The others have been replaced over the years.
They still burn bright— once you tighten on the bulbs and check all the fuses.
Christmas memories come back to me while climbing up and down the ladder. My wife and her loving passion of instilling the good nature of the holiday season in our children.
My babies who aren’t babies anymore. My grandmother. All the houses. All the moves. All the great friends we made along the way. All the Christmases for which we were never ready but turned out great.
Our first Christmas in the Dallas hospital. Our second holiday season— with three kids in two different hospitals. The early days of our marriage with sick kids but being too tired to be too scared.
How we persisted.
My wife’s persistence that the house be ready for Christmas with the kids.
A guy has a lot of time to think when he spends the entire day on his roof.
We’ve told each other several times, “This year will be the last for the old C-9s. We’ll upgrade to LEDs next year. It’ll be an investment, but it’ll be worth it. They’ll last forever— at least that’s what they say.”
That’s what we said late last month when we opened the box.
But, I stopped to admire our work late the next night— both on the house and with the people who live within its walls.
I had the idea for this column and reflected upon my walk down memory lane the prior day.
Then I thought to myself, “I don’t know. Those old C-9s look pretty good. I think we can keep them around at least another year or two.”
Austin Lewter is the owner and publisher of The Whitesboro News-Record. He can be reached at [email protected].