A Blue Christmas on the Mountain

WHITE MOUNTAINS A Blue Christmas on the Mountain

From alpine forests of spruce, fir and aspen to stately stands of ponderosa pine, the White Mountains are a land of eternal Christmas.

The mountains are sacred to the N'dee, the Apache people. They are sacred to all of us who live here. We call our home "the Mountain." It gives us beauty, peace and wisdom for the asking.

In Arizona's high country, all seasons have a splendor of their own, but the Mountain shines brightest at Christmastime. Fifty-foot ponderosas outside businesses are draped with lights. Families go to the forest to cut trees for their homes. People from Mexico open up their condos for a week of skiing and shopping. Communities produce electric-light parades, Christmas pageants, home tours, crowded stores and Santa Claus in a helicopter. A jet flying over sees little towns blinking like stars in the darkness. Nowhere is the Christmas Spirit more joyfully observed than here.

But for many years in the midst of all this goodwill, the Spirit of Christmas was lost on me. I dreaded Christmas. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to sleep through it. Christmas only made me think of all the people I loved who were gone.

When my kids were growing up, I did my best to get into the spirit of things. When they were grown and I was alone, I stopped pretending. Even though the old boxes came down from the attic and I tacked up pine boughs and strung lights across my porch, my heart wasn't in it. To make matters worse, friends and relatives kept inviting me over for Christmas dinner so I wouldn't be alone. But I wanted to be alone, to spend the day quietly waiting for it to pass. My dogs and cat didn't care if I wasn't cheerful as long as they had toys in their stockings.

About 10 years ago, God gave me an attitude adjustment for Christmas.

No matter how blue I felt, I always went to church on Christmas Eve. Our little church was packed shoulder-to-shoulder for Midnight Mass. I was singing in the choir. Candles glowed, incense wafted, poinsettias circled the altar. A big Douglas fir glittered with lights beside a crèche of the Nativity. The Light of the World slept in his mother's arms.

After Mass my daughter's in-laws invited me over for tamales and posole, the traditional Christmas Eve feast in the Spanish Southwest. They had a big, happy, rowdy extended family and lots of friends. I usually joined them, but that night I was too depressed. I told my daughter I wanted to go home and go to bed.

It was about 1:30 A.M. when I left the church. A calm snow was falling. The bars were closed, and most of the Christmas lights were out around town. My neighborhood was dark except for my porchlight. When I was almost to my driveway, I noticed a lump covered with snow in the middle of the road. I thought it had been dropped off somebody's truck, so I got out to move it. I brushed off some snow and saw long black hair. I stopped breathing. The lump groaned. It was a young woman all curled up. I tried to lift her up.

"Leave me alone. I want to die," she slurred.

I drew a deep breath and grabbed her arms again. "You picked a bad place," I said. "The highway is back there."

She opened her eyes. She wasn't very big, so I grabbed her around the middle and manhandled her into my warm pickup. "I'll take you home," I said. "Where do you live?"

"Whiteriver," she said. She fumbled in her jacket, brought out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, then dropped it on the floor.

I picked it up. "You're gonna burn up my truck," I said.

I turned around and headed down the road toward Whiteriver. It was snowing hard. About 2 miles past Hon-Dah Junction, she started laughing. "I don't want to go to Whiteriver," she said.I pulled over. "Why did you tell me you live there?" I asked.

"Okay. No more games. Where do you want to go? I'm tired."She stared straight ahead for a while, then said, "Do you know Kaia?"

"I know her. Do you want to go there?"

"Sure. Take me to Kaia's," she said.

The lump groaned. It was a young woman all curled up. I tried to lift her up. 'Leave me alone. I want to die.' We crept along on the snowy road all the way to McNary. She'd sobered up enough to give me directions. I drove up to the house and honked. The porchlight went on and a woman came out.

"She was passed out on the road in front of my house," I said.

"I almost ran over her. Can she stay here?"

"Yes. Thank you. I'll take care of her," Kaia said.

We got her out of the truck and into the house. When I got home, it was 3:30 A.M. and my fire was nearly out. I built up the fire and sat in the recliner a while, petting my cat. A smile came over my face.

The sun on fresh snow was dazzling the next day. I drove to McNary to see how the lump was doing. Kaia came out and thanked me again. She said, "I've known this girl a long time, and I've never known her to drink. She broke up with her boyfriend."

I never knew the name of the woman who cured my Christmas blues.

Jo Baeza has lived in Arizona's White Mountains for 40 years as a teacher, editor, freelance writer, and reporter and columnist for the White Mountain Independent. She lives in a woodsy old house with two dogs and a 17-yearold acrobatic cat.