Epilogue

We never talked to each other about what happened to us that Christmas—we still weren’t much for telling our feelings in my family—and I won’t pretend that it solved everything between my father and me. We continued to do enthusiastic battle for another twenty years. But after that, each of us knew that there was a person somewhere behind the defenses on the other side, and we never forgot it.

We had a Christmas tree every year after that. Even after my grandmother had died and I had moved away to the city, and my father was there all alone, he would have a tree waiting in the living room when I came home for Christmas, and we would decorate it together. And when it was all finished, I would unwrap the star and put it on the top. Then we would both stand back and admire it and not say much, but I know we were both thinking of that Christmas in 1946.