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Christmas In 2021 And 1976
I apologize in advance for any typos I fail to catch.
Let me first begin with some background. The time period I call the Summer of 1976 began, for me, on October 13, 1975, when I decided I wanted to write poetry rather than science fiction/horror/murder mysteries (the three genres that had dominated the earler part of my adolescence) and it ended on December 31, 1976. Until Saturday, July 10th, 1976, the period seemed like a sequence of intense experiences separated by several days at a time. But on July 10th, when my First Beloved helped me to find my c.b. handle (we had purchased our Midland c.b. the night before)---which was Starwatcher---the intensity of experience became a daily blessing: each day, even those with dismal weather, even those during the enforced separation from my Beloved which was brought about by the first term of my freshman year at college (that term lasting from September 9th through November 23rd, 1976) had a kind of shimmer or glow.
When I returned from college on November 23rd, 1976, the intensity accelerated even further---when I was welcomed back to c.b. channel 22, and then picked up my First Beloved at a fastfood jobsite and learned that nothing had changed. (I did not know that, on the first or second Friday of December, my Beloved would actually undress---changing "work uniform" to date-night clothing---in front of me).
Due to the intricate patterns of the Gregorian calendar, the synchronization of the days and dates that 1976 featured, recurrences are seen every six, five, and eleven years. 2021 has been one such year; 2027, which I do not expect to live to see, will be another. Then, if my calculations are correct, it will not come back again until 2038; I am adamantly sure I will not live to see that.
As yesterday, so Christmas of 1976 also fell on a Saturday. On that day, in 1976, my parents were able to put aside their judgementalism and provided me two gifts which I had not expected to receive---a pair of white painter's pants (popular, that year, on college campuses and high schools) and a copy of Peter Frampton's album, Comes Alive. Ckad in my new painter's pants, I spent part of the morning in my room, with my headphones, listening over and over to my favorite Frampton song, "Baby, I Love Your Way." I had acquired the 45rpm during that first term in college; and that version, which was also played repeatedly on WIZE 1340, had truncated the second verse, so that I heard the whole song on Christmas Day, Saturday, 1976. The second verse remains, for me, one of the most poetic lyrics I have ever heard; only Leonard Cohen's song, "Alexandra Leaving," even approaches that intensity. It spoke to me of my Beloved; it still does.
The fullest gift of that Christmas Day was delivered by our local newspaper's morning edition which, for that day's editorial cartoon, had dispensed with political commented and simply showed a line drawing of the Magi following the Star of Bethlehem---and the caption of the cartoon was THE STARWATCHERS. I very nearly fell out of my chair, during brunch, as my family and I read different sections of the paper. Later, I clipped that picture and kept it in a scrapbook I had filled with items from the Summer of 1976---a scrapbook taken from me by a jealous companion some years later. However, I have learned that our local library has each day's newspaper pages---including that day's---on microfilm, which can be printed. If and when my affliction lightens, I am going to attempt to acquire a copy again.
The appellation or epithet, Starwatcher, evolved to Starward after I encountered that word, for the first time, in a sonnet about Saint Benedict written by the great Christian poet, Thomas Jones, Jr. But the meaning is the same. Yesterday, with another set of headphones, I listened to the Frampton song again, with the same effect.
I believe that 2021 has given me my final experience of the synchronicity of days to dates that 1976 featured. I am grateful for that and, though the feeling is both wistful and bittersweet, it is only a finality in this life. One of the great aspects and effects of the Orthodox Faith, especially when expressed Liturgically, is its sense of the reality of Heaven. My sense of Heaven has changed from what it had been before---too thin, too watered down, too truncated, and far more about judgement than about joy. Now, as I view it through Orthodoxy, I can easily and gladly believe that the beauties and delights of the Summer of 1976, which I remember so fondly in 2021, will be present in some form in Christ's Heavenly Kingdom, which will last for ages of ages.
