Paradoxically, a Holiday Like Pioneers Had

As a daughter of Virginia, I long to return for the holidays. The Appalachian mountains are home to my great-aunt, grandmother, parents, sisters and nephews. But I am a Californian now, and going home for Christmas poses some challenges. So I’ve decided, by letting the airline’s deadlines for decent fares and seating slip away, that we will not make the trip. Although it hurts to miss out on cornbread, ham biscuits and my good-natured family, the logistics, and the risks, of air travel will keep me and mine in Orange County.

When pioneers moved west long ago, they knew they might never see their families again. Letters, often a shared piece of precious paper whose reply was sandwiched between the sender’s lines and mailed back, often took months to receive. Entire families grew up subsisting on old memories and the few news items that reached them via letters or travelers. Back then, moving a country’s breadth away often meant lifetime separation.

I never dreamed I would experience a problem with distance. In my public relations career, I thought no more of taking a flight than driving from Los Angeles to San Diego -- less, actually. My family would always be there in Virginia for me to visit, and I went home often, at least twice a year.

Now, though, I’m not only a daughter. I am a mother. My son, newly 5, is a child of beaches and freeways, not pine forests and roads blazed by frontiersman Daniel Boone. As a young native of the Golden State, he enjoys holiday tables laden with chips and salsa, soy sauce and rice, in addition to turkey and dressing. Gatherings traditionally synonymous with snow and ice are now celebrations gilded with sun and sand.

Always, I’ve brought him to my family’s home for Christmas, but now, at the age when memories really begin to take hold, he will not be going.

I’ve asked myself, Why not? He loves to fly, and my husband, whose parents are gone, rarely returns to his native state. But I have my reasons.

My mechanically fascinated son, who could work the coffee maker when he was 3, and recently shocked his baby-sitter by starting up her car and trying to drive it away, is insatiably curious and energetic.

An airport delights him, firing all his neurons simultaneously, so that the prospect of corralling him through long lines and possible delays, plus a layover in Atlanta, is exhausting. Also, when I look at his happy on-board face while he questions the flight attendants, I feel terrible guilt at exposing him to the risks. Mechanical failures, weather conditions, wind shear, ice on the wings, Martians coming down from the sky ... none of the selfish reasons for putting him on a plane can quell the fears that leap to mind.

All this pleasure costs around $750 per family member, times three. It’s expensive to fly into a small airport for the holidays. As late fall slid quietly by and I dithered over the decision, prices merely climbed to unaffordable levels.

I do admit, however hatefully and irrationally, that the terrorist threat hovering over the U.S. has added the final weight to the other burdens. I don’t believe we would be in real danger, but there is nothing rational about fear. Had I been a pioneer woman, I could have shot the bandits or wild animals threatening my child. But given the chance, I would have caved in and left the West, to raise my child in a safer place. With shame, I realize that if a difficult and vaguely threatening airplane trip can dissuade me from traveling, I would have handled the journey in a covered wagon pretty badly.

So we’ll stay here for the holidays, in breezy, glossy Newport Beach. My son will help us choose a tall tree from a nearby lot, while I’ll try not to think of the time in Virginia when I chopped one down, lashed it to my minibike and dragged it home to my mother. On Christmas, we’ll visit our neighbors, take a ride on the Balboa Island ferry and drive out to the mountains for a day.

On a recent visit, my mother taught her grandson to make cornbread, and because he’s demanded it daily ever since, it will be on our holiday table. It won’t be Virginia-style, since I don’t have the proper black cast-iron skillet, but it will be her California version, made in small cakes just right for a grandchild’s hand, and he will like it just fine.