Last Christmas in California by Kristine Rae Anderson

Last Christmas in California
Kristine Rae Anderson

The liquid amber tree in the neighbor’s front yard
turned gold and blood-red weeks ago. It’s now mostly bare
so streetlamps and front porch bulbs—glowing oases 
at 6:00 a.m.—create webby shadows on a driveway. 
The end-of-autumn leaves shuffle like old women 
crossing a kitchen floor to make coffee in the morning quiet.

That’s me, of course, waking first among my family, 
even as December predawn lingers like a cat reluctant to wake up.
Decades ago, my son would’ve been up an hour ago, holiday
decorations illuminated in the living room, the tree sparkling,
the stockings gift-heavy as they dangled above the fireplace. 
My son is grown now. This will be our last Christmas here. 

Tomorrow, my husband and I will drive our only child to LAX, 
watch him rise into his life elsewhere. As it should be. 
We will return to the house, pause until New Year’s before we take 
down the tree and garland, pack keepsakes (our son’s first-grade-
picture ornament, a glittery glass orb from my late mother-in-law), 
then fill the trash with the tarnished and chipped, the broken treasures

from all our married years that we can’t justify moving
three thousand miles. We’ll continue emptying closets 
and cupboards, painting over flaws we’d grown accustomed to. 
For months, we’ve lugged heavy boxes of picture books 
and novels, well-loved jigsaw puzzles, Legos, and no-longer-
needed work clothes to Goodwill. Yet, before that final push—

before new bedroom carpets and last window washing, before 
tile grout is polished to a startling shine—this Christmas morning
my husband and son and I will sit together with steaming coffee mugs
and stockings full of what we can’t wait for each other to open,
and later over plates of ham and potatoes, we’ll raise an anticipated
toast as we memorize this present, even as it passes.



Kristine Rae Anderson is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of the chapbook Field of Everlasting (Main Street Rag) whose work has appeared in SALT, Persimmon Tree, Anacapa Review, and elsewhere. She recently moved from her native California to New England with her husband and their three-legged rescue dog. www.kristineraeanderson.com