The ghost of Christmas present

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds – born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water – rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.

But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.

This was my fifth out of six Coast Guard Christmases I've spent on duty. (I was scheduled for duty my second year in, too, but squeaked out of it after I covered for someone who skipped out on watch a couple weeks earlier.)

I don’t mind holiday duty. I volunteer for it. Let someone else rack up family time. The essence of American Christmas – Santa, presents, reindeer, lights, cheesy pop music, succulent ham, and unbridled consumption – fails to impress me. And, my family doesn’t have any great Christmas traditions (half my family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, to begin with), at least not any I’d want to replicate with warm nostalgia. (Dragging out the withered Christmas tree in April to the tree graveyard out back? Being tasked to wrap your own presents? Christmas music blaring at 5 am when you were up performing for three Christmas Eve services, the last stretching past midnight? Ripping open a gaily wrapped package of...Sears underwear?)

I’ll go for a quiet candlelight carol service and charitable gifts in honor of friends and relatives; I enjoy writing Christmas cards. But that’s about it. My one Christmas off, I spent the 24th and 25th cooking meals in a soup kitchen. So give me duty, really...I don’t mind.

This year, it was unexpected. Whether due to my supervisory responsibilities, my changing duty status, my rank, or the transitory nature of my non-billet, I’d escaped the duty rotation and thus dodged the specter of holiday duty. Until a week ago, when one of my petty officers fractured his shoulder in a particularly spirited Morale game of Ultimate Frisbee, and there I was a couple days later, shooting lead downrange to re-qualify and stand his duty.

My roommate, meanwhile, was heading home to Turkey for three weeks. She had me wake her up at oh-dark-thirty to say goodbye – by the time she returned, I’d be sailing in the Pacific somewhere. “I’ll see you in the summer,” she blinked drowsily.

Christmas Eve flew past faster than the NORAD-tracked reindeer. Morning staff meeting, a long passdown as my supervisor disappeared for 15 days of leave, and then a busy procession of cars to check through the front gate, everyone rushing to squeeze in last-minute Christmas shopping at the exchange. I’d saved up a fair amount of paperwork to slog through, too, so it wasn’t until late afternoon when I noticed the light blinking on my work voicemail. Blink. Blink. Blink. Who would call me on Christmas Eve at work? Who knew I was here? It was, to my astonishment, the detailer. Uh oh. Wasn't my future set? “Call me. I have an idea I’d like to run by you.”

Of course, by then, it was evening on the East Coast; and assuming he was busy envisioning the dancing of sugar plums with his family, I left him a quick message and then put it out of my mind, searching out my watchstanders to go spread Christmas cheer. No more ideas! I thought. I thought I was all set to deploy. Don’t change that now. Don't ruin my Christmas.