A Long-Distance Christmas
How to keep far-away grandkids close during the holidays.
Mike Archer

The holiday season is a time when people naturally draw together in the depths of winter’s gloom to share the soft glow of family. But what if you aren’t fortunate enough to be able to enjoy the heartwarming cheer of a family gathering at this special time? What if you will miss the boundless excitement of your grandchildren frantically ripping open gifts in the frosty pre-dawn of Christmas morning? What if you can only dream of the warm touch of a small hand or a little voice stridently piping, “I want to sit next to grandma at dinner?”

Our older son was in the Armed Forces for many years and, while we were immensely proud of the contribution he was making, we were often apart from him and his family on special occasions. Although he has now left the military, he still lives out of province and a great distance away. We can’t just get together at will and we’ve shared the hardships of Christmas apart.

Having anticipated the chaos of children around us again at Christmas when we became grandparents, we at first felt the void in our lives keenly and struggled to find ways to bridge the gap. Slowly, however, we’ve learned to take every opportunity to feel close to our remote grandchildren, especially at this time of year. Nothing, of course, replaces being with them but we have found ways of narrowing the distance.

Kids bubble over when they’re sharing ‘special secrets’ and phone conversations with our grandchildren can be almost conspiratorial running up to Christmas. Ask, “Did you get daddy’s gift, yet?” and my grandson barely breathes his excited response. I imagine him looking around to ensure he’s alone before whispering the details to me.

And it’s not just gifts that the children want to talk about. They thrill us with details of their visit with Santa at the mall (“I asked for a new video game.”), getting their tree from a farm (“We took a big saw and I helped daddy cut it down.”), and the horse-drawn sleigh ride they took (“It was dark and, you know what, grandpa, I fell off into the snow but I didn’t hurt myself and we had hot chocolate with marshmallows!”).

My granddaughter goes into exquisite detail about the costume for her school play (“It had sequins, grandma, and it was blue and mommy made it and I sang two carols and…..”). It’s a beautiful picture-painting exercise to savour and share.

When the kids were younger, we used to read little topical stories onto tape for them. My wife hit on the idea of adding sound effects and we were amazed at the kick it gave them. All we needed to create those little packages of seasonal warmth was the loan of a couple of CDs of canned noises from the local library.

Now that our grandkids are older, we’re going to write them special Christmas letters, representing what their year has meant to us. We’ll use the stories they’ve told us and the photos they’ve sent – my gangly grandson standing a head taller than his grinning friends at summer camp; my horse-mad granddaughter beaming from the saddle, pointing to the rosette on the bridle. There’s so much to include.

We’re planning to put a video together showing the grandchildren our pre-Christmas: grandma baking her delectably creamy, golden shortbread, our brightly initialed stockings hanging from the heavy grey stone fireplace, the two of us teasingly wrapping gifts without letting the kids see exactly what we’ve got them! And in the works is something we are trying to adapt from “The Twelve Days of Christmas” so that it’s all about the family.

It used to be that a lone phone call was our only Christmas Day contact and we had to wait anxiously for the New Year for the package of holiday photos to arrive. Now we can share things almost instantly. With digital cameras, it can be mere minutes after something happens that we are able to share it on our computer screen while being talked through it in every exquisite detail on a cell phone.

Maybe next year we’ll get to have a wonderful family Christmas. I really hope so. But, if not, we’ll do our utmost to keep our grandchildren close to us through it.

Mike Archer, a father and grandfather, is a freelance writer who lives in Pickering