JIM HENDRICKS: Assembling Christmas memories

Guys with kids will know what I’m talking about here.

Most guys with kids, anyway. Guys who have hammers in the toolbox.

One of the nights that I look forward to the most each year is Christmas Eve. Late Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve after everyone has gone to bed and the mad toymaker has put away his instruments of futility. It’s when the “instructional” portion of the evening has become just a small annoying blip in the rearview mirror of Santa’s sleigh.

The instructional portion of the evening comes right after the kids are in bed, valiantly fighting sleep and then finally giving into it, exhausted by the anticipation of Christmas morning and unending speculation as to what they’ll find around the Christmas tree.

Christmas wishing is serious business not to be taken lightly. Foul it up and you could get a girl’s bike, or Santa might forget to load up that videogame or whatever it is that everyone else has on their list. It is exhausting work for little minds that are, more or less, calculating how many Santa Points might have been lost by that errant throw that resulted in a broken window or how many times that the words “clean up your room now” had to be repeated before a bedroom was finally halfheartedly cleaned up.

But eventually they succumb to the world of dreams. What happens then is that dad performs one of his most important yet unappreciated jobs of the year, forced upon him by the inclusion of two words that no red-blooded dad ever wants to read:

Assembly required.

They are words that try a man’s soul, as well as his wits. They frazzle the otherwise steeliest of nerves.

The best advice I ever got about assembling something came from Daddy, who worked evenings in the outdoors department at the old Gibson Discount Store on South Slappey. Among the things they had to do was assemble bicycles. On one particularly aggravating job, his boss approached him, looked the bike over and told him, “Bill, the secret is to never force it.”

Instead, he said, “You just get a bigger hammer.”

Which is what he promptly hit it with, resolving, I was told, the problem.

And, frankly, hitting an uncooperative gift with a hammer is a lot more satisfying than taking other advice like “read the instructions” … which no guy does … until nothing has fit together right … for the ninth or tenth time … and the hammer didn’t work … even the big one.

Those were the Christmas Eves when I yearned for spiked eggnog, which I don’t like but would have drunk anyway, had I only had the instructions on how to make it.

My wife, Cheryl, has never understood my dislike for written instructions, particularly any attached to the fridge that say stuff like “load the dishwasher.”

I tried to point out that they just slow you down, that I was pretty good at figuring out what went where anyway, and that Part B never really quite fits Part A, regardless of what some instructions instruct to the contrary. Then something like a mini electric-powered four-wheeler inexplicably coming apart the first time your kid rides it leads to the inevitable observation that maybe, just maybe, you should’ve looked the instructions over before you started.

Those nights, thankfully, are behind me, though they occasionally sneak up with the grandkids.

But at some time between the last strike of a big hammer late at night and the first patter of little feet running down the hall before it’s light outside, you find the sweet spot of Christmas Eve.

Everyone else is sound asleep. Santa, for better or worse, has loaded and delivered everything. The rush is over, at least for a few hours. You can breathe.

Now, as back then, on Christmas Eves when when I hit the point where everything than can be done has been done, I sit back and look at the lighted tree. When the weather’s nice — clear sky, not too cold — I go outside and just stare up at the stars, Christmas lights hung by the Master Decorator.

With the kids all grown and doing their own required assembly on behalf of St. Nick, I catch myself chuckling as I remember those frustrating projects, memories of frustration I now greet — inexplicably — with fondness and some longing.

Age, I suppose, brings with it a certain perspective, thanks to memories that are filtered with the warm glow of nostalgia. Especially on a Silent Night. A calm night, when spirits are bright.

It’s a blessed Christmas gift.

A gift of peace.

No assembly required.

Email Jim Hendricks at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_JHendricks on Twitter.