Christmas usually goes by in a flourish of colorful but thoughtless gifts, fattening luncheons and two-faced exchanges. Saying that spirit of the season has lost its essence is an understatement. Aside from bearing the unrelenting hassle of Friday night traffic, you also have to face your pretentious relatives who, really, are only there for the delicious food and the latest family gossip. Last year though, our family took a break from it all for a short but memorable trip to New York. Who were we to know what lay in store for us was just exactly what we were looking for—the heart of Christmas; it came to us not only in full, but in leaps and bounds.

Last year’s Christmas holiday was spent in a tumult of interesting tours, shopping sprees, and unsavory meals in the busy and tourist-filled streets of New York City. During Christmas morning itself though, I mused, the scenario of an over-populated New York seemed entirely unbelievable as everyone seemed to be warming in their family’s presence.

As we, my family and I, were strolling down Lexington Avenue on the way to the subway, my father was going over the day’s activities—though I thought it sounded entirely uneventful. We were to make our way to the Bronx, via the subway, where one of our uncles will pick us up and drive us to their home for a lavish yuletide lunch blah blah blah…  The four of us waited patiently for our stop, 176^th St, while the otherwise empty train moved on.

After a while, my father stood up and inspected the complex subway maps displayed along the sides of the train. He’s been uneasy for a while now. Horror-stricken, he turns and exclaims, “The train has been skipping stops! We’ve skipped 3 already!”  while holding up three of his fingers. Mom starts to panic and I nudged my oblivious brother; partially deaf because of his iPod. Dad and Mom, who are discussing the circumstances of getting lost in an extensive underground subway, miles away from home, on Christmas day no less, sit and decide to wait it out until we come a little closer to our stop. “Then,” he says, “we’ll just walk out the closest station to 176^th and walk a few blocks to the meeting place.”

When the train was beginning to slow down, I, my dad and my mom stood up; all the while considering the possibility of the ride bypassing our stop, a lengthy 7 blocks away. We decided against it just as the doors closed and a startling ‘thump’ came from the window. My brother had walked out of the train.

There was a moment of complete silence; as if God were giving us time to let the thought sink in—My brother. Left alone. In an underground station. 7 blocks away. In a foreign city. And in New York at that! A startling cry shook me from my reverie. It came from my mom, who started murmuring tragic what-if situations; all the while my dad was silent and unresponsive. Thankfully, the train didn’t skip our stop. The moment we stepped out my mom started weeping, still murmuring to herself; Dad excused himself and went back to the last station, taking the track opposite the one we stepped out from. I just stood there, offering mom no consolation whatsoever, as a stream of hopeless situations invaded my mind.

Fear squeezed the blood out of my heart as two separate trains passed by the station. “If my brother were there…”  My eyes were unfocused as tears started to collect; my consciousness the only one stopping them from falling. The ground started to shake, indicating the arrival of the following train. When the train came to a halt and my dad stepped out alone, a barrage of scenes flashed through my mind and that was when the tears truly fell. Living without my brother by my side was unimaginable. The insufferable abomination has been wreaking havoc in my life since the moment he was born. I couldn’t look at my parents in the eye; partly because my eyes were teary and partly because I was afraid to.

Time seemed to travel at a snail’s pace as the doors of the train finally closed. Though the whole time all I was really hearing was the ensuing argument of who gets to use the bathroom first this morning; the whiff of the spicy chicken we fought over last night; I saw the pictures we took in Central Park a few days before; I felt him place his jacket on my shoulders when I told him I was cold earlier. All in a few seconds my world crumbled into small pieces and I felt alone; incomplete more like. But just as the slightest hint of the departing train was lost from sight, a heart-breaking “Ate!” resounded through the walls of the station, followed by “Mom! Dad!” It seemed he got off on the same train as well, just compartments away.

Waves of relief flooded through every nerve in my body and all I could do was stand in a corner and watch my mother give him a bone-crushing hug. The whole scenario played out again and again in my mind and I realized how close I had come to losing my only sibling. My brother and I were never the closest of anything, we stood away from each other, silently observing what the other was doing and minding our own business to keep from going back to the cat-versus-dog phase in our life. We had our similarities and differences, the latter out-numbering the former like the number of students in the chapel during finals week as compared to it on a normal day. You could say we were on the state of cease-fire, where we tried to get along as much as possible; having grown up practically hand-cuffed to one another, this proved quite the task to fulfill. Nevertheless, it was all in a day’s work; we got on quite well. We were in this peaceful state of harmony and the peculiar thing about it was that, it was rather silent.  It seemed talking was not necessarily required to get our messages across to one another. In fact, one only had to inquire about the happenings to fully empathize with the other; feelings were something you only saw in each other’s eyes. Secrets were shared with long awkward looks, whispers and smiles; but of course, what’s the use of sharing a secret when there’s no one there to back you up? We were there for one another as much as we looked after each other.

Be that as it may, our road to this friendly state of serenity was rocky to say the least. We had our fair share of squabbling. The heart-warming thing about it though, was that I never remembered the roots of our arguments but, rather, the simple yet sweet things he does to make up for it; like that ice-cream shaped cookie he gave me after an exhausting night of verbal sparring. I’ve realized that the hardest thing about losing a brother is that you’ve felt what it’s like to have one. You are similar to an only child at most in a sense that you’re alone and have no other siblings, but the difference in that is that you’ve known what it’s like to be with one. And that makes all the difference, if you ask me. That makes the loss all the more painful.

You think you always know what you’re thankful for every time you share a banquet with your family on Christmas day when you see everyone smiling and eating their way through the table. But the truth of the matter is, you don’t see the umbrella laid out for you when it’s pouring outside, neither do you see the huge bag on your desk on the morning of your retreat when you’ve been too lazy to pack the night before, specially laid out and cleaned for you to use, nor do you notice that ‘good luck on your exams!’ text when you’ve spent the entire night cramming your way to an A. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that matter the most, the smallest things that you never notice. This experience truly was a blessing disguised in tragedy. Not only did I see the true beauty of the season, all of my family did as well and in buckets full too. They say home is where the heart is, and if that’s true, then I guess we carried our home all the way to New Jersey that quiet afternoon.

The retelling of the story to friends and relatives, unsurprisingly, came with jokes and teases and such but nothing would compare to that moment of happiness that followed when we were finally together again. The silly gifts and delicious meat all paled to the warmth that surrounded us that lunch time. After all, you don’t get to feel this much love all year round. This is what makes the holiday so special, I mused. It made the banquet all the more appetizing knowing I’d have someone to fight over the last slice of dessert. I always thought I knew what fear was, what terror entails, but after that mind numbing experience, I am definitely sure I’ve met it face to face.

No substantial change took place after that incident other than lectures on what to do when you get lost in an underground subway in alien grounds (with no signal to reach you), but I’m pretty sure every one of us got the message loud and clear. Sometimes, you don’t need to hear lessons to learn it. Blessings come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes in ways you would never expect. You just need to stop wasting your time looking for it and start being thankful for the things you have; especially the ones you take for granted. If there’s one thing I learned from this whole experience, it’s that you don’t really know what you want. Most of the time, you keep searching for something you think you want but what you don’t realize is that you already have it.

Santa gave me the best gift ever 17 years ago, though, of course, I won’t always admit it.