A president impeached. Bombs falling on Iraq. Amid the tumult, the season’s joys are still to be found.

Bob and LaVerne Harhay had just returned from the nearby community theater. LaVerne said the Christmas play had been just what they needed.

She had spent most of the last two days listening to the radio and watching TV, getting the latest information, misinformation and noninformation on the bombing of Iraq. She’d had enough.

“It’s good up to a point, but when it starts to get totally chaotic, you get together with family and say, ‘Let’s enjoy each other a little bit and get away from it for a little while.’ ”

But they can’t, really. A gathering of the Harhay family is virtually a military mobilization. Military service runs through three generations, from Bob’s 20 years as a Marine to their grandson Eric Bach’s current assignment as a sailor aboard the Houston, a submarine based in San Diego.

Will 22-year-old Eric be deployed to Iraq? Surely not, they say. Well, probably not. He just got back from six months at sea.

But they all know the truth of what Eric’s stepfather, Air Force veteran Gary Ambrose, says out loud:

“In the military, things can change like that. He could go tomorrow.”

And will the president, the commander-in-chief, be thrown out of office? The Harhays don’t know, but they say the spectacle is disconcerting.

“I am really disturbed by everything that’s going on around us in the political world,” says LaVerne. “The dissension, that affects me. It’s all hitting at one time. Sending men overseas with not a lot of agreement and cooperation on the political scene, that disturbs me.”

This is not going to be the usual Christmas season for this family. Not that Christmas ever is usual by civilian standards. Even before the bombs started falling in the Mideast on Wednesday, the family was having to fit its holidays around the demands of military realities.

Eric has duty Christmas Day. “That means that we make Christmas Eve special for him,” says LaVerne--unless he’s still on alert and can’t leave the base.

Then his mother, LaVerne’s daughter Lois, “will feel really sad, and our part will be to be supportive of her,” LaVerne continues.

“I’ve been through this, but this is all new for her to have these things happen.”

Eric called his mother at work Wednesday, but with a stack of backlogged work and a looming deadline, she asked him to call back later. Then someone told her about the bombing in Iraq and she feared the worst. Had he called to say he was being shipped out? She had no number to call him back.

“I don’t think she got one hour’s sleep that night,” says her husband, Gary. “She was up six times. I don’t know if it’s because of Eric. She’s working two jobs, maybe that’s it. But she’s under stress.”

But despite it all, he says, she continues to work on her Christmas cards.

Is it going to be a good Christmas? “We’ll have to see what’s going on in the world,” says Lois.

No, says LaVerne. “We’re going to make it a good Christmas.”

When it comes to being a military wife and mother, LaVerne is the family’s acknowledged veteran. This is how you cope, she says.

“It’s very disturbing. It’s unsettling. But you still continue with Christmas. It’s not like you say, ‘Humbug, I’m not going to do anything.’ If anything, Christmas becomes more important.

“You really have to have the right attitude in order to enjoy life. You write letters, you do things to keep the communication going. You become weaker or stronger. I prefer stronger.”

Children force you to be strong, she adds. “They will pick up the attitude from you. Maybe you cry in bed, but throughout the day you show strength for the family’s sake. You say, ‘Your Dad is over there doing his duty. Now we need to do ours,’ and you just carry on your day. That’s how I handled it. It’s called survival.”

The Harhay family lives clustered in south Orange County. They will gather on Christmas Eve on Eric’s behalf, even if he can’t make it. They will gather again on Christmas Day, because son Tom, a paramedic captain, has duty Christmas Eve.

But LaVerne concedes that there will be an unusual undercurrent this year.

“I don’t feel that red-white-and-blue feeling when I turn on the TV like I felt during the Gulf War,” she said late last week. “That worries me. That keeps me keyed up.

“Do you think it’s affecting us? Just look. It does affect us, because we’re always talking about it, always thinking about it. That’s what it’s done to us.”