I found my hook for the memoir, inadvertently. I was going to put an entry on this blog about this Christmas, which was over the top in every wonderful way I could imagine. As I wrote it I began to think of my mom again and of this magical world she created for us, which I took to more than the others. I began thinking of our relationship through the years and it was hitting me in waves that I experienced the rain forest qualities of this extraordinary woman more than the rest.
I did not sugar coat her drinking and psychosis. She did not sugar coat her words to describe me, most especially, when she was drunk. I had the very best of her, when I was four through when I was about nine. Then I experienced her very worst.
And my mother was her worst at Thanksgiving, but her best at Christmas. Our spiritual celebration was secular, but we did not ignore our Christian roots entirely. I have had to defend my excesses at Christmas, when I was criticized as materialistic, silly, supersticious, or just completely impractical. I was tolerated sometimes by those who felt above such childishness. I shut up when other adults around me wanted to discontinue all adult gift-giving because, as we all know, Christmas is for children. I have listened to ministers advise us to think of others less fortunate, to remember "Christ's humble beginnings" and to put away crass materialism.
And inside, all along, a voice in me was clear and strong that told me to ignore those other voices. A voice that told me to celebrate to my soul's content, to enjoy, to give, to love, to decorate, to keep my head up without apology.
And there it was ... the hook that grabs me about my mom, about the gifts she gave and the pain she endured and spread sometimes, despite her sweeter voices. to understand my mother and me, to understand my family, one has to understand that my mother irrevokably proved the existence of elves. You cannot write our story without knowing this and without knowing that Santa was not even a jump from that, since he was no more than a really BIG elf himself. One has to understand that life in our home really was a rain forest: lush or rotting, with nothing in between ... and that the lushness did not exist without the rotting, no matter how much I might have wished that the rotten had not been quite so painful, nor quite so sick.
It was my family. When I look at those two holidays and the intervening times. ... when I look at the time between Christmas and our escape to our lake island, it is simply more of the same. Those summers were the vacation version of Christmas.
ANYWAY, I am excited because I have my framework. Perhaps I've not explained it well, but that isn't the point. You know how it feels when all the bits and pieces and flotsam and jetsam of stories fall together in a moment? That's how I feel.
So I had to run into my room here, and sit down and tell you all how excited I am! I have been working on the memoir, but it has been hard to find the stem, the TRUNK from which all branches stem. I know it was my mom at the center, but what about my mom? Her magic was at its core all along. And I was the one who received the most of that magic, or who was most tuned into it. I'm not sure which. Perhaps I will learn as I go along; more likely it really does not matter at all.
But I am back. And I'll be writing entries again more regularly. I've lost a few followers, which makes me a little sad, but it can't be helped. And I'm not in here for the numbers, after all. I am in here to practice my craft, to share it, to share my art ... and to have the fun of drinking in all of yours!
May we all have a wonderful 2012, and if we do not, may we continue to find comfort with the support that never seems to falter in this general area of the blogosphere!
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
Friday, December 30, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Have a wonderful Holiday week
I have been beyond busy, which is fine. I remembered another story about my mom. I had forgotten this for many, many years.
My childhood home had a backyard which ended at "the woods," a narrow strip of woods with a brook running through it. When I scampered up the small bank at the back end of the yard, it was perhaps fifty yards to the brook, which, very conveniently had a fallen tree across it. I could scamper across, then climb up a steep bank for another fifty feet or so, to the corner of two streets. In the winter you could see that corner from my bedroom window. I ran up there year round, and was three houses from my best friend's house.
It was also the convenient path across town for what we then called "hobos." Mom would not call them bums, and we did not talk about "the homeless" back then. A few times in my early-ish childhood, I came out from under the willow tree canopy when I heard my mother loudly yelling at some man at the edge of the woods who seemed to be approaching Nancy and me, playing in our ground-tree house. I do not remember being afraid, however.
Mom had a social conscience. I was with her on the steps of the library for the town's "sympathy march" for the big Washington Civil Rights march. We all sort of had a to-do there, with speeches and food. But we all listened together to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. because about five people had radios tuned in to the same stations. I don't know whether there were transistors or what. I was too busy looking at the people's faces. Mom made us look at the hosings by the police, and the attack dogs. She felt we should know what other children had to endure. I remember crying and she said, "Honey, you SHOULD cry for them. It is a terrible thing." I was crying because they seemed to MAKE the dogs bite people, but I felt it wise not to say anything. Besides, I DID know she was right.
Which leads me to Christmas. There were three of them--three men with slick-combed hair and chinos and shiny belt buckles. Men who looked, as some Beatrix Potter book said, I think, as if they had dusty corners. I remember one dark green shirt with frayed edges, but it was very smooth. The other men were generally wrinkled. That's what I remember--wrinkled faces, wrinkled shirts, wrinkled trousers. But shiny buckles. Smooth, shiny hair. And clean.
They came together to the back kitchen door from the first Christmas when I was five, and two more after that. My mother handed out cookies and a $5 bill to these "hobos." I remember it vividly because my parents felt we should see people who were not doing well. We should know about it and understand. We ourselves were one minor catastrophe from poverty, but my mother would point out "That catastrophe hasn't happened for us. And we're having a wonderful Christmas. And we have a home with a bath and a half, and they have none."
That was a lot of money to my parents, and the men knew it. They were respectful to her and they did not come around at other times--at least not when I saw. They stopped coming, though, by the time I was nine--the town had done a "sweep" in the fall, and did another one in November so they would not bother people any more. My parents talked about that one morning when they didn't know I had been up before they sat down to breakfast before Daddy went to work. Sometimes I didn't go in and bother them; I sat on the couch, still half asleep, listening to their voices, catching bits and pieces of conversations that swirled far above the head of a child.
"They don't hurt anyone. I don't CARE what they say. Those men were never anything but kind. I ASKED them to come up so I could help, Jim."
"I know, dear. But times are changing. It isn't like when we were kids. Some of these men are dangerous."
"I know, I know. But not our hobos. They were just down on their luck." And that's all I remember.
A year later my mother got a letter from one "to the Lady at 274 Parker Street" and she cried. He had a job and lived in an apartment, but he'd wanted to thank her. All she said was, "See? I was right. He was a perfectly find man."
My parents invited strangers to our home on Christmas Day sometimes. There was a single mom who was a waitress at their favorite restaurant. She brought her little girl one time when I was about eleven, and we gave her a doll. And my dad sat down with some young man from the shoe store, and they worked on something one Christmas afternoon in his den.
My parents wanted us to celebrate, to party, to revel on Christmas. We all did, but it was not out of greed. I think for them it was out of some enormous sense of gratitude and a recognition that so far we had been lucky. Mom hated the word "blessed" because she felt it sounded as if we might think we were specially chosen or something. No, she and dad felt we were simply lucky. And our Christmas was the family's Thanksgiving.
To tell the truth, she was never quite sure about where Jesus the Christ fell into things. She was candid about that, but on Christmas Eve, she would read the story, and we would put the "star in the east that led us" in the scene last thing. Her set had the baby in the manger already, so we decided to put the star up last
When I was a teenager, she would stand there looking at the Créche and say, "Well. I just don't know about God's only begotten son. You may be right, Jetty, that he tried some begotten daughters but they were killed at birth. You are right, honey. People didn't care much about daughters. They didn't when I was a girl, either. But I don't know. There is something about this magical time. I think I would rather believe the story than not. Doesn't it seem wonderful to think that God sent us a BABY to straighten us out? Maybe we can try believing anyway, just the way we believe in other things." And she would sing "God so loved the world..."
She would ask if I believed in Santa and I would smile and say yes. I LIKED believing in elves and fairies and Santa.
"Well, then," she'd say. "Jesus the Christ it is. Where the HELL did I put that North Star?"
***
My friend and I were talking about how to celebrate when we see so many people in need around. She can't and I understand that completely. For me, though, I am celebrating how lucky I have been in the past three years to have people who reached out to me to help me feel grounded, who actually supported me while I waited eighteen months for Social Security Disability, who linked hands beneath me, a living net of love to keep me from falling. I honor the beauty that was in both my parents. I honor the gift of love, I guess, hokey as that may sound. Our minister mentioned that revelry is part of our heritage as a species, and perhaps setting aside what amounts to survivors' guilt is okay. That doesn't make us greedy or insensitive.
I have much to think about; much to be grateful for. Without these people who will be here Saturday night, I could very easily have been one of those "hobos" by now. Literally. And without some of you, as well, who sent messages, sometimes gifts, who read what I wrote and made me feel that it was worth going on.
(And, well, besides ... there are cookies. And best of all? there are wind up toys. How can I NOT revel?)
I hope you ALL have a healthy and wonderful holiday season. I will be back in the New Year.
My childhood home had a backyard which ended at "the woods," a narrow strip of woods with a brook running through it. When I scampered up the small bank at the back end of the yard, it was perhaps fifty yards to the brook, which, very conveniently had a fallen tree across it. I could scamper across, then climb up a steep bank for another fifty feet or so, to the corner of two streets. In the winter you could see that corner from my bedroom window. I ran up there year round, and was three houses from my best friend's house.
It was also the convenient path across town for what we then called "hobos." Mom would not call them bums, and we did not talk about "the homeless" back then. A few times in my early-ish childhood, I came out from under the willow tree canopy when I heard my mother loudly yelling at some man at the edge of the woods who seemed to be approaching Nancy and me, playing in our ground-tree house. I do not remember being afraid, however.
Mom had a social conscience. I was with her on the steps of the library for the town's "sympathy march" for the big Washington Civil Rights march. We all sort of had a to-do there, with speeches and food. But we all listened together to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. because about five people had radios tuned in to the same stations. I don't know whether there were transistors or what. I was too busy looking at the people's faces. Mom made us look at the hosings by the police, and the attack dogs. She felt we should know what other children had to endure. I remember crying and she said, "Honey, you SHOULD cry for them. It is a terrible thing." I was crying because they seemed to MAKE the dogs bite people, but I felt it wise not to say anything. Besides, I DID know she was right.
Which leads me to Christmas. There were three of them--three men with slick-combed hair and chinos and shiny belt buckles. Men who looked, as some Beatrix Potter book said, I think, as if they had dusty corners. I remember one dark green shirt with frayed edges, but it was very smooth. The other men were generally wrinkled. That's what I remember--wrinkled faces, wrinkled shirts, wrinkled trousers. But shiny buckles. Smooth, shiny hair. And clean.
They came together to the back kitchen door from the first Christmas when I was five, and two more after that. My mother handed out cookies and a $5 bill to these "hobos." I remember it vividly because my parents felt we should see people who were not doing well. We should know about it and understand. We ourselves were one minor catastrophe from poverty, but my mother would point out "That catastrophe hasn't happened for us. And we're having a wonderful Christmas. And we have a home with a bath and a half, and they have none."
That was a lot of money to my parents, and the men knew it. They were respectful to her and they did not come around at other times--at least not when I saw. They stopped coming, though, by the time I was nine--the town had done a "sweep" in the fall, and did another one in November so they would not bother people any more. My parents talked about that one morning when they didn't know I had been up before they sat down to breakfast before Daddy went to work. Sometimes I didn't go in and bother them; I sat on the couch, still half asleep, listening to their voices, catching bits and pieces of conversations that swirled far above the head of a child.
"They don't hurt anyone. I don't CARE what they say. Those men were never anything but kind. I ASKED them to come up so I could help, Jim."
"I know, dear. But times are changing. It isn't like when we were kids. Some of these men are dangerous."
"I know, I know. But not our hobos. They were just down on their luck." And that's all I remember.
A year later my mother got a letter from one "to the Lady at 274 Parker Street" and she cried. He had a job and lived in an apartment, but he'd wanted to thank her. All she said was, "See? I was right. He was a perfectly find man."
My parents invited strangers to our home on Christmas Day sometimes. There was a single mom who was a waitress at their favorite restaurant. She brought her little girl one time when I was about eleven, and we gave her a doll. And my dad sat down with some young man from the shoe store, and they worked on something one Christmas afternoon in his den.
My parents wanted us to celebrate, to party, to revel on Christmas. We all did, but it was not out of greed. I think for them it was out of some enormous sense of gratitude and a recognition that so far we had been lucky. Mom hated the word "blessed" because she felt it sounded as if we might think we were specially chosen or something. No, she and dad felt we were simply lucky. And our Christmas was the family's Thanksgiving.
To tell the truth, she was never quite sure about where Jesus the Christ fell into things. She was candid about that, but on Christmas Eve, she would read the story, and we would put the "star in the east that led us" in the scene last thing. Her set had the baby in the manger already, so we decided to put the star up last
When I was a teenager, she would stand there looking at the Créche and say, "Well. I just don't know about God's only begotten son. You may be right, Jetty, that he tried some begotten daughters but they were killed at birth. You are right, honey. People didn't care much about daughters. They didn't when I was a girl, either. But I don't know. There is something about this magical time. I think I would rather believe the story than not. Doesn't it seem wonderful to think that God sent us a BABY to straighten us out? Maybe we can try believing anyway, just the way we believe in other things." And she would sing "God so loved the world..."
She would ask if I believed in Santa and I would smile and say yes. I LIKED believing in elves and fairies and Santa.
"Well, then," she'd say. "Jesus the Christ it is. Where the HELL did I put that North Star?"
***
My friend and I were talking about how to celebrate when we see so many people in need around. She can't and I understand that completely. For me, though, I am celebrating how lucky I have been in the past three years to have people who reached out to me to help me feel grounded, who actually supported me while I waited eighteen months for Social Security Disability, who linked hands beneath me, a living net of love to keep me from falling. I honor the beauty that was in both my parents. I honor the gift of love, I guess, hokey as that may sound. Our minister mentioned that revelry is part of our heritage as a species, and perhaps setting aside what amounts to survivors' guilt is okay. That doesn't make us greedy or insensitive.
I have much to think about; much to be grateful for. Without these people who will be here Saturday night, I could very easily have been one of those "hobos" by now. Literally. And without some of you, as well, who sent messages, sometimes gifts, who read what I wrote and made me feel that it was worth going on.
(And, well, besides ... there are cookies. And best of all? there are wind up toys. How can I NOT revel?)
I hope you ALL have a healthy and wonderful holiday season. I will be back in the New Year.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Christmas as A Child: YES, Norman Rockwell for Real
I am busy actually STARTING my Christmas Eve preparations and I am also painting. I'm hoping to get back into my blog world before Christmas--I have several pieces started--but I am not really sure I will. But it is NOT for any bad reasons. I miss writing and I miss reading! Still, sometimes I have to oh, go ahead and LIVE my life so I fill the well, so to speak.
I first published this one in 2009, and it explains why I really am an all out, absolute, completely wacko Christmas nut. Not in the sense of buying new decorations or oodles of presents; I love the peace, the music, the silliness, the love that has always been mine for the giving and receiving. My family did it right. Sorry to bore those who read this, but I enjoyed reading it again because all of it flooded back and put me into the mood again.
I also know I referred to this in October--I think I published this again now for my own sake! A relative who was less than kind to me sometimes, but very kind at others, has died... and it has brought up some, well, disturbing memories. They may find their way into another entry, but I think I wanted to focus on something joyous... on a time when I got to be nothing more or less than an excited, happy child.
It is not meant to replace my entries--I realized tonight, as I revisited this post, that it was "birthing" a new one. The hour is late now, as I add these last two paragraphs, but reviewing and editing this piece did the trick. Joy is the woman who died, and I like visualizing her here, at Christmas, with my mom.
Lately I have been returning to this blog myself, just to bring that feeling back--how lucky I am to have such memories! So, have a wonderful holiday season! I'll READ some blogs, but somehow, even though I mean to write, I get side-tracked.
Here goes... no pictures, no more apologies... just my family at its very best!
Norman Rockwell Ain't Got Nuthin' On Our Christmases
It's hard for me to choose a Christmas from childhood. Two or three may be mixed together here, but I don't care. To me, it was idyllic. Jim did not torment us. Jacky and I were small children together, even up until he was about eleven. Jean Ellen was a keeper of magic and secrets to rival our mother. And Dad and Mom? Well, they had to be experienced.
So the Roots of my Love for the Season Grew Deep and Immortal Here...
My mother not only looked like Mrs. Claus, she acted like her. And it always began the day after Thanksgiving.
Jacky and I, and sometimes even Jimmy, Would race downstairs on Friday morning to see five presents perched on the top shelf of the extra tall white bookcase in the dining room. The Five Foot Shelf fit on one shelf, that bookcase was so wide... And the books on the top shelf reached the top of Daddy's head, so it was six feet tall. I grew up in a home with a bookcase in every room. It was just not a room without books, even in the bathrooms. And we had a BATH AND A HALF!
At this point, the books were still on that shelf, too, so the presents were annoyingly out of reach. We would climb on chairs, wondering how it was that Mommy had managed to pile the presents so that just enough of each tag was visible, so we could read the name, but we could not move a single package without the whole pile's tumbling to the floor. Inevitably we'd blow it and the pile would fall.
Mom would come from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her first of seven Christmas aprons, and say, simply, "Good thing nothing was breakable. Go ahead and open them and ruin your surprise. I don't much care..."
Then, as she was heading for the kitchen, she would toss back, "Not quite sure how Santa would feel, but that's your problem." We would feign our disappointment and put each one back, rattling them, squishing, doing our best to know what was inside, but Mom was too smart. We never could figure it out. It took until I was about twelve to be bothered that there never was something for Mommy there. Jean Ellen and I took to wrapping something for HER the morning after Thanksgiving, because it just felt all wrong. She was in college and it was a ritual we enjoyed together. I think it was the first of many she and I developed around the holiday together.
Let me reinforce this; until I was about 20, my mother never drank between Thanksgiving and Christmas. NOTHING. She would empty the huge "Silver Satin" port jug and there were never stray rum and cokes around. In fact, she didn't buy Coca Cola® at all until just before the holiday.
From then on, every day held a surprise. She didn't do a lot that Thanksgiving weekend, but wrap a new present or five each day, and the pile would grow more precarious until, by Sunday, Daddy took the books from that shelf and put them in a box tucked in the footwell of his desk. "GAWD knows none of you will let me have any peace between now and that day. MY life is over now. Nothing but shelling out money, having to run around to get GAWD knows what. Bah."
Tiny Tim in Scrooge Clothing
He never said humbug until the day. He also was the least convincing Scrooge alive, since he read us the Christmas Carol and checked with Mother every single night, asking her whether maybe ONCE she might come up with something on her own list that didn't involve her doing more work around the house. The truth was, my dad spent more on Christmas presents than anyone else, and would get scolded at by my mother constantly, often punctuated by a wet dishtowel on his head, which sat there for at least fifteen minutes, at whatever angle it had landed.
My parents were in love. That was the miracle of them. For all his womanizing, for all her drinking, for the myriad fights in between? They loved one another with a passion that would have been embarrassing if it had not been so wonderful to see. They liked to talk late into the evening, just about books, about politics, about philosophy. About their days. My father said that Mom was the most highly educated person he'd ever known and she never went to college. He would walk up behind her in the kitchen and simply put his arms around her sometimes, and they would stand there, singing softly, saying nothing.
(That's what I wanted in my life, and knew I could never settle for less than that, that alone would be better than less. I do not regret that choice at all.) I will not spoil this by moving into the present, though. I will return safely to that time, as a child, through my early teens, when I saw that my parents were clearly lovers at every age. I felt, though would never have said so, that I was lucky to witness those private moments, and that my parents did not find it wrong to let us see them.
Their love was palpable at Christmas. And the house was full of the good kinds of secrets. This Christmas brought us the birth of the "Christmas Spider," As Mom and Jean Ellen dubbed it. A hanging thingy made of glitter gold paper, on a large hook. When you draped it from a chandelier, pointy tentacle/leg things draped in many layers from the center and it seemed alive in a particularly grotesque way.
It moved around the house, from dining room, to kitchen, to a curtain rod, to the lamp next to Mom' chair--wherever Jean Ellen or Mom chose. the damned thing lasted for 25 years! And there was the wrapping of the "spoon rest" if it was Mom's turn. She and Grandma LeSure, Dad's mom, had an ongoing exchange with that. Granny'd gotten it for her donation to the Navaho Indian Tribe (back then). It was pale pea green, with three spoon rest depressions. Made of plastic, it was a "French" artiste in the center with his paintbrush, surrounded by his palette spoon rests. Half his moustached was missing from the get-go. The ugliest thing I ever saw. Granny gave it to Mom, then Mom gave it back for Mother's Day, then Granny gave it back on Mom's birthday, and here it was being re-wrapped in the same box, same interior tissue, same tag with all the cross-outs, for her.
We had traditions coming out our ears in our family. Most of them had to do with laughing.
But some had to do with the season. In late September, for instance, when I was little, Mom took me for a walk and we brought a pillow case. We'd go into the wildflower field and fill it with drying grass. Then Mommy would hang it in the attic and, along around December 20th, there was hay for the manger. She and Jean Ellen would put the crèche (nativity--we are French) together on the little table by the front door. We did not do the British custom of leaving the baby Jesus for Christmas morning, but that's okay. Mommy wanted us to have one thing that would remind us of the day's origin. When I was big enough, she let me sound out the words of the story--we were born reading, so that was fine. We knew it by heart anyway. So Jack or I would tell the story while they put the crèche together. Jean Ellen always made a star that covered the normal painting there. Sometimes silver, abstract on black paper. You never knew. Sometimes a big star in a cluster of smaller ones in a field of blue.
And the baking. I would sit cross-legged on the counter and "help" with the doughs, hand mixing in the chocolate chips. Or I would sprinkle the sugar cookie stars. Mostly I licked the bowl because it made it easier for Mom to clean. I think that Jean Ellen and I learned to bake through osmosis. I don't measure much, to this day. Mommy baked by feel, she said. We had six kinds of cookies, and the butter cookies without leavening were made two weeks in advance, and other doughs were frozen. She never froze cookies.
"They never taste quite the same," she said. I think she was right. And we NEVER used margarine. Margarine was a sin in our house.
We went shopping for presents for Mommy on their double bed, Jack and I. Daddy would have a miraculous display of things my mother wanted all around the perimeter, with price tags on every item--price tags he had made himself, to suit our budget. He as fair, though, because he had certain items out of our range--they were his presents. And he trusted US NOT TO TELL, and we never did. Through the year Mom thought of ways we could earn money for Christmas. We'd get paid and she had little jars with our names on them, NOT TO BE TOUCHED. Some things were practical, and some pretty, but there was always enough so that Jack and I could truly choose up until we were around nine. There were often twenty items there--all bought by Daddy, all re-marked. And then he helped us wrap them in tissue papers, and he had a stash of glitter and star stickers and ribbon so that we could make them "special." My Scroogey Dad.
****
I am the youngest. The miracle for me? Christmas Eve. By then, there was a ham coming out of the oven by 1:00 and a turkey going IN, for a late buffet at night. The trimming party was that night! While Jack and Jim were rooting around for a missed present or whether or not Santa REALLY was out there, I sat cross-legged on the living room floor with my dad. I wish I had a picture. I was not more than five or six. I was tiny. He six one. And we tested the bulbs, consulting over how he might plan which should have reflectors. Counting sockets and bulbs. Sometimes the count was wrong and he'd say, "Road trip, Jetty, get your coat." We'd run to Wallach's grocer and get some bulbs of the color we needed adn somehow or other, Daddy's find something that someone just HAD to have, just to even things out you know.
But I would hand Daddy the bulbs or reflectors and he would string the tree, from the bottom up. He didn't even bothe with the spire until the end. We knew it would get tipped. We worked quietly and fast, for guests arrived by 4:00 and we had to also unpack the ornaments, so people could decorate when they came. I loved unwrapping the blown glass ornaments. Mommy never hid breakable things from us. If we broke and item, she's say, "Did you mean to? Will you be more careful next time?" And that was that. We didn't mean to, and we WERE more careful and very little got broken.
That Christmas, when I think I was six, Grandma and Grandpa LeSure were there for BOTH days and were staying in a hotel! And Aunt Joy was coming. She wasn't married then, and was ten years younger than Mommy and was GLAMOROUS. The tree-trimming party mostly had friends of my parents when I was little. I loved sitting in a corner and hearing the adult conversation. Grandma LeSure told me I could go INTO her purse and try her lipstick. When I did though, Grandpa SLAPPED me and I yelled at him for it.
When Grandma explained, he had the oddest smirk on his face and said, "Well, Missy, I guess no one will push you around in this life. Excuse me." I found it a wholly unsatsifactory apology and avoided him all night.
Slowly the beauty of the tree emerged, amidst the singing and the laughing and the stories, the ham, the turkey, the spilled drinks--not Mom's, other people's ... she had me TASTE hers even--the boys nearly tipping the tree over from an over-rambunctious game of throw the dish towel around...
As the night lengthened, it all blurred for me. It seemed to me that our tree glittered more than anyone's. Then Mom and Joy had the obligatory fight over not having garland tinsel. We had the long, leaded icicles then. And Mom and Jean Ellen would not let ANYONE help with that. Every piece had to drape free. Grandma LeSure got that, too, and so did I, but when I started to help, suddenly, Daddy said, "Santa comes soon, Jetty! You have to run to bed!"
Run I did, and so did Jack. Jim and Jean Ellen stayed up later, but I didn't mind. I never saw the thing done. For me? For me, the last glimpse of Christmas Eve was a room full of people laughing, JE draping tinsel over Daddy's head, the boys NOT fighting, but playing cards, Mommy talking with Grandma, Grandpa standing back, holding his stomach, smoking his pipe, but looking happy. Joy working on the tree and clucking at the lack of garland, and two to six other adults laughing, singing, or talking. We always sang "Lullay thou Little Tiny Child" when I went to bed.
***
That early Christmas I leaped out of my bed though, pretty late and looked at the roof below our window. It was the roof to the den and there were HOOFPRINTS. "JEAN ELLEN!"
Now, my sister HATED to be wakened. We were not allowed to rouse her OR Jim until 7 for stockings, but I JUMPED ON HER. She opened one eye and grunted, but she got up and came to the window and said, "Oh, Jetty. Honey. Santa must be HERE right now. Quick. Back to bed." She went to bed, I flew into the hall, STRAIGHT into my dad.
"WhAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"Santashereisawtheprintsontehroofandiwanttosayhiand go---"
He had a huge turkey platter in his hand. It was NOT one of the presents we'd seen."DADDY?"
He simply squatted down and said, "Jetty. Santa is so frazzled this year, he's asked ME to wrap this for your mom. See? He already had me put the stockings at the top of the stair. Now, don't you think he might be a little upset to have to carry on polite conversation with a little snigglefritz who is supposed to be in bed NOW?"
"YOU are helping SANTA?"
He looked so solemn with the weight of this honor. "Yes. And I need to do a good job, so off to bed."
No problem.
***
The morning between 7 and about 8:30 was a cacophony of stocking openings and playing games until Daddy allowed us to get him up. On this ONE day, he insisted on showering first, just to torture us. Jim would dig out his slippers--again worn once a year--and his robe and we'd wait. UGH.
Then HE woulds schlump downstairs, grumbling and turn on the lights and this was MY FIRST look. Presents from one wall all the way to the front window, presents as high as my chest, and the most beautiful Christmas tree EVER. And we were allowed ONE PRESENT before breakfast. Only one. It was okay. We learned very early that our Christmases lasted longer than anyone's because we took turns and we took breaks. We had to PLAY with our toys. WE read our books. We watched the grown ups. We all shared the jokes.
If it sounds like Heaven, it's because it was. Sheer Heaven. This Christmas was all about trains, though. JACK GOT his Lionel trains from Grandpa, and five billion miles of track and little houses and trees and, well EVERYTHING. I had good stuff too, but it was the trains.
When Daddy's last present was opened, along around TWO--he HOARDED them under his chair and we had to watch him open his all at the end. Rotten man. And he won at the can you unwrap tissue without ripping it game. Excruciating. Mommy was festooned in bows and she and Grandma and Jean Ellen were busy with dinner plans. Jim wanted to listen to his record albums and call his friends.
Jack, Grandpa and I went into the basement and built a city. We had hills and had to measure the angles--Grandpa was a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. And engineer... WITH A REAL ENGINEER'S CAP! He put it on and he we built our railroad route, complete with a mountain, a skyscraper we could drive it THROUGH and a cave and tunnel. We only had four crashes before it was complete at Five.
And Grandpa looked like a little boy, when we threw the switch and the train began to run. He ran around the tables with us as every obstacle was successfully managed. I threw the switch correctly--we had TWO trains--and they avoided one another neat as can be.
When it was done, He threw his cap in the air and DANCED. It was the only time I remember seeing him smile, let alone dance. My grandpa, my brother, and me, we danced a jig and sang a railroad song on Christmas.
***
There were no pictures taken or home movies. Grandpa died the following summer. But I see him in his cap, I hear him and I remember forgiving him the slap for the call, of "GREAT JOB THERE, LITTLE ONE" when I threw the switch for engine number two.
Grandpa was a railroad man. And for one Christmas morning, so was Jack and so was I. Three guys on the tracks, just doing our job.
On one magic Christmas when I was only six, and the world was new, and Santa landed on my roof.
***
The tree held presents and gave them up at night, after we were all in our nightclothes again. Mommy doled them out and all were labeled from the tree. They were always special--jewelry, a matchbox car, something special to the particular child. That year, mine was Santa in a Snow globe, only it was about three inches tall, with a tiny note affixed that said, "Thank you for not bothering me. It was a busy night. You are such a good girl. Love, Santa"
***
There is no one left from that time but me. Even Grandpa's hat is gone. But I hear him still. the magic of that Christmas, of many others, remains with me still. But that one Christmas, Grandpa let us see his back yard, the boy, the man who loved trains, the man who loved us. And I see the tree shimmering as I glanced at it over my daddy's shoulder as he carried me to bed, humming so that his chest rumbled and tickled me. I see the tinsel on his head, and Jean Ellen slapping Jimmy's hand as he looped the stuff in a clump. I feel my heart speeding up at the memory of almost seeing Santa.
I see it as clearly as any movie could bring it. It shines there for me to run whenever I need it; there, just by my heart, with Mommy close by, laughing.
So forgive me if I indulge myself in festooning and laughing and singing my way around my new home, making cookie dough to freeze, ordering some gifts, putting up my tree, repeating the story of every ornament. And planning my own Christmas Eve celebration with nine of my family, here. In my home. And there will be stockings from TWO Santas under my tree Christmas morning. And there will be toys. There will be singing deliberately off key.
And there will be more love than any one woman could possibly hope for. Here. In my home. You all are invited. Just let me know by the end of next week, so I know how big a turkey to order!
I first published this one in 2009, and it explains why I really am an all out, absolute, completely wacko Christmas nut. Not in the sense of buying new decorations or oodles of presents; I love the peace, the music, the silliness, the love that has always been mine for the giving and receiving. My family did it right. Sorry to bore those who read this, but I enjoyed reading it again because all of it flooded back and put me into the mood again.
I also know I referred to this in October--I think I published this again now for my own sake! A relative who was less than kind to me sometimes, but very kind at others, has died... and it has brought up some, well, disturbing memories. They may find their way into another entry, but I think I wanted to focus on something joyous... on a time when I got to be nothing more or less than an excited, happy child.
It is not meant to replace my entries--I realized tonight, as I revisited this post, that it was "birthing" a new one. The hour is late now, as I add these last two paragraphs, but reviewing and editing this piece did the trick. Joy is the woman who died, and I like visualizing her here, at Christmas, with my mom.
Lately I have been returning to this blog myself, just to bring that feeling back--how lucky I am to have such memories! So, have a wonderful holiday season! I'll READ some blogs, but somehow, even though I mean to write, I get side-tracked.
Here goes... no pictures, no more apologies... just my family at its very best!
Norman Rockwell Ain't Got Nuthin' On Our Christmases
It's hard for me to choose a Christmas from childhood. Two or three may be mixed together here, but I don't care. To me, it was idyllic. Jim did not torment us. Jacky and I were small children together, even up until he was about eleven. Jean Ellen was a keeper of magic and secrets to rival our mother. And Dad and Mom? Well, they had to be experienced.
So the Roots of my Love for the Season Grew Deep and Immortal Here...
My mother not only looked like Mrs. Claus, she acted like her. And it always began the day after Thanksgiving.
Jacky and I, and sometimes even Jimmy, Would race downstairs on Friday morning to see five presents perched on the top shelf of the extra tall white bookcase in the dining room. The Five Foot Shelf fit on one shelf, that bookcase was so wide... And the books on the top shelf reached the top of Daddy's head, so it was six feet tall. I grew up in a home with a bookcase in every room. It was just not a room without books, even in the bathrooms. And we had a BATH AND A HALF!
At this point, the books were still on that shelf, too, so the presents were annoyingly out of reach. We would climb on chairs, wondering how it was that Mommy had managed to pile the presents so that just enough of each tag was visible, so we could read the name, but we could not move a single package without the whole pile's tumbling to the floor. Inevitably we'd blow it and the pile would fall.
Mom would come from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her first of seven Christmas aprons, and say, simply, "Good thing nothing was breakable. Go ahead and open them and ruin your surprise. I don't much care..."
Then, as she was heading for the kitchen, she would toss back, "Not quite sure how Santa would feel, but that's your problem." We would feign our disappointment and put each one back, rattling them, squishing, doing our best to know what was inside, but Mom was too smart. We never could figure it out. It took until I was about twelve to be bothered that there never was something for Mommy there. Jean Ellen and I took to wrapping something for HER the morning after Thanksgiving, because it just felt all wrong. She was in college and it was a ritual we enjoyed together. I think it was the first of many she and I developed around the holiday together.
Let me reinforce this; until I was about 20, my mother never drank between Thanksgiving and Christmas. NOTHING. She would empty the huge "Silver Satin" port jug and there were never stray rum and cokes around. In fact, she didn't buy Coca Cola® at all until just before the holiday.
From then on, every day held a surprise. She didn't do a lot that Thanksgiving weekend, but wrap a new present or five each day, and the pile would grow more precarious until, by Sunday, Daddy took the books from that shelf and put them in a box tucked in the footwell of his desk. "GAWD knows none of you will let me have any peace between now and that day. MY life is over now. Nothing but shelling out money, having to run around to get GAWD knows what. Bah."
Tiny Tim in Scrooge Clothing
He never said humbug until the day. He also was the least convincing Scrooge alive, since he read us the Christmas Carol and checked with Mother every single night, asking her whether maybe ONCE she might come up with something on her own list that didn't involve her doing more work around the house. The truth was, my dad spent more on Christmas presents than anyone else, and would get scolded at by my mother constantly, often punctuated by a wet dishtowel on his head, which sat there for at least fifteen minutes, at whatever angle it had landed.
My parents were in love. That was the miracle of them. For all his womanizing, for all her drinking, for the myriad fights in between? They loved one another with a passion that would have been embarrassing if it had not been so wonderful to see. They liked to talk late into the evening, just about books, about politics, about philosophy. About their days. My father said that Mom was the most highly educated person he'd ever known and she never went to college. He would walk up behind her in the kitchen and simply put his arms around her sometimes, and they would stand there, singing softly, saying nothing.
(That's what I wanted in my life, and knew I could never settle for less than that, that alone would be better than less. I do not regret that choice at all.) I will not spoil this by moving into the present, though. I will return safely to that time, as a child, through my early teens, when I saw that my parents were clearly lovers at every age. I felt, though would never have said so, that I was lucky to witness those private moments, and that my parents did not find it wrong to let us see them.
Their love was palpable at Christmas. And the house was full of the good kinds of secrets. This Christmas brought us the birth of the "Christmas Spider," As Mom and Jean Ellen dubbed it. A hanging thingy made of glitter gold paper, on a large hook. When you draped it from a chandelier, pointy tentacle/leg things draped in many layers from the center and it seemed alive in a particularly grotesque way.
It moved around the house, from dining room, to kitchen, to a curtain rod, to the lamp next to Mom' chair--wherever Jean Ellen or Mom chose. the damned thing lasted for 25 years! And there was the wrapping of the "spoon rest" if it was Mom's turn. She and Grandma LeSure, Dad's mom, had an ongoing exchange with that. Granny'd gotten it for her donation to the Navaho Indian Tribe (back then). It was pale pea green, with three spoon rest depressions. Made of plastic, it was a "French" artiste in the center with his paintbrush, surrounded by his palette spoon rests. Half his moustached was missing from the get-go. The ugliest thing I ever saw. Granny gave it to Mom, then Mom gave it back for Mother's Day, then Granny gave it back on Mom's birthday, and here it was being re-wrapped in the same box, same interior tissue, same tag with all the cross-outs, for her.
We had traditions coming out our ears in our family. Most of them had to do with laughing.
But some had to do with the season. In late September, for instance, when I was little, Mom took me for a walk and we brought a pillow case. We'd go into the wildflower field and fill it with drying grass. Then Mommy would hang it in the attic and, along around December 20th, there was hay for the manger. She and Jean Ellen would put the crèche (nativity--we are French) together on the little table by the front door. We did not do the British custom of leaving the baby Jesus for Christmas morning, but that's okay. Mommy wanted us to have one thing that would remind us of the day's origin. When I was big enough, she let me sound out the words of the story--we were born reading, so that was fine. We knew it by heart anyway. So Jack or I would tell the story while they put the crèche together. Jean Ellen always made a star that covered the normal painting there. Sometimes silver, abstract on black paper. You never knew. Sometimes a big star in a cluster of smaller ones in a field of blue.
And the baking. I would sit cross-legged on the counter and "help" with the doughs, hand mixing in the chocolate chips. Or I would sprinkle the sugar cookie stars. Mostly I licked the bowl because it made it easier for Mom to clean. I think that Jean Ellen and I learned to bake through osmosis. I don't measure much, to this day. Mommy baked by feel, she said. We had six kinds of cookies, and the butter cookies without leavening were made two weeks in advance, and other doughs were frozen. She never froze cookies.
"They never taste quite the same," she said. I think she was right. And we NEVER used margarine. Margarine was a sin in our house.
We went shopping for presents for Mommy on their double bed, Jack and I. Daddy would have a miraculous display of things my mother wanted all around the perimeter, with price tags on every item--price tags he had made himself, to suit our budget. He as fair, though, because he had certain items out of our range--they were his presents. And he trusted US NOT TO TELL, and we never did. Through the year Mom thought of ways we could earn money for Christmas. We'd get paid and she had little jars with our names on them, NOT TO BE TOUCHED. Some things were practical, and some pretty, but there was always enough so that Jack and I could truly choose up until we were around nine. There were often twenty items there--all bought by Daddy, all re-marked. And then he helped us wrap them in tissue papers, and he had a stash of glitter and star stickers and ribbon so that we could make them "special." My Scroogey Dad.
****
I am the youngest. The miracle for me? Christmas Eve. By then, there was a ham coming out of the oven by 1:00 and a turkey going IN, for a late buffet at night. The trimming party was that night! While Jack and Jim were rooting around for a missed present or whether or not Santa REALLY was out there, I sat cross-legged on the living room floor with my dad. I wish I had a picture. I was not more than five or six. I was tiny. He six one. And we tested the bulbs, consulting over how he might plan which should have reflectors. Counting sockets and bulbs. Sometimes the count was wrong and he'd say, "Road trip, Jetty, get your coat." We'd run to Wallach's grocer and get some bulbs of the color we needed adn somehow or other, Daddy's find something that someone just HAD to have, just to even things out you know.
But I would hand Daddy the bulbs or reflectors and he would string the tree, from the bottom up. He didn't even bothe with the spire until the end. We knew it would get tipped. We worked quietly and fast, for guests arrived by 4:00 and we had to also unpack the ornaments, so people could decorate when they came. I loved unwrapping the blown glass ornaments. Mommy never hid breakable things from us. If we broke and item, she's say, "Did you mean to? Will you be more careful next time?" And that was that. We didn't mean to, and we WERE more careful and very little got broken.
That Christmas, when I think I was six, Grandma and Grandpa LeSure were there for BOTH days and were staying in a hotel! And Aunt Joy was coming. She wasn't married then, and was ten years younger than Mommy and was GLAMOROUS. The tree-trimming party mostly had friends of my parents when I was little. I loved sitting in a corner and hearing the adult conversation. Grandma LeSure told me I could go INTO her purse and try her lipstick. When I did though, Grandpa SLAPPED me and I yelled at him for it.
When Grandma explained, he had the oddest smirk on his face and said, "Well, Missy, I guess no one will push you around in this life. Excuse me." I found it a wholly unsatsifactory apology and avoided him all night.
Slowly the beauty of the tree emerged, amidst the singing and the laughing and the stories, the ham, the turkey, the spilled drinks--not Mom's, other people's ... she had me TASTE hers even--the boys nearly tipping the tree over from an over-rambunctious game of throw the dish towel around...
As the night lengthened, it all blurred for me. It seemed to me that our tree glittered more than anyone's. Then Mom and Joy had the obligatory fight over not having garland tinsel. We had the long, leaded icicles then. And Mom and Jean Ellen would not let ANYONE help with that. Every piece had to drape free. Grandma LeSure got that, too, and so did I, but when I started to help, suddenly, Daddy said, "Santa comes soon, Jetty! You have to run to bed!"
Run I did, and so did Jack. Jim and Jean Ellen stayed up later, but I didn't mind. I never saw the thing done. For me? For me, the last glimpse of Christmas Eve was a room full of people laughing, JE draping tinsel over Daddy's head, the boys NOT fighting, but playing cards, Mommy talking with Grandma, Grandpa standing back, holding his stomach, smoking his pipe, but looking happy. Joy working on the tree and clucking at the lack of garland, and two to six other adults laughing, singing, or talking. We always sang "Lullay thou Little Tiny Child" when I went to bed.
***
That early Christmas I leaped out of my bed though, pretty late and looked at the roof below our window. It was the roof to the den and there were HOOFPRINTS. "JEAN ELLEN!"
Now, my sister HATED to be wakened. We were not allowed to rouse her OR Jim until 7 for stockings, but I JUMPED ON HER. She opened one eye and grunted, but she got up and came to the window and said, "Oh, Jetty. Honey. Santa must be HERE right now. Quick. Back to bed." She went to bed, I flew into the hall, STRAIGHT into my dad.
"WhAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"Santashereisawtheprintsontehroofandiwanttosayhiand go---"
He had a huge turkey platter in his hand. It was NOT one of the presents we'd seen."DADDY?"
He simply squatted down and said, "Jetty. Santa is so frazzled this year, he's asked ME to wrap this for your mom. See? He already had me put the stockings at the top of the stair. Now, don't you think he might be a little upset to have to carry on polite conversation with a little snigglefritz who is supposed to be in bed NOW?"
"YOU are helping SANTA?"
He looked so solemn with the weight of this honor. "Yes. And I need to do a good job, so off to bed."
No problem.
***
The morning between 7 and about 8:30 was a cacophony of stocking openings and playing games until Daddy allowed us to get him up. On this ONE day, he insisted on showering first, just to torture us. Jim would dig out his slippers--again worn once a year--and his robe and we'd wait. UGH.
Then HE woulds schlump downstairs, grumbling and turn on the lights and this was MY FIRST look. Presents from one wall all the way to the front window, presents as high as my chest, and the most beautiful Christmas tree EVER. And we were allowed ONE PRESENT before breakfast. Only one. It was okay. We learned very early that our Christmases lasted longer than anyone's because we took turns and we took breaks. We had to PLAY with our toys. WE read our books. We watched the grown ups. We all shared the jokes.
If it sounds like Heaven, it's because it was. Sheer Heaven. This Christmas was all about trains, though. JACK GOT his Lionel trains from Grandpa, and five billion miles of track and little houses and trees and, well EVERYTHING. I had good stuff too, but it was the trains.
When Daddy's last present was opened, along around TWO--he HOARDED them under his chair and we had to watch him open his all at the end. Rotten man. And he won at the can you unwrap tissue without ripping it game. Excruciating. Mommy was festooned in bows and she and Grandma and Jean Ellen were busy with dinner plans. Jim wanted to listen to his record albums and call his friends.
Jack, Grandpa and I went into the basement and built a city. We had hills and had to measure the angles--Grandpa was a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. And engineer... WITH A REAL ENGINEER'S CAP! He put it on and he we built our railroad route, complete with a mountain, a skyscraper we could drive it THROUGH and a cave and tunnel. We only had four crashes before it was complete at Five.
And Grandpa looked like a little boy, when we threw the switch and the train began to run. He ran around the tables with us as every obstacle was successfully managed. I threw the switch correctly--we had TWO trains--and they avoided one another neat as can be.
When it was done, He threw his cap in the air and DANCED. It was the only time I remember seeing him smile, let alone dance. My grandpa, my brother, and me, we danced a jig and sang a railroad song on Christmas.
***
There were no pictures taken or home movies. Grandpa died the following summer. But I see him in his cap, I hear him and I remember forgiving him the slap for the call, of "GREAT JOB THERE, LITTLE ONE" when I threw the switch for engine number two.
Grandpa was a railroad man. And for one Christmas morning, so was Jack and so was I. Three guys on the tracks, just doing our job.
On one magic Christmas when I was only six, and the world was new, and Santa landed on my roof.
***
The tree held presents and gave them up at night, after we were all in our nightclothes again. Mommy doled them out and all were labeled from the tree. They were always special--jewelry, a matchbox car, something special to the particular child. That year, mine was Santa in a Snow globe, only it was about three inches tall, with a tiny note affixed that said, "Thank you for not bothering me. It was a busy night. You are such a good girl. Love, Santa"
***
There is no one left from that time but me. Even Grandpa's hat is gone. But I hear him still. the magic of that Christmas, of many others, remains with me still. But that one Christmas, Grandpa let us see his back yard, the boy, the man who loved trains, the man who loved us. And I see the tree shimmering as I glanced at it over my daddy's shoulder as he carried me to bed, humming so that his chest rumbled and tickled me. I see the tinsel on his head, and Jean Ellen slapping Jimmy's hand as he looped the stuff in a clump. I feel my heart speeding up at the memory of almost seeing Santa.
I see it as clearly as any movie could bring it. It shines there for me to run whenever I need it; there, just by my heart, with Mommy close by, laughing.
So forgive me if I indulge myself in festooning and laughing and singing my way around my new home, making cookie dough to freeze, ordering some gifts, putting up my tree, repeating the story of every ornament. And planning my own Christmas Eve celebration with nine of my family, here. In my home. And there will be stockings from TWO Santas under my tree Christmas morning. And there will be toys. There will be singing deliberately off key.
And there will be more love than any one woman could possibly hope for. Here. In my home. You all are invited. Just let me know by the end of next week, so I know how big a turkey to order!
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