How to Tell It's Christmas

 “Is it Christmas today?” I ask again.

It was hard to tell then. There was no snow in Alabama like on the cards and in the movies. No mittens and hats and snowballs fights. No horse-drawn sleighs.

Winter comes to Alabama in damp browns and blacks and grays. It was hard for a young child to tell when Christmas is coming in 1966.

            But this is the year I have just learned that Christmas can't come until after Thanksgiving. The turkey that has lurked around the chicken yard all summer, terrorizing me, has disappeared suddenly. Something else to be thankful for.

            And my mother and sisters and I have been to Mama Clark’s to buy fabric and trim for Christmas dresses. My sisters take a long time to pick out fabric. They like new clothes. I don’t like  the the feel of new clothes. I like old clothes. Mama picks out my fabric.

That day, my mother and my sisters and Mama Clark spend a long, boring time considering ways to adjust last year’s patterns for this year’s fashions and so save us the cost of buying new ones. I pretend up Darlene and Elvis, and we play together awhile.Then I fall asleep on Mama Clark's back porch swing.

            My mother is spending more time than usual at her sewing machine. Its whir is a background noise in the house, even as I fall asleep at night. And I spend time every day before my afternoon nap, spilling my mother’s full button jar onto the table, raking through the contents for buttons to set off the red or gold or russet cloth of our new clothes for when they are finished.

            My mother spends more time than usual in the kitchen, too. The heat has been turned off in the spare room to store the extra food. That room is filling up with fruit cakes, tea cakes, tipple cakes, and all kinds of good things to eat, along with the supplies for baking to come that has overflowed the kitchen cupboards. The black walnuts we picked up in the fall or the pecans my grandfather brought us, or the apples my mother has dried. When I follow her in there, it smells like a gingerbread house. We cannot have any of it until Christmas.

            Lately, in the middle of sending me to fetch something for her, my mother will stop herself.

 “Mama needs her house shoes” she’ll begin, or “sweater” or “scissors. Will you run go look under my bed,” or  “in the hall closet,” or  “in the spare room . . .”

 Then she’ll stop and put a finger to her mouth.“Oh, never mind, honey,” she’ll say, “No. No, don’t you go. Mama will get them herself.” 

It will take me years, slow child that I am, to properly understand this one.

            Sunday a while back, just before the service was over, the deacons passed the plates around a second time, and everyone in the church, young and old, drew out a name to buy a gift to put under the tree for the Christmas Eve service. My mother says I can have three whole dollars to spend on a present, and that I can’t tell anyone but her that it’s for little Bette Griffin.

My Sunday school teacher has taken me aside and measured me for a set of wings, a gown, and a halo. She has showed me how to walk down the middle aisle of the church sanctuary; step, pause, step, pause, looking very serious, as The Angel of the Lord should do. I have to learn a new Bible verse.

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

It’s a lot of words to remember. Instead of learning my nursery rhymes, I practice it with my mother every day. I tell her, “This is a lot of words. I would rather just say, Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.”

 My mother says. “This is not that hard. You already know all your nursery rhymes. If you can learn all that, you can remember this.”

“But they rhyme,” I say. 

 “Nevertheless,” she says, “you can do it.” She turns her chin down and looks right in my eyes.  “And if you stand up in the church on Christmas Eve with those wings and that halo and say Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater to the Shepherds, there will be a spanking waiting for you when we get home. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

 “Now,” she says, “say it again from the beginning.”

So I have to remember all the words. And I have to remember to walk slowly. And I have to remember not to say Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater. And not to reach back and scratch at my wings. Or to bend over. Because then the halo falls off. Every time.

One day, my daddy and I go into the woods and pick out a tree. We find it in just a few minutes. He lifts me way up to tie an old rag around the top of it so we can spot it when we come back for it later. My daddy sets me back on the ground and looks down at me. He is very, very tall.

He teases, “Look at those long arms and legs sticking out from your coat, girl. I’m going to have to put a brick on your head to keep you from growing so quick.”

Then we take a walk in the woods and call to the birds there. My daddy can call just like a bird and you can’t tell the difference. We hunt mistletoe. We go to the lake and skip rocks. We row around the lake. When we get home, Daddy tells Mama that it took so long because cedars are getting hard to find. And he winks at me.

One morning, Mama tells me in a couple of weeks on Christmas Eve, Santa will visit our church and I can tell him what I’d like for Christmas. I can ask for one thing, politely. One thing only. Because it is not good to be greedy. Greediness will make children grow up crooked.

“Can I ask him to turn me into a horse?” I ask.

“No,” she says.

“Can I ask him for a monkey?”

“Absolutely not.”

            Then what is the point? I think this to myself, but say nothing. I look out the window at the damp, black and gray landscape. It looks just like the pictures on the tv set.

            “Can I ask him for snow?" Mama thinks about this.

            “Yes,” she says, “but don’t be surprised if he can’t work it out for you this year. He’s very busy.” She looks out the window, too. “You should probably ask him for a new coat.”

“Oh,” I say. “Yes, ma’am.”

I would much rather have a monkey than a new coat.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asks, “and a piece of pie?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say.

My mother pours a dollop of coffee into my cup of milk and cuts off a nice chunk of sweet potato pie for each of us. I know that I’m getting pie for breakfast to make up for the fact that she won’t let Santa Claus bring me a monkey or turn me into a horse. There is no question about it, now.  I am completely certain that my mother runs everything. Even Santa Claus.

After pie and coffee, we sit at the kitchen table with construction paper, scissors, and a rubber-tipped bottle of mucilage. I love the way it smells in here. Coffee, cinnamon, lemon cleaner, and glue. My mother cuts longs strips of red and green paper and shows me how to make them into a chain. At first I count them, but when we get past ten, my mother helps. There are twelve. We hang them on a nail in the kitchen.

Mama says I can take one chain off every night before I go to bed, and count them every day.

“You mean after all this work we’re only going to tear it up?” I say.

“Yes,” she says, “and when we get to the last chain, you’ll know that it’s Christmas Eve.”

I think about that for a minute. I have an idea. “If we take a bunch of them off every day, will Christmas come sooner?”

“No,” she says.

“So Christmas is coming in that many days no matter what I do?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a lot.” I say.

“We have a lot to do,” my mother said then. “The days will go by quickly.”

And she was right again.

Still waits all year for German Chocolate Cake

Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

Leann

The Carpets of Hartsfield

Saying goodbye to my grown child was one of the most disorienting experiences I've ever lived through. Talk about cognitive dissonance. This was written after the exit of my youngest child and only son. I'm posting it today in sympathy with a great, life-long friend, Jackie, who just delivered  her only girl, our Kristin, to a university several states from home. 

A million miles of carpet covers the floor at the Atlanta airport, and the walls are lined with art. Time expands and contracts here.  All around us people hurry along wishing for more of it, or sit and wait, wishing for less.

In an invisible cone of privacy I say goodbye to my child, my last one, my boy.  Touching his forehead at the hairline, I smooth back thick strands. I can’t help it.

I have to reach up so far to touch his head now. There, just there, is a small whorl of hair, like the eye of a storm.  The first time I saw it was the day I gave birth to him.

Photo by Chelsea Lindsey

Goodbye.  

For him, the word is a portal, an opening, the beginning of his new life at university, out in the world on his own.  For me it is the closing door of a house that I don’t live in anymore. I lower my hand and take a step back. I think of all the things he doesn’t know yet. I breathe in. I breathe out.

The walls of the airport in Atlanta are lined with art, and a million miles of carpet cover the floor. In an invisible cone of privacy I stand on one small square, alone, an island in the great ocean of people all around me.

Goodbye I say, goodbye, goodbye, as nineteen years and most of my life turns.  He smiles and waves. Then he faces forward and dives headlong into the tide.

Our boy.

Knows now there's never an end to it.

 Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

               Leann

Remember That He's Gone

When I left for Alabama, the coming day was just a pink smudge on the horizon behind my left shoulder. The honeysuckle vines had begun to stretch their tendrils and reach for the next rail on the fence. The rosebuds dreamed on their stems.

As I pulled out of the driveway, I remembered when he was born. How our family waited for three days, my mother becoming increasingly, uncharacteristically fractious as she prayed for my sister to give birth safely. And he was safely born, despite his large size, and his mother’s preeclampsia. My sister, who’d been mad for a girl-child, forgot all about that the minute she held him, her first-born. He was such a blond fairy baby, all cherry-pink-and-apple-blossom-white. Such a beautiful, sweet boy.

By the time I hit the 81 South, the sun had cleared the horizon behind me and I’d remembered past the worst of it. How his mother was taken so young. In the time it took for a city truck to run a stop sign. How he survived that accident with stitches in his dandelion hair. I remember still, how they felt under my palm, those bloody, crusty cuts, when I rocked and comforted him that endless February afternoon. Her husband, my crazed parents and shocked siblings struggled with the technicalities of her sudden death. The arrangements. That tiny boy cried for his mother as least as long as it had taken him to be born. I cried with him. More death would come to us, and soon. I was eleven that year.

Passing Knoxville, I skimmed quickly over my memories after that. There is a reason that fairy tales contain dire consequences for motherless and fatherless children. A song kept playing on the radio that expressed my feelings of sadness and anger. And more sadness. And more anger.

I know that time stops for the grieving. In the space between hearing the news, and living through the funeral, life goes into an odd slow motion. Like being stuck on a merry-go-round in the wrong gear. And it feels so strange and unforgiveable to look out and see that, all around you, the world continues at normal speed.

After Chattanooga, I stopped remembering, and I began to contemplate what I was driving into.

His children are beautiful and smart and strong. His wife is loving and courageous. So I have the greatest hope that they will be alright now that he is gone. I pray for their comfort. And for the rest of us who loved him so.

I hope for some peace for the man who unknowingly drove a farm tractor in front of his loaded rig and watched it swerve, crash and ignite, shocked and horrified, as the cab burned down to the frame in what must have seemed like the pause between two breaths.

I left my hometown years ago. I’ve been many places. Wherever I was in the world, there was not a day in my life without him in it. Not a day without all of my family in it, especially the young ones. My niece and nephews, so close to my own age, so far from my own experience.

I saw them in the faces of my children, and of the children I worked with over the years. I held them close. They were always with me, wherever I was in the world. Someone once asked me if I believed that houses are haunted. I said I believed people are haunted, not houses. I believe it still.

At his memorial, I lingered to touch his motorcycle jacket and boots. I’d thought as we both aged, and our lives slowed, we’d have found time for each other again, someday. But he wasn’t granted age. Sometimes, there just isn’t any more. I headed back to Virginia in the dark of an early morning.

That fairy child grew up to be, in many ways, a hard man. Hard to know, hard on himself. A hard worker. Sometimes hard to live with. Now hard to live without. And hard to forget.

On the coldest day of this winter, they’ll release his ashes on the top of Cheaha Mountain, as he instructed his friends in one of those conversations we all have, but only half believe in.

When I pulled into my driveway, I could see that the rosebuds had emerged from their dreams into riots of flowers. The honeysuckle blossom thickened the air with a sweetness that was hard to bear. That song on the radio started over again just before I cut the engine.

I’ve seen him several times since then. A shadow on the floor. A movement at the corner of my eye. The rumble of his grown-man’s voice as the air conditioning hums into action. It's not him. It’s not the house. It’s me.  

All the winds of northern Alabama find their way to Bald Rock up on Cheaha. I can see just as clear how it will be on that cold day this winter. His ashes rising upward on the same winds the hawks ride, up there at the top of the mountain, swirling together higher, and higher, hanging in the air. Then drifting down, falling like the mercy that is surely owing to his children, into the valley where our ancestors lived and worked and died.

I hope I can be there on that day. I hope, in time, I can remember that he’s really gone.

Knows now there are some things she'll never understand

 Leann