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

With him, still

Not so long ago and far away in another life, I was a storyteller. Here’s one of the stories I often told this time of year:

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was a little girl in Alabama. Some things were the same then. Mamas and Daddies loved their children. Spring came every year. Elvis was the King of Rock and Roll. Some things were different. Little girls almost always wore dresses. My mother made all of my clothes. Everybody we knew went to the same church every Sunday. Twice.

I was the youngest child in the family by many years, almost as young as a grandchild. I was not unappealing to look at, with blonde hair, blue eyes and a ready smile. Unfortunately, I also had a busy brain and a mouth to go with it, and was forever asking inconvenient questions at inconvenient times.

            My mother, God bless her, loved dressing me up for church on Sundays. So did my teenaged sisters. I guess they thought they might as well have some kind of fun out of me in exchange for putting up with my behavior for the rest of the week.

So on Saturday nights they picked out my dress and slip and shoes and socks and underwear. They bathed me and washed my hair. They slathered my hair with Dippity-Do and filled my head full of itchy, pokey brush rollers. It was all more of a trial than any four-year-old should ever have to endure.

            But on the Saturday night before Easter, these ridiculous rituals would go into overdrive. My mother would have been working for weeks by then, making her idea of the perfect Easter outfit for her baby. One that that bristled with lace, embroidery, puffed sleeves, ribbons and bows. My mother and sisters would turn me into a pastel petit four for the day, an overly frosted little pink and white cupcake with blonde hair. An Easter confection.

            Of course, I did not want to be a little pink and white Easter confection at that time in my life. Back then, my goal was to someday, eventually, grow up to be a horse and/or marry Elvis Presley. His magazine photos were plastered all over the walls of the bedroom I shared with my big sisters.

To that end, I got together with my imaginary friend, Darlene, every day. And when Darlene arrived, it was the easiest thing in the world to pretend Elvis up for a visit to our house, as well. Once there, he would very obligingly play whatever game Darlene and I had gotten going, with my dog, Chipper, and my pet chicken, Irmengarde in tow. Darlene and I could always count on Elvis to liven up an otherwise dull afternoon.

But, oh, those Easter weekends! The newness of those clothes! I hated the scratch of lace. I hated the binding of ribbons and elasticated puffed sleeves. And the unforgiving white patent leather shoes. And white cotton gloves, for goodness sake. And a straw hat with an elastic strap under my chin. Horrors.

I failed to understand how the wearing of castoff boy's britches and tennis shoes and a t-shirt to church on Easter Sunday could prevent the Easter Bunny from coming or Jesus from rising from his tomb. It was all very confusing.

But my mother and sisters were on a mission. A mission to try to make me the cutest little Easter brat at Mamre Baptist Church. So, with my hair let down and combed out, they worked me into new underwear, socks, shoes, gloves, and confectionery dress. Then I was made to stand on the little bench in front of my mother’s dressing table, where I could see myself in the big, round mirror from head to toe, and be admired by all the females of the family.

So there I stood on the Easter Sunday morning of my fourth year, a successfully potty-trained human being who had left her high chair far behind. Stuffed into itchy, binding clothes, my stiff, sprayed hair in a perfect “flip” around my shoulders, I felt like some sort of sacrificial lamb to fashion. Oh, the indignity.

I stared in the mirror, feeling my pre-school gorge rise, until finally, I exploded. First I kicked off the shoes and wrenched off the gloves and socks. I threw the hat across the room and began to tug at the ribbon around my waist. Next I pulled the hated dress over my head, that object of all those hours of my poor mother's loving work.  As I tugged and wriggled and twisted off those clothes, I growled and whimpered like a caged animal.

And then there I was on the little bench, staring up at my mother, wearing only my little white cotton slip and panties. My face was blotchy, my hair enmeshed in tangles from the struggle to disrobe. Without a sound, my sisters melted out of the room.

From the doorway, my mother stared back at me, outwardly calm, inwardly seething. But she had been a mother much longer than I had been a child. She was much smarter than I was. And more patient. As she opened her mouth to say something, the kitchen phone rang.

“You stay right there and don’t you move, young lady. I’ll be back to deal with you in a minute.”

So I stood, sniffling and trembling with anger. Darlene appeared. I began to tell her my troubles. My mother soon returned and stood at the door, watching me talk to the empty air around me. My abandoned clothes had come to rest in various unlikely places around the bedroom she shared with my father.

Curiosity being one of my foremost character flaws, I turned my attention to her. “Who was that on the telephone, Mama?” I asked, still sniffling.

My mother’s expression changed then. Her eyes took on a shrewd look. She was wise enough to recognize an opportunity when one presented itself.

“Who that was on the phone, young lady,” she said, “was Elvis.”

I stopped sniffling. Darlene disappeared back from whence she came in an instant. My mother had my full attention now.

“Elvis heard about the outfit I’ve been sewing for you this Easter. He wanted me to take a picture of you wearing it.” Here my mother nonchalantly studied the nails on her left hand. “I told him I’d see what I could do, but not to expect too much, because you were cutting up such didoes about it.”

I exploded again, this time into action. Running around the room, I gathered up the hated clothes, talking a mile a minute about how I’d have them on before she knew it, how I’d comb my own hair and buckle my own shoes, and if she would just go get my brother’s camera, I would stand very, very still, and smile real pretty, and be good the rest of the day. No. I’d be good forever and ever. And ever. Amen.

Mother disappeared down the hall and shortly returned with the camera and my sisters. They made a couple of adjustments to my ensemble and took me outside. Darlene waited for me there in front of the camellia bush. And that’s where my mother snapped my photograph. For the King.

Then my family piled into the car and headed to church like every other Sunday of our lives. Darlene waved us all the way down the road to the turnoff.

I’m sure my Easter basket was lovely that year. I’m sure I hid eggs and ate candy and had a wonderful day. But what I remember most about that Easter is imagining the look on Elvis’s face, all the way up in Memphis, when he got my picture in the mail. At Graceland. Who really wants to be a horse when they grow up anyway?

I have lived through a fair few Easters since that one. I think about those years sometimes, of my family, and the world we knew then. I think about Darlene. She must surely be getting as long in the tooth as I am, these days. I miss her.

Not long ago, I visited Graceland. I did not see my photo there. I’m sure it must mean that Elvis carried it with him always, perhaps in his wallet. I like to think he could see Darlene in that picture with me. That Elvis Presley had the only existing photo ever taken of the two of us together, all those years ago. I like to think that somewhere out there in the cosmos, it’s with him, still.

Still hates breaking in new clothes.

Happy Easter. Thanks for coming. 

Come again soon.

Leann

 

             

Here's To the Next Times

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Sweet potato pie and Earl Grey Tea

It’s the middle of December. I awoke this morning to a world wrapped in cotton wool, all sound deadened in the mist. Today, we’ll add our star lights to the front porch.  We’ll take out our Christmas books and begin to read them. We’ll turn on the Christmas music. Soon we’ll decorate the tree.

And here’s where we are this year: Still in Virginia. Still in the last house we moved into, except for our youngest daughter, who has moved on to a place of her own. My husband is now working for a different company, and he’s finding his work there quite satisfying.

My son has happily changed his university major to athletic training, works all the hours God sends and has managed somehow to make the dean’s list for at least the last two semesters he’s told us about. My oldest daughter works at two hospitals and assembles electronic components, takes riding classes, belongs to a drama group, and several social groups as well as taking literacy tutoring every week. She has a lovely boyfriend.

Our youngest daughter loves her job at an animal shelter in a nearby town, and is settling in to her new digs in a neighborhood that seems to suit her well. I love the place. We text or talk every day, and we get to see her almost every week.

Sadly, we lost our cat, Panda, this year to old age. He was thirteen. His ashes are buried in the back garden under the new fig tree. But before we lost him, he had time to enjoy many happy arguments with his two new friends:  Starr, also known as The Devil Herself, and Jackie Chan, the Ninja Kitty, two kittens that we took it upon ourselves to house and provide for.

Now I have a wonderful word for any of you whose children or close acquaintances go to work at an animal shelter. It’s the handiest word ever if you use it, which I didn’t. The word is: No.

Our dog Scout remains as wonderful as always, just with more gray around the muzzle, but as ever, still a puppy at heart.

I continue to substitute teach, mostly at my favorite elementary school here. I also occasionally work for a company that organizes moving and estate sales, which I quite enjoy. I am blessed to work with overwhelmingly lovely people.

The mist is lifting now. Birds swoop and dive around the multiple feeders in the front garden. The hawk that lives just into the treeline must be hunting elsewhere this morning. Foxes live in that part of the wood as well. One of them occasionally saunters across the back garden at first light. I see him sometimes sniffing the woodpile as I pour my morning coffee.

It doesn’t seem like over two years since we left England. And then again, it seems longer. Sometimes it feels like time is one of those big rubber bands that stretches and stretches and then snaps back with a pop.

This is our third Christmas back in America. It has been such a long transition, this last one, the move from England. It has been so full of twists, good and bad. Such drama. And while I told myself I embraced my new life, still, I held a great part of myself back.

A moment of silence

 I have found it quite difficult to let go of the memories of what was our daily life in Harrogate, and to compare it with our life here: Our neighbors there, our friends, our home, our back garden, our doctors, dentist, favorite shopkeepers, pubs and restaurants, schools. The Harrogate Theatre, that wonderful old place. And Betty’s. Oh, Lord.

Without thinking about it, without realizing it, for the longest time, I silently held back my affections from this place, resenting it only because it is so different from the life we had there. Then realizing what I was doing, I stopped and took a good look around.

 This is not Harrogate. But it is a wonderful place, and we are lucky to be here. And now that I’ve forgiven it for what it is not, I’m really beginning to love it and to see all the wonderful opportunities the area offers.

Still, we’ll always love Yorkshire. Always miss it a bit. I’ll probably always pathetically tear up at the first strains of Jerusalem. Can’t help it.

It was a warm Thanksgiving this year. After a meal of fried chicken, baked salmon, mashed potatoes, green beans, creamed corn, collards and biscuits with lemon cake for afters, the five of us waddled out to the woods behind the house for a stroll on the trail. It was mild enough to remind me of my childhood Thanksgivings in Alabama.

We  meandered mostly together through the woods along the creek, gathering pine cones for the fire place.

It is a never-ending source of wonder to us that these big people in our lives are the same ones who used to be so little as to fit in our laps. And they won’t understand for years what it’s like sometimes for my husband and I to be with them as they are now, remembering how they used to be, and who we were when we were younger with them.

Or know the frustration of being unable to remember some of the last times--the last time we tucked them in bed;the last time we kissed an owie; the last time we read them a story; the last time they fought over who got to sit next to one of us; the last time we picked them up from school.

American fireplace--English post box

The frustrating thing about last times is that you don’t always think about or even know when they happen. Not for years.

Such is life. So here’s to the next times. The ones that we hope are coming. Here’s to watching It’s a Wonderful Life  yet again, and decorating the tree. Here’s to having our big, festive meal on Christmas Eve, and sleeping in on Christmas Day, and eating leftovers. Someday other family members will join us. Some Christmas we’ll be on our own.

A daily reminder

Because as we have found, life is mostly transition. And like my mother told me many times in an inadvertent lesson, “Don’t nobody want to fool with a fussy plant. Get you one that’ll bloom wherever you put it, and can take some rough handling.”

So Merry Christmas another year. We wish you happiness in whatever and however you celebrate. And we hope that you are always able to bloom wherever you are planted.

Still waiting for Santa

 Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays.  

Thanks for coming. Come again soon.

Leann

 

The Day Before Thanksgiving

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 I wrote this some few years back, when my children were teenagers.  It's interesting to think of what's happened since then. I wonder what will happen next?

 

It’s the day before Thanksgiving.    My kitchen is covered in cooked sweet potatoes, cornbread waiting to be crumbled, simmering mushrooms, chopped onions, garlic, cranberries, apples, and sage.  As I chop and simmer and sauté, I think of holidays past and future; of other homes; of my life in America and in England; of the many faces and voices that I love and miss.  Like the character in Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, I sniff the air and know Christmas is coming, “It’s fruitcake weather.”

            My three children are scattered to their own interests today.  They are moving in directions that don’t always include their parents now, wading in to the shallow end of lives of their own, and I prepare for this holiday in a quiet house for a change.

            I’ve never cared much for change, but I’ve come to make my peace with it over the years because I have learned in a long, slow lesson that everything changes, given enough time.

          And this is the largest one so far.  My babies are gone.  They have disappeared somewhere into the long legs, strong jaws, and steady eyes of the young adults I find myself surrounded by now.  It’s disorienting.  I miss their little selves sometimes; their soft, round arms and legs, their tiny voices; the whispery smell of sleep in their hair in the morning.  But I like these young people who think they own my house -- even with their immature attitudes about the division of labor and money in a domestic setting.  They give me reason to hope that, in time, they may just turn out all right.  Or at least avoid lengthy jail sentences.

            We went for a family walk not long ago, the five of us--something that doesn’t happen as often as it once did.  We took our dog, Scout, to the reservoir not far from here on a crisp, golden autumn day.  It was muddy underfoot, of course, and we trudged around the water talking, grouching, arguing, complaining and laughing as usual.  We are our own moveable circus of noise.

            Along a narrow avenue of trees I fell behind with my middle child, my daughter.  We walked slowly, and lazily watched the others ahead of us.  They played at the water’s edge throwing a stick for the dog and competing to see whom she would bring it back to first.

            Yards away from them, I stopped in mid-stride, entranced by the scene around me.  In a pause between two heartbeats I caught my breath at how beautiful my family looked to me just at that moment.  My feelings must have shown on my face.  My daughter asked what I was thinking.

            I told her to look closely at the family around her, as we were that day, because our times together like this would slowly come to an end.  What we had always been as long as she could remember--the circle of five-- would only last a while longer.  Before long our circle would change, and we would not go back.

            Standing under the falling leaves I thought about how families grow into their own private cultures.  They form and grow, and then change to form other circles, other cultures. Being with all of them that day was like watching a drop of rain gather on the edge of a leaf, just before it falls into the stream below and is carried away to become a part of something else.

            My daughter and I watched together as the others tussled over a stick and jostled each other and argued and laughed.  She put her arm around me and rested her head on my shoulder.  While we stood there our circle felt close and safe.  I thought,  “If I stand here very still and quiet and if I don’t move or breathe, this afternoon will go on always with no one having to grow up, or grow old, or separate, or die.”

            But our feet got cold.  Somebody started an argument.  Scout lost the stick.  Our moveable circus slogged back to the car where we ate crumbly cookies and shared hot tea from a plastic thermos lid and argued about who was muddiest, whose feet fit where, and who had more room on the seats.

            Driving through the Dales toward home I thought about how we are born into one circle--a good one if we are lucky, but how we have to cultivate the second one ourselves.   I drank in the three-hundred-sixty degrees of wonderful outside the car window, and I was so thankful for everything around me and behind me---for all of it---especially the birds.   I am so thankful for birds.

             There was a time in my life, a long time ago, when the only thing that comforted me was watching the birds that came to feed on the crumbs I left for them on the garden wall of our rented house in California.  That was a lifetime ago when my husband and I first came to understand that our oldest child’s autism would take our family down a different path than the one we had planned for ourselves.  I didn’t want to go down that path.  I didn’t even want to look down it.  I was scared to death then of the rest of my life.

So all through those dark days, I held on tightly to those birds.  I fed them and watched them every day until, well, we had some very fat birds in our neighborhood.  And after awhile, I found I was able see all the other good things in life again.  I am grateful for those birds.  There has been so much to enjoy, after all.

            Everything changes given enough time.  Everything. I don’t even know where we will be at Thanksgiving next year, or Christmas, or how often in the coming years the children will spend those holidays in our old circle. 

But today, it’s the day before Thanksgiving, and my kitchen is covered in a great plenty.  My husband and children will be home again soon. 

            Steam has stippled the wide windows that look over the walled back garden.  I crumble cornbread for stuffing and watch through abstract patterns of beaded water as the birds dart between bare branches and swerve through the air.  They collect the gifts I’ve left for them and fly on; high over the rooftops and into a horizon I cannot see from here.

Still prefers ham.

            Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks for coming. Visit again soon.

                            Leann

. . . so this old world must still be spinning around, and I still love you . . .