Memories of the Heart Mary Ann Kirby Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime. Laura Ingalls Wilder 42 • November 2018
We all have our own memories of Christmases-past. Mine mostly involve my grandmother’s house. I was the only child of a single working-parent, and my mother and I would most often rely on my grandmother to create and fulfill all our holiday experiences. And she was happy to do it, too. She’d have the yard man haul her eight-foot artificial tree down from the attic every year and stand it in the corner of the living room–along with ornaments stored in partitioned boxes once gathered from some liquor store. We’d string the colored lights around the tree and then I would begin the task of strategically placing all the balls and tinsel garland. Sometimes we’d use icicles to finish it off and it would inevitably end up looking like an explosion of aluminum. On Christmas morning the house would smell divine. There would be a turkey in the oven along with cornbread dressing and a sweet potato casserole. The dressing was a family favorite and was especially delicious when served mashed-up with white rice and gravy. We’d be seated at the kitchen table and each place setting would be complete with a freshly-ironed cloth napkin. Christmas Day was not a day for folded paper towels. It was special. We’d use the good plates, too. Everyone had their glass of tea made from that granulated instant tea powder-stuff that just dissolved in water–and one solid can-shaped, ribbed, jellied cranberry sauce jiggled on a saucer in the middle of it all. I never understood the cranberry sauce. Or the Le Sueur peas, for that matter. Clearly I had not yet developed a sophisticated palette. I was just a kid, after all. And when it was time to give thanks, it would always be the same: “Father we thank Thee for these and all our blessings. Amen.” Didn’t matter who said it–it was always those exact words. For decades. ✧ ✧ ✧ When my grandmother died in 2012, I brought her kitchen table to my house. I didn’t have room for it but it was just one of those things that I couldn’t part with. We had played countless hands of double-solitaire on that table, had a thousand conversations–and had eaten all those Christmas dinners. I had to put it on the back porch. It wasn’t “in” the elements, but wasn’t inside, either. Not surprisingly, after a few years, the polyurethane began to peel and the wood was showing damage. So I decided to refinish it. I sanded it, by hand, for no less than twelve hours–with no TV and no radio. The sound of rubbing away generations of DNA consumed me completely. And after all the rubbing and sanding and scraping and remembering, I got to bare wood. The table was completely raw. And it smelled amazing. It was a cross between cedar and perfume. It was an emotional smell. I felt transported to another time. Memories flooded my eyes. ✧ ✧ ✧ As the years wore on, Christmases at my grandmother’s became less involved. There was less participation. She was getting older. Everyone had other lives. They lived in far-off places and experienced life’s normal distractions. Our group had become fractured. Sometimes family dynamics, themselves, presented their own difficulties. At some point, gatherings and gifts had become more obligatory and less meaningful. Christmas mornings were filled with socks, and bathrobes, and packaged undershirts– and stress. It was easier to give an envelope containing a twenty-dollar bill. The faded excitement of Christmas morning had become a distant expectation. But on one particular Christmas morning, ironically the last that I remember celebrating there, there was one wrapped package that was larger than the rest. It disrupted the otherwise low-lying landscape of the few gifts under the tree. It was a single box, had one of those big puffy bows on top, and it had my name on it. Hometown madison • 43
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