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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 RANKIN • 81