Christmas Magic

My mother was an expert at making much from little. Nothing demonstrated this more than Christmas. My mother's Christmas trees were a work of art. After my father draped the colored lights around the tree, every fragile glass ball and bubbling bird were carefully hung from the branches by my mother or my sisters. Then the real artistry began as my mother delicately draped the tinsel, strand by strand, until the tree looked to be covered with shimmering icicles. Finally, she created magic under the tree with a small lighted church nestled in 'angel hair' snow next to a small frozen pond (mirror) alight with graceful sparkled ice skaters. I loved to crawl under the branches and gaze at that tiny village in the snow. This first photo is of my brother Bob and I, Christmas 1957. This is taken at my grandmother's house: artificial tree, a chair from the sun porch brought inside for the winter. It appears that this is the year I received a toy skunk for Christmas; I remember the skunk, he had a molded plastic face. Plainly, my mother has given me a home permanent for the holidays. My brother and I are dressed in our best clothes and I'm sure we have been warned to be on our best behavior. My grandmother's house was not a place for children and we were severely warned by our mother, "Don't make any noise; don't touch anything..." Christmas would have been a long day of sitting quietly on the scratchy navy blue sofas, highlighted by a formal dinner at the long white tableclothed dining table. The finale would have been my grandmother's famous apple and pumpkin pies. One Christmas, as the dessert dishes were being cleared, my grandmother asked my sister Barbara what she thought of that pie. My sister honestly answered, "Good, thank you, but I like my mother's better." Time stood still as the room came to a silent halt. "What was that?" asked my grandfather in his gruff Swedish voice. My grandmother gave my sister a piercing look, then turned to the kitchen to continue the dinner clean-up. My grandmother had perfected the passive-aggressive cold shoulder, and pity the person who suffered its intent. My mother hustled us home early that Christmas, packing the station wagon to the roof and bundling us against the driving snow.
The two photos below would have been taken in our own Fairview, Pennsylvania home. In my mind, Christmas was a grand production in our home that couldn't possibly be matched in any other place. My parents grew Christmas trees and sold them, choose and cut, from our property. Our own tree would have been one unwanted by paying customers, so perhaps a little crooked, or with a gap in the branches that needed to be hidden next to the wall. The photo of me as a baby would have been 1953, the other one also me, 1956. We would have received only one or two gifts for Christmas. My mother worked very hard to make it seem like more. I usually received a doll from Santa, or perhaps a doll cradle. My mother would have brought out all my dolls and stuffed animals on Christmas Eve and placed them around the tree. I would come out Christmas morning, excitedly searching for the new face amongst the toys. Our other gifts would be wrapped, a pair of lacy socks, or warm mittens. Sometimes she would wrap things that we already had; a mended sweater, or a repaired bracelet. Money was very scarce, but my mother still managed to make Christmas magic at our house. One year I received a muff made of white rabbit fur, and oh how I adored that gift! I felt like a princess.( a muff is a cylinder shaped object to keep a girl's hands warm, usually wrapped with fur on the outside, and lined with wool and satin) The gift I remember as the most magical was a battery operated bear, a mother bear in a dress and apron sitting in a rocking chair, feeding a bottle to a baby bear in her lap. As the mother bear rocked, she would pull the bottle away from the baby's mouth and he would let out a squeak, then she would put the bottle back to his mouth. It was my most treasured possession. One Christmas, when my brother was about 5 or 6, he asked for a Casper the Talking Ghost. He loved the Casper cartoon on TV, and that year they were advertising a Casper doll, with a ring at his neck to pull and hear one of 3 phrases. It was all my brother talked about, but it was an expensive item, and a doll (although it was more like a stuffed animal), so my mother decided that a truck would be more appropriate and it fit the budget. She was sure he would forget about the Casper doll by Christmas. Well, my mother was wrong; my brother ran excitedly to the tree Christmas morning and then burst into tears. He was inconsolable. Tears popped from his little blue eyes (his tear ducts are misshapen). The whole family stared in disbelief at this heartbroken little boy as he cried his eyes out. So, I quickly made up a story and told him that Santa ran out of Caspers after he gave them to all the poor children and the little children in hospitals, but he was already working on making more Caspers for next year. Amazingly, he bought the story (I guess he didn't know we were the poor children) and he didn't forget it. The next Christmas my mother, lesson learned, scrimped and saved to put a Casper the Talking Ghost under the tree. My father just shook his head; a doll, for heaven's sake.
Once we moved to Illinois, my mother started another tradition: lunch under the Christmas tree at Marshall Field's downtown Chicago. Marshall Field's had a restaurant in the center of their store, and it was open to the ceiling four stories above. Their Christmas tree filled every bit of that four storied space. My mother and I would dress in our best dresses and coats and take the Illinois Central to downtown. After walking for what seemed like miles in the sharp cold air, looking at all the animated Christmas scenes in the blocks-long windows of Field's and Carson Pierie Scott, we would have lunch together next to the Marshall Field's Christmas tree. In the first years it was my sisters, my mother, and I, but as my sisters went off to college, on this rare special occasion I had my mother all to myself. More of my mother's Christmas magic: in a large and busy restaurant, she had managed to reserve a table for two right next to the tree for a glamorous, and extravagant luncheon.
My mother told me once that when she was young, she would receive a single orange in her sock for Christmas, no other gifts. I suppose that's why it was so important to her to create a magical Christmas for us. We all carried on the tradition, and have created Christmas Magic with our own children, sometimes taking the magic a little too far and spending far too much, but always with the tree and decorations and traditions of Santa. I'm sure my mother made unbelievable sacrifices to make sure we had something under the tree Christmas morning, the beautiful Christmas tree she so carefully decorated. Today, as another year slips away, I will disassemble our own lovely Christmas fir. With every ornament and decoration I carefully wrap and put away for another year, my mother's Christmas magic will be in my heart.

Goodbye Christmas

Christmas has come and gone, and with it my beautiful girls. I anticipated this Christmas with such excitement, I wanted to slow its coming, in order to slow its departing. All my girls were with me for Christmas, and we all knew that it may be the last time. But Christmas rushed in so fast, as it does, and rushed out again. Whitney left two days ago, flying to San Diego on her way to her new life in New Orleans. I didn't think my heart would ever stop breaking; it took everything in me to let go of her and watch her walk out the door. And now Kerrie and her family, Jamey and Karsen, have gone down the driveway, headed for Seattle as I waved and waved to them, tears streaming down my face, their car smaller and smaller until it turned onto the highway and I couldn't see it at all. Oh my goodness, how I miss them so! This is what I have wanted for them since the day they were born: happiness, love, success, adventure, fulfillment...but I didn't realize the sacrifice it meant for me; that for them to fly, I would have to let go of them. I didn't know how much the letting go would hurt. I didn't know how hard it would be to keep from calling out, "Wait, don't leave me behind!" Selfishly, I wish I could go back and change the things I said or did to encourage them to be independent. Why did I have to push them so, and expect so much of them? Why was it so important to me that they reach for the stars? Why couldn't I let them settle for what was here and safe and close at hand? Thinking that, I am all too aware that it is entirely possible that nothing I said or did to sway them or otherwise damage them would have any effect on their choices in life; that it is possible, even probable, that they would have become the fabulous people they are in spite of my fumbling mothering. Just the same, I wish it had been different; that time had moved more slowly, that I had been less busy, and less worried; that I could have savoured it more, or remembered it well. I once had a friend, long ago when Kerrie was in preschool, who told me about the day her daughter was born. Her own mother came into the hospital room soon after the birth and asked, "What do you have, a son or a daughter?" "A daughter!" she was beaming, but her mother began to cry. When she asked what the tears were for, her mother told her, "Your heart will break a thousand times." I think of that story often, whenever my heart is breaking.