Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, last night the longest night of the year. I had wanted to celebrate, commemorate it somehow, but I was mostly tired yesterday. This is not only the time of year for gift giving; it is also the time of year when my youngest daughter is cooking and baking and making candy and gifts of homemade granola. Because of that, I am shopping, shopping, shopping. I think I’ve been to the co-op three times already this week, and then throw in going to Lunds, Kowalski’s and finally the hardware store looking for fireplace matches with which to flambe the coq au vin that she is planning to prepare for the family dinner; well, I am tired.
Driving around town the last two weekends I see cars with trees strapped on top of them. Now that it is nearly Christmas, the signs on the tree lots say “half price.” Lots that were full of greenery a couple of weeks ago are sparse, the white lights dangling amidst the darkness of early evening. Once I became a teenager, I was the one who went out and got the Christmas tree with my mom. It became her story, “I don’t know if I would have had a real tree if it weren’t for Theresa. No one else would help me.” And I don’t know how we got it into her car, but I think she had a hatchback, and we did. We were never “let’s strap the Christmas tree onto the top of the car” kind of people. Ever. And once we got that tree home, my mom had her ‘rules’ for decorating the tree. The smallest ornaments always went higher up in the tree.
Christmastime was laden with stress while I grew up. One year, when I was only 6 or 7 years old, I remember crawling into an upstairs crawlspace and I found a child’s glass teapot set. I asked my mom about it, and when she realized I had found my Christmas present that she had hidden, she was upset and angry. As I got older, I was often disappointed by the practical gifts I received. It was at Christmastime that I felt the sting of living in a more affluent neighborhood, but not being affluent. The day after Christmas we’d check out each other’s gifts with friends, and I was always amazed at the things they had gotten. Frivolous, shiny things. My daughters still use the metronome I got as a gift when I was a teenager and played piano.
In the back of my mind, as I drive through town, seeing folks buying real Christmas trees, I think that maybe one day I too, will buy a real tree. Will have a Christmas that doesn’t feel like I’m just driving around buying things, but I don’t know, maybe that’s just me, succumbing to nostalgia, or being bored with shopping. Because my Christmas with my girls is a real Christmas, it’s just not a big family Christmas like I used to have with my mom, my dad, all my brothers and sisters and their spouses, and then our kids, too. Maybe even the tree lots seem frozen in the 1960’s, because of what they evoke, reminders to me of my past, which changed to become my present.
My mom’s story about me helping her wasn’t just her being grateful, it was also an indictment. She was sad or angry, that my dad didn’t go out and get the tree with her and I knew it. I helped her in a way to take away her sadness, to alleviate her anger, to try to soothe that which seemed to never get soothed. Sometimes we had fun together, but more often, she’d be telling me her same stories, about her life just not turning out how she’d planned. About my dad not showing up, about my dad stopping at the bar on his way home from work. She never talked about her feelings, but maybe my mom was lonely, lonely at Christmastime, and maybe with eight kids, all she felt like she was doing was shopping and cooking and baking.
