A Christmas lesson for later
1959. I would have been wearing a dress, which wasn鈥檛 ideal. Even if it wasn鈥檛 scratchy, it limited what you could do, if you were brought up proper. Dresses enforced primness. So I would have been perched on the edge of a wingback chair.
What Mommy and I were doing was 鈥減aying a visit.鈥� It probably wasn鈥檛 longer than a half-hour, an eternity to a little girl on a sunny day, but I was raised to be polite, which included practice in not having everything go my way. I understood my obligation to be on display. I would sit up straight and say 鈥測es, ma鈥檃m,鈥� 鈥減lease,鈥� and 鈥渢hank you,鈥� even for hard candies. This didn鈥檛 take much effort, but it thrilled adults no end 鈥� especially the really old ones, like this one.
The lady would beam at me, her face pleating every which way, and extract basic information from me about my age and grade level, and then I would be released to explore the apartment. It was a one-room apartment and it smelled funny: a sour kitchen odor from some kind of food we never had at home, face powder, and dust. Dark furniture prevailed, bone-fragile, watched over by antimacassars and tatted linens. Porcelain dolls in satin frills stared out from behind glass. I knew these were expected to delight.聽
While I pretended to admire the dolls, Mommy absorbed compliments about me and assured our hostess that I could be quite a handful at times. When their conversation finally drifted into other areas, I edged over to the tray of captive African violets yearning toward the window light and patted their furry leaves.
鈥淚鈥檓 so happy you dropped in, Hazel. My niece and her family are coming by Christmas Eve. They keep asking me what I want, but this is all I want. I don鈥檛 need a thing!鈥�
鈥淚 know just what you mean. There comes a time you just don鈥檛 want any more stuff,鈥� Mommy said.聽
This made no sense to me. It鈥檚 not that Christmas was about the gifts, so much; I could make do with one stuffed animal. But the rest! Hanging paper snowflakes in the window and plugging in the electric candle; frosting sugar cookies and shaking on the sprinkles; all of that filled me right up. Every year I鈥檇 lobby hard for more lights on the porch, but ours was not a house of excess. The tree would be bought early on, but it had to wait propped up against the outside of the house for a few days, learning how to be polite. Then, just before Christmas, we鈥檇 bring it in. Mommy would put on a record of carols, my sister and I would work on smoothing out the wrinkles from last year鈥檚 tinsel, and Daddy would try to get the strings of lights working without using bad language.
The old lady had a tree up, too. I measured out my tour of the room, lingering at the sights so that I wouldn鈥檛 run out of them before the visit we were paying was over, and I saved the tree for last. The base of it was at my eye level, on a sideboard near the window. It was two feet tall. It was made out of tinfoil or something, like a sculpture of scarcity. Mommy was remarking on how nice it was, calling it a 鈥渢abletop tree鈥� as though that were a real thing, but it was the saddest thing I鈥檇 ever seen. I felt sorry for the old lady. She couldn鈥檛 move fast enough to disrupt an antimacassar. She could wear a dress all day long and not mess it up. If she鈥檇 wanted presents, there wasn鈥檛 any room for them under her little tree.
鈥淚 just love old people,鈥� Mommy told me on the way home, but that was another thing that didn鈥檛 make sense. To be old was to have accepted a life of deprivation, to me. And the proof of it was, I was considered to be some kind of highlight just by showing up.
2014. The season has really merried up since we decided not to exchange presents anymore. We have way too much stuff already, and more would be an anchor on the heart. Dave鈥檚 making pounds and pounds of almond roca and will deliver it all around the neighborhood. I鈥檒l crank up Handel鈥檚 鈥淢essiah鈥� soon and see if I can score an invitation to go caroling. I鈥檓 sure we鈥檒l get a present for the little boy in our life. We鈥檙e really looking forward to seeing him.聽
All he has to do is show up and be himself, and it will fill us right up. We might get a little tree. We might not.
