Christmas Past - A Reflection on Family Celebrations of Old
/The December day a few years back was a bleak and cold one. Snow and cold weather had brought life to a standstill throughout most of the city the day before. I had an early afternoon appointment with my cardiologist at the hospital downtown, the same hospital in which I was born so many years ago. By the time I left the appointment and made my way out of the hospital parking lot, I was starving. A holiday dinner was scheduled for later that evening, so I didn't want much lunch. As I drove west, making my way west down the few city blocks towards the home in which I had lived as a child, my mind was focused on trying to find a place to stop for a quick bit of food to tide me over until dinner. There's no place to stop for lunch in this neighborhood, I thought.
Just then, I caught sight of a little coffee shop kitty-corner from the corner of the block where my childhood home was located. The coffee shop was housed in the building that once housed a grocery store and the neighborhood drugstore. Hungry to the point of nearly going into a state of hypoglycemic craziness, I parked my car on Boulder Street, the street upon which I had grown up, and made my way to the shop.
As I rushed from the car to the shop, my mind returned to all those times so many years ago when I would stop on the corner across the street from where I now stood. My memory transported me to a time when my mother would entrust a quarter to me with the instructions that I was to go buy a loaf a bread. "Yes, you can keep the change and buy candy if you wish." I'd skip down the street, stop on the corner, look both ways, run across Boulder Street, and then Institute Street, and then skip up to the front door of the grocery.
When I reached the shop door, I reached to open it and the realized the door was locked. It was dark inside.
Pressing my nose against the window, I peered in and saw the shell of what once was the market of my youth. I remembered the meat counter at the back. That's where the check-out counter with boxes filled with candy in front of it was, I remembered. I focused in on looking at the worn floors I had walked across so many times so many years ago. Coffee bean bags and equipment for brewing coffee were now strewn all over the small space that was once the corner market of my youth. I mused to myself, Was that store really that small?
Disappointed that the coffee shop was locked, before I turned to head back to the car, desperate to find another place for a quick snack, I realized there seemed to be life in the other side of the shop, the place where a drugstore once was located. I walked towards the door and realized the coffee shop was housed on that side of the building. Inside, the layout was all wrong. Tables and benches lined the wall where my cousin and I would once sit at the soda fountain to order our cherry cokes when we were cool thirteen year olds with enough money to buy a coke. On the opposite side of where the soda fountain once stood, was a bar where I could now order coffee and something to eat.
Soon, a bagel, a very good bagel, with cream cheese, and an excellent cafe latte brought my sugar levels back up to normal. Siting on the wooden bench in the bay window store front, I savored the moment.
Somehow, despite the cold weather, the dreary skies, the worries in my heart, and the feeling that this Christmas just wasn't going to be that merry this year, I decided to linger in the neighborhood for just a little longer.
I felt I was in the heart of “home.” I felt transported to another time and space by just being in this space I knew so well.
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These streets, these sidewalks, are as familiar to me as the back of my hand. I know where all the cracks are, and even the several types of concrete used to make these sidewalks are familiar. They haven't changed in all these years.
I look up at the trees that line the street. They seem to be standing guard as if they are protecting all the memories once made under their leafy branches. Their aged, bare limbs seem all the more empty now that they no longer shelter my great grandparents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my father from hot summer days.
Grandma's house is just down the street. I can't see her house, but it is there just steps away. How I wish I could walk down that street and walk in the door for a visit.
I think of the family history that these trees witnessed on this block. They watched my father move into the house just down the way nearly a hundred years ago.
I look at the trees and in my mind’s eye, I see my parents standing so close together for a photo on their wedding day. The day was a bleak and cold one. They'd been married in the United Presbyterian Church across the street right after morning services on that February day.
As I ventured down the street on that cold day in December when I revisited the places of my childhood and the memories that live in those spaces, I was drawn to the destination where the heart of all those memories lived, Grandma’s house
Grandma’s house ~ The heart of family gatherings for my childhood
My first days were spent here. My first Christmas was spent here. My father was serving in World War II, so that first celebration did not include him.
Later in the year, we would celebrate again when my father came home. My mother told me that my grandmother kept the tree up until her boys were home so we could all celebrate together.
Post World War II ~ a photo of my paternal family which includes my uncle who was just home from Europe where he had served as a paratrooper.
Post World War II ~ A photo of my father home from serving in the army holding me while my brother and mother stand next to him.
The aunts the uncles, the cousins would all be at my grandmother’s for Christmas. It had been that way from my earliest days.
In the heart of the home, the kitchen, Grandma made would always make her wonderful fruitcake using her secret recipe which she did not share.
She would store the fruitcake in the panty, that cold room right off the kitchen,
the place where we as children could never enter,
the place that seemed like the inner sanctum of the kithchen,
indeed it seemed to be the place where all the goodness Christmas lived.
The pantry held shelves stacked high with metal tins full of
all kinds of perfectly made candy:
peanut brittle,
divinity,
cherry drops,
fudge.
More tins held the most heavenly tasting spritz cookies.
Oh the joy I would feel
when she would enter the pantry after Christmas dinner
and load down the kitchen table with:
mincemeat pies,
pumpkin pies,
cookies,
and candy,
all made by her own hand.
Preparation for Christmas Day would have also included
days of polishing the silver.
Sometimes, we, the older cousins, had the task of going to Grandma's house a few days before Christmas to polish the silverware and the silver serving dishes.
We would very carefully take the china from the dining room buffet and set the table.
The table had to be properly set.
The salad plate, the water glasses, the silverware, the napkins, all had to be properly placed.
The silverware was measured with a finger to be an inch from the end of the table.
*****************
In those days,
My world was small.
It was filled with rich relationships,
many funny stories,
great laughter,
long held traditions,
and
solid foundations for
faith
and family.
Memories live in places.
We may no longer live in those places.
Time and space have filled those places and spaces with new people making new memories, but in those precious places of old, when we visit them again, they are alive in our memories. The places themselves seem no longer bound by time or space. The places, the spaces come alive in our memories and are filled with vivid images and remembrances that fill up those spaces again with love and laughter. We remember the sweet companionship of our loved ones. We remember so many wonderful stories that were both written and retold in these places.
*******
On that cold day in December, when I walked down the streets of my childhood,
memories of days of long ago were again tucked away in my mind and in my heart.
No one can take them away.
Death cannot destroy them.
Hopefully, memory will remain so that these times will live on in my mind.
*****************
There is such a nostalgia bound up in memory, and a yearning.
We long to go back into that time and space
for one last lingering look
of all the dear faces gathered around the dinner table.
We long to hear the laughter ring out again.
We long for a family well and whole,
Not separated by death,
Estrangement,
Misunderstanding,
Bitterness,
Jealousy,
Greed.
Those days, those memories of times gone by, when I thought nothing in the world would ever
disrupt
or disturb
or destroy
all that was found in the heart of my family
are now a part of a time far away in the past.
I am visiting them to see what they have to teach me now.
I will continue to reflect upon these thoughts of family as I progress through the days of Christmas 2020.
