SO PERFECT A CHRISTMAS “Real Life” by Glo Harbison The mind of a seven year old holds the excitement of stupendous thought processes that capture anecdotes derived from the very ordinary. How was I to know that my seventh birthday would hold open-ended moments approaching the most glorious Christmas I could ever imagine? Today, I can say that my blithe indifference to trouble grew from visions of mirrored Christmas ornaments and angel hair carefully place in circles around each light. The aroma in the making of white divinity loaded with pecans exploding in mouth-watering warm fluffs is a dream for taste buds. I studied with amazement as mother transform a hot liquid into cotton-like plumps of pure sugar mixed just right with vanilla. There was to be a sudden change in our lives. The planning of it all emerged quite secretly on a Sabbath afternoon in California. It was an average day except for poor mother’s terrible migraine. She used to have them frequently when things didn’t go her way. The worry part in her brain would swell up, she said, causing her to eventually vomit. When I was little, I believed that whatever hurt inside her head - escaped out her mouth after she was sick, for she always felt better afterward. I wondered if her head would just one day explode for all the things she stuck up her nose like Vicks salve, saline water and the hot water bottle she placed on her eyebrows. I’d never known eyebrows to get so cold that they would need a hot water bottle. My irrepressible optimism had already taught me to be on guard for unprecedented experiences just waiting to happen. You could never know what would happen next around mother. She was full of the grandest contradictions. At Thanksgiving, she would set a beautiful table with a turkey and dressing with all the trimmings. When we finished eating, she cleared away the soiled table and would reset the table just like brand new with fresh clean linen and sparkling dishes. She would send one of my older brothers out to the local park just around the corner from our house - to invite the winos and other hang-out sorts to come and dine at the Ritz. They all filed in looking like they worked in a coal mine. They had the same looks in the form of a question mark across crinkled expressions. Then they nervously fumbled as they would pull out their chairs to sit down. Their forks clattered on their plates from nervousness just like the sound of granddaddy’s false teeth. They looked at us like they thought we were crazy. The odd mixture of aromatic smells of hot turkey, cranberry sauce, and our guest’s body odor seemed to drift over head and mix up together with the smoking hot turkey steam. We all grinned at each other as we chewed together in an instant gathering of strangers. I wondered if mother was going to offer them a bath afterward. Most of them looked disappointed when Mother poured their glasses to the brim with Cool-Aid. There was enough wine oozing from the pores of these poor cast a-ways to explode into fireballs over lighted candles. Nope! Today, they would be glad for Mother’s kindness. After all - these guests needed to feel thankful - not homeless! Daddy was off at the races in sunny California with my two older brothers. His leaving every Sabbath had become a habit. Mother was hurt and mad at him for leaving her when she was sick, just to go have fun. If only Mother could have a migraine and be fun to be around at the same time, I questioned, then maybe Daddy wouldn’t leave. Little did Daddy know what Mother was planning that day. She told my sister and I that she was planning a surprise party for Daddy, for when he returned home late that night, he would be very surprised to find us……. gone! Mother was always up to something inventive. We were soon to leave on a trip to another country that Mother called ‘Texas’. Texas was where mother could finally stomp around. She had mentioned many times how she longed to return home again to her ole’ stomping ground, as she’d put it. I tried to picture what she looked like when she stomped around in Texas because I’d never seen her wear a pair of boots. She told us that her Papa used to burn cow chips in their fireplace. They went about picking up dried cow pies in the pasture to make a fire inside their home. It sounded pretty strange to me that there is, in fact, a use for everything! In the winter, I imagined Grandfather feeding the cows double portions during winter months just so they could keep the house extra warmer. After gathering up our things, we were on our way to Texas. We had gone a few hundred miles in our old navy green Nash that looked like a bathtub turned upside down. Mother suddenly turned hostile and said something that had to do with my rear end after I quizzed her over and over, “How many more miles is it, Mama?” When night came, she kept driving straight through without stopping. In later years, I figured out why we didn’t check into a motel to rest. We didn’t have the money I guessed. The distance from California to Texas wasn’t like a trip to the store to buy a loaf of bread. Mother said it was 2,000 miles. The word “thousand” was the biggest number I knew. I tried to reason just how far that was as I looked up to the moon. We had put a large round metal tub in the back seat of the Nash. We stopped at a store and bought the biggest chunk of ice I’d ever seen and put it in the tub. The man brought it out with two large hooks. The food we took consisted of a large bag of oranges, pieces of cheese, crackers, onions and tomatoes. We had peanut butter, bread and grape jelly. What more could we want? Mother had thought of everything again. As the desert sun set, we stopped bathing our faces with the wash cloths we had brought. We would rub the wash cloths over the melting ice in the tub all day long and bath our faces with the cold rags. The desert wind whipped around and felt like an open oven like when Mother baked a cake. Mother appeared to be stiff and frozen in the same position with her hands clutching the steering wheel. She said little except for us to be quiet when we became too boisterous. “Aww….when the sun began to set, the hot wind cooled down and actually felt ‘cold’ at times. I sat in the back seat’s open window with my body outside the car and my legs inside, balancing myself by gripping my legs firmly against the locked door wall inside. I held on to the top of the car with great care for there was definitely the thrill of danger in what I was doing. Nothing I had ever done before could compare with the excitement of imagining that “I” was the wind and the stars growing brighter with each mile in the black night above us. The cool wind blew thought my hair as I watched the lines on the highway speed by. I tried to count them over and over. I couldn’t help remembering about what mother had taught us about Jesus –how He had created the stars and the wind and the beautiful white sand that looked like swirls of vanilla ice cream speeding passed us on each side of our headlights. Looking at the cactus, it was perfectly prickly and beautiful and fitted into the background like a desert painting. The cactus had a built-in friendly nature reminding us of statues waving their arms to us as we glided by. Everything was meant to be exactly as it appeared. Two days later, we were in Texas and were nearing the little town called Alto. My grandmother was waiting for us to arrive. I had never met Grandmother before the day of our arrival. The puzzle in this picture was slowing piecing together. Mother had called my aunt and Aunt Thelma asked our family to come and live with grandmother to the end of her days, that if we did, our rent would be free in her large, very old two-sided house that would be ours….someday. It was sunset and the red dirt roads leading into Alto were not yet paved. The red dirt was billowing up in whirlwinds of dust coming out the back of our tires like barrels of fire in the air through the light of the orange sunset. As we drove up to Grandma’s house, my sister and I could not contain our excitement. Mother looked down at me to introduce me to my grandmother I’d never met. “Gloria, you favor your grandmother.” Mama said. When I looked up at Grandma’s sagging, wrinkled face where her deep wrinkles were filled with a type of putty (mother said it was face powder) in the cracks of her wrinkles, I frowned along with Grandma in her sorrowful expression. She was never what one might call – a happy woman. Feeling suddenly disillusioned, I pulled on mother’s skirt for her attention to convince her that I favored my Daddy. My sis, Patty, and I leapt into the air acting more exuberant than what Grandmother expected, and when we jumped up and down and ran through her house, Grandmother grunted with displeasure because the novelty pieces of glass figurines in her China case began to shake violently. No doubt, the house was way more than fifty years old and had lost its youthful appearance – mostly like Grandmother. Grandmother didn’t like children –it was obvious from her scowls and grunting. All that would eventually change with a lot of work. I tried to entreat her and complimented her yellow hair braided up on her head. Her hair smelled rancid from seldom shampoos. She had dozens of gingham dresses with dainty little flowers in them –all the same style. She wasn’t use to talking much, so mother told us to be quiet. I had not yet learned the fine art of flattery, but somehow it came natural for me to compromise with Grandma in adoring words that she immediately suspected were insincere. Little by little, Grandmother’s hard interior began to show signs of vulnerability. At breakfast time, I became a spectator of Grandma’s morning breakfast routine. Hiding quietly behind the door, she never suspected a thing. She was so dainty in everything she did. She fixed two pieces of toast, two slices of crisp bacon and black coffee. These were the only items ever on her breakfast menu. When she sat down to eat, she took a knife and cut her toast into six little perfect squares. When she chewed, there was more noise from her loose false teeth than from the crisp toast being masticated. I could barely hold my laughter inside, for grandmother’s very serious side became hilarious to a seven year old who worked at having fun. Sometimes I had to laugh- then I’d cover it up by saying, “Grandma, you’re sooooo sweet! Mama had warned me about lying. The weeks passed by with lightning speed. We received a call from Daddy in California. He missed Mother and his children and was on his way to Texas to join us. Life would be grand when we were all together again. After all, Grandmother was Daddy’s mother - another good reason for him to be with us. Daddy quickly got a job in a dry cleaning shop in downtown Alto. It was wonderful to see Mother and Dad hug each other as if they had been apart for decades. The mimosa tree branches in Grandmother’s huge yard outside our windows, drew objects at night on the wall paper as the wind shifted, and some of them were scary. I pulled the cover up over my head - but not for long. Curiosity won out to see what animal figure or horror object would form a silhouette with one peek just outside my covers. During summer nights, I invented a cool-down system wherein I would sprinkle the sheets with water and then run and jump between the covers. It worked like a charm for the coolest and best dreams. Christmas was near. My brother and his family were making a trip from California to spend Christmas with us. Nicki, my brother’s wife was a woman of many talents in baking, interior design, sewing and a dozen other gifts. The word was out – Nicki was to decorate our Christmas tree. This was a big deal back then. In that case, the tree would need to a perfectly triangular in form from the top to the bottom. Mother and I took the car and a heavy axe and headed for the deep woods overgrown with pine trees. We tromped around for about thirty minutes and then - quite suddenly - we saw the tree! But it was up very high reaching toward the sky -the most perfectly shaped Christmas tree we had ever seen. We saw it at the same time because our eyes were roving to see which of us would find the best tree first. “Mother! I squealed with delight - how will we ever get to it?” “Why, that’s easy, Glo – we’ll cut the whole tree down!” Mother laughed. Mother never saw anything as being impossible. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? I quizzed, frowning at the thought of this feat fit for a lumberjack. We both laughed happily and our laughter rang throughout the wooded scene. We couldn’t stop laughing that day, except for moments to catch our breath as we were faced with work way out of our league, but it was too late to turn back. We kept chopping at that hard thick tree trunk and swinging that ax –why, this experience was powerful and I wanted to pull up my sleeves and show my muscles, but Mother reminded me that ladies don’t show their muscles as her own muscles were bulging at the seams. As we dragged the huge pine tree top to the car, by some miracle we lifted it up on top of the car and tied it down. The branches were healthy and a deep forest green. The pine oil smelled wonderful – just like Christmas! There were no scraggly branches on this tree! We felt a sense of pride when we realized how pleased and amazed Nicki would be to apply her gifts in decorating it. For the rest of the week before Christmas, Mother toiled in the kitchen, slaving away over a hot stove. We would have a feast this year of turkey and dressing, a tossed green salad, smoking mashed potatoes with giblet gravy, candied yams with melted marsh mellows, fresh green bean casserole, and deviled eggs. A relish dish decorated with various sweet and dill pickles, onion slices, cheddar cheese slices, olives, fresh pieces of bell peppers of yellow, red and green. As if this menu would not delight any pallet, we would enjoy pecan pie, apple pie and caramel pecan pie with ice cream on top. I crept into the front living room so I would not disturb Nicki as she decorated our perfect tree that reached to the top of our double ceiling. At the end of the evening, Nicki was finished and out came the presents she carefully placed under the tree. When the lights were turned on, the awesome wonder of the tree’s beauty was indescribable to a seven year old. The angel was placed in the top and could be viewed on most every side. Early morning came and my sis and I yawned at the approaching daylight. Everything was prepared and in good order. About noon, my aunts, uncles and cousins began to drive up with their contributions in food and gifts for the last family reunion we would ever have together with kinfolks on my mother’s and dad’s side of the family. My aunts and uncles and their children were middle-age now and the days were approaching when families would no longer have big “blow outs,” as Texans called them, in meeting together for family reunions. Of course, we didn’t realize it then, but we had it so good. When the last present was opened, we gathered around the piano to sing beautiful harmony together, silently hoping our neighbors were listening so that they could feel Christmas cheer as we did. We stopped for a moment to pray and thank God for His care throughout the years. I looked around the living room where all the torn gift wrappings lay. Everyone was busy chatting away about the events of the past year. That moment of Christmas splendor was so surreal that I looked at my new doll - her blond curly hair - tinted lips and eyelashes that batted open and shut with the slightest motion. Suddenly, she looked cold and fake compared to the warmth there in the living room with loving family members where everyone knew what Christmas was about. I knew the first time I saw my new doll that I would never play with her - and I didn’t! Mother looked at me with a worried glance. Her little girl had crossed over into a new phase. When Uncle Melvin talked, he captured a listening audience. Every word he spoke carried a unique sense of humor born out of sarcasm. He had a giving heart but his blunt way of being outspoken made him a natural comedian. It’s the way he phrased sentences with enthusiasm, sarcasm and ironic comparisons about life’s little frustrations. I suppose his directness when he spoke would not be accepted from anyone else other than Uncle Melvin. You wanted to reach up and kiss his cheek. I saw Aunt Lilly and Aunt Marietta’s eyes tearing up over the spiritual words in our Christmas songs sang in harmony -the tears of gratitude poured forth in that we were all safe, alive to see one more Christmas together as a family. My big sister’s gorgeous voice rang through the wooded beams that held the old homestead together. No one said it, but it would be our last group effort to meet together at Christmas to celebrate the fact that we were all alive together under the protecting Hand of God. That day our harmony rang throughout the neighborhood with the lovely words of our favorite Christmas songs. Mother was probably somewhere in the background – her body aching with middle-age pain from life catching up with her. She was one of the best cooks in the county,…no, in fact- the world! She may have been sweetly wishing that everyone would leave, so that she could lie down and rest, but she managed to smile and say good-bye to the very last relative. She worked harder than anyone to assure a beautiful festive and appetizing spread for the pallet’s cravings. There must have been a hush over the entire world as angels sang glory to God in the Highest while millions of families greeted each other with hugs and kisses to stop for one moment and bask in the wonder of Christmas. “Time” itself seemed to stop and bow to the Spirit of Hope – Christ Jesus – the Savior of the World! He had made everything possible in these precious memories to think back upon in so perfect a Christmas! ♫ Silent Night…Holy night, All is calm, all is bright ♫ Round yon virgin mother and Child! Holy Infant, so tender and mild, ♫ Sleep in heavenly peace, Sleep in Heavenly peace. ♫ ♫ Silent night, holy night, Darkness flies, all is light; Shepherds hear the angels sings, “Alleluia! hail the King! ♫ Christ the Savior is born, Christ the Savior is born.” ♫
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 04:01:59 +0000
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