November 6, 2024
As I grow older, I’ve noticed
that my memory isn’t as sharp as it once was. My husband used to tell me—and
not unkindly—that I had the memory of an elephant. It was a point that, while
not something I took pride in, necessarily, was something that comforted me.
Now, those far away times that
stick out, ready to be reviewed at my whim are fewer than they used to be. One
thing I am having a hell of a time recalling lately are names! Is it ever
frustrating not remembering the names of actors/actresses, people I used to
know, occasionally people I do know…. well, you get the idea. I also,
sometimes, have a challenge finding just the right words to say. Not so much
when I’m writing, but if I’m speaking, those words like to hide on me.
I am, however, grateful that
some of the memories I’ve always cherished—those involving loved ones no longer
living—are still with me. And as we approach the year’s end, that’s
particularly comforting as I can cast my thoughts back to special times past,
even going back to my very young childhood. To the times that are the most essential
to who I think of myself as being while yet a child. Particularly the one
birthday party I had when I turned 8, and of course to my early Christmases.
That birthday party happened
in the summer 1961. Prior to that summer we had been a family of 5 living in a two-bedroom
house. We had an eat-in kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. One bedroom was my brother’s; the other held
two beds, one for our parents and one for my sister and me. That small house
was in a rural area of southern Ontario. Out in the sticks. Our nearest neighbor
was only about a couple of hundred yards to the north of us. The two houses,
ours and the Simons’, an older couple, were separated by a field(theirs) that
held lots of tall grass in the summer—and a small abandoned “garbage” pile with
a home-made incinerator in the far back corner.
One day, I think when I was 5,
Mr. Simons passed away. Their children had been long gone before I was even
born, moved off and living their own lives. I do have a memory of looking out
our side window in the little house toward the Simon’s house and seeing Mr. Simons
on the ground, with an umbrella opened over him, shading him. I recall the
sight confused me. Later of course, I learned that he’d had a heart attack and
she’d done what she could to protect him from the sun while she waited for
help. On that day, my parents were at work, while my brother looked after my
sister and me.
Then in the summer of 1961,
our parents told us that they’d bought that bigger house next door. And no, they
weren’t selling our little house. They were going to turn it into a rental
property—whatever that was (I was only almost 8.) Each of us kids was going to
have our own bedroom! Shortly after we moved in, when I turned 8, I had my
first birthday party, ever. All I recall of the event was that my daddy had
used two sawhorses and a big slab of wood to make an outdoor table for the occasion.
Christmas was another thing
that looms huge in my childhood memories. There are only a handful of details
that were constant, for every Christmas. The special breakfast which was not
only bacon and eggs, but orange juice and grape juice; the large orange in
the toe of my stocking; church at midnight; and our Christmas Eve candle.
About eight inches high, red
and nubbly on the outside, fatter than my little-girl hands could encompass,
that candle was lit every Christmas Eve, and only burned during that evening. I
recall one time, when we had my mom’s brother and his wife over, that someone
made a joke about blowing out a candle, and I thought they had said they wanted
the candle blown out. I was maybe 5 at the time. I remember yelling, “I’ll do
it!” and reached up for that candle….and ended up with hot wax on my dress! I was
lucky not to be burned. Don’t know if the dress survived.
That candle symbolized
Christmas to me the same way the midnight Eucharist at our church did. It was
sacred. It was special. Adding to its aura for me was that it had been my dad’s,
who died the January after we moved into that big house across the field from
the little one, way out in the country.
After my mother passed, there
were items that had been set aside for each of us—she’d made a list. And there
were items that were just taken by each of us, though not in a selfish way. We
were all three too much in shock with our mother’s sudden death in her 57th
year to be greedy.
My brother took possession of
the candle, and it gave me comfort each Christmas season, seeing it on his
mantel. After he and his wife were both gone—in the fall of 2021, I contacted
my nephews and asked if I could have that candle, and they quickly agreed.
And then they couldn’t find it.
In fact, they couldn’t find any of the Christmas decorations, period. I mourned
the loss of that candle, though not as much as I did the loved ones who’d had
care of it.
Then, a week ago Sunday, I got
a text from my brother’s eldest son. It was a photo of a red candle and the
question, “is this it?”
Apparently, that weekend as
they finally prepared their parent’s house for sale, they discovered some
storage bins tucked up in an out-of-the-way niche. And inside of those bins
were the missing Christmas decorations—and the candle.
I’m not ashamed to tell you I
cried when I saw the picture of it. I just did. I know it’s because that candle
is a solid physical connection to those who were and are no more. In a very
real way, since it was cherished by my father’s family, and with him by his
own, then my brother by his, it’s all I have left of those Christmases long
gone. And all I have left of them.
As I write this, that candle
sits in a glass-fronted bookcase in my living room—the same bookcase that my
maternal grandfather, a furniture maker, had made for my mother. And waiting
for Christmas Eve.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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