Ghosts of
Fruitcakes Past
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the past three weeks my
gal-friends and I have been unfolding Christmases we have known. We six women,
who went through school together, keep alive a group email conversation began
over ten years ago. We live in England, Washington, Montana, Oregon, California
and Mexico.
Our shared memories are similar. Details
vary. Take ice skates. Some received new white leather skates wrapped and
beribboned beneath the tree. Others wore big brother or sister’s hand-me-downs
from the closet. We skated in Harlem at the old rink, ice over dirt, courtesy
of volunteer firemen. Was it where the “new” post office now stands? We skated
on the frozen Dead River, the Milk River and irrigation canals. All agreed, we skated with pure grace and
elan, to music only we could hear, waiting to be discovered, Olympic material.
My daydream exploded the day I fell through an iced over air
bubble on the Milk River. I was alone. I crashed through the thin skin of ice
to land hard on the solid ice a foot or more below. I was alone. Nobody saw me.
I felt terrified and humiliated. I limped home. I don’t remember if I ever
skated again. Probably I did. Humiliation and sore bums don’t last forever.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire was not part of our historical
past. Chuck roasts chestnuts at the annual modern-day Harlem Christmas stroll
and as far as I’m concerned, Nat King Cole can keep his chestnuts. Food was a
big part of Christmas for all of us with lefse and lutefiske, Norwegian and
Swedish cookies taking prominent roles at most tables. In my English family, we
baked gingerbread, molasses cookies and decorated sugar cookies. We whipped up batches of divinity and fudge, frosted cakes
and baked pies.
Generally entire families gathered for Christmas dinner, most
often at Grandma’s house. Every mother and auntie brought her best creations
and plenty. Everyone ate to bursting. You had to because Grandma kept filling
your plate. Leftovers were wrapped and shared about, enough for days.
School and church programs loomed large in our lives. We all
participated, willingly or not. I’m still jealous of the first and second grade
rhythm band girls who got to jingle the bells or shake the tambourines. Stuck
in the last row with the taller boys, I banged two sticks together. I never did
graduate from sticks.
The best Christmas program memory came from England Karen.
Before the church was built, Lutheran services were held in the basement of the
old bank building. She was maybe six or seven. Herman Gebert, two years ahead
of us, had a speaking part. In Karen’s words, “Herman calmly walked to the
front of the church, turned toward us and promptly spewed the entire contents of
his stomach on the floor. It was quite dramatic.”
Floweree Karen remembers being a “holy terror”, threatened
with lumps of coal and willow switches. One year her Mom sent her brother and sister
to the drainage ditch to cut a swath of switches and put them under the tree. Years
later Karen’s son Mike was born on Christmas Day and that helped heal the
hurts.
None of us had piles of presents. We tore the wrapping off
soft flannel pajamas, a sweater set or saddle pants and usually a special toy,
a doll, a wagon, or games and puzzles. A bicycle was a super-huge big deal. But
the bicycle usually had to sit on the porch until spring thaw.
Everyone has asked me, “What is Christmas like in Mexico?”
Now I can answer. What I saw is that Christmas here is much like our past
Christmases, when we imagine times were simple. Decorations are glitzy but
sparse. Silver bells with red and green ribbon might hang from a door. But the
yard is not cluttered with Santa, Reindeer, Frosty, Charlie Brown and
fifty-thousand flashing colored lights wrapped around every available
surface.
The holiday focus in Mexico is on family. Church goers attend
Midnight Mass or special Church services. The family gathers around plenty of
traditional food, crab and shrimp serviche, cecina en adobo and pollo mole.
Some families have a tree. My favorite was created with poinsettias. (My tree
is made with six braids of smuggled sweetgrass.) Gifts tend to be clothing and
one or two special toys or games. I’ve not seen a lot of toys for sale. The Mexican
families I know have a long way to go to reach the excess we take for granted.
Memories are like fruitcake soaked in the brandy of time,
made to nourish us today with new understandings of who we are and to remind us
to cherish what got us here.
But for the life of me, I cannot find words, to explain
hookey bobbing on the icy streets of Harlem to my new friends.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
January 2,
2014
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
