Snow Globes
Living in the moment seems the best fit for me, because my memories seem to be more comprised of moments than events. Though there are some things I recall in toto, there are far more vignettes that comprise my recollections. Maybe I don’t have the focus or the energy to commit most things to memory. Maybe I simply do not have the bandwidth for it. Whatever the reason, my life separates into moments where some remain with me while others join the dinosaurs or the socks that disappear from the dryer. Taking time to reminisce on Christmases throughout my life, I do not have full memories in the round, but moments strewn along the path of my life. Smooth and shiny as river rocks – and I’m good with that.
As a child, my paternal grandmother (Nanny) would come down from mythical Ridgefield, Connecticut to visit us. In my youngest of times, she arrived by train. I could not tell you if the station we picked her up from was in Columbia or Orangeburg or Branchville or some other town. I don’t remember if the station platform was wood or cement. I don’t even remember the mighty locomotive or Nanny disembarking from a passenger car. What sticks in my mind is the image of the rails disappearing in the distance where the parallel lines merged (obviously Connecticut). The Christmas gift of this vision was my first glimpse of infinity. Not bad.
Christmas with Nanny was filled with recollections of her taking her grandchildren to Eckerd’s Drug Store at the Orangeburg Mall for lunch at their lunch counter where every year, the waitresses were excited to see her. Of course, there also are the moments that exist within me of Nanny’s bad driving (the stuff of legends), of her lovingly saying to me in Arabic Ya Habibi, and her occasional expression of amazement with her wrinkled hand pressed to her forehead as she would moan “Sheesh ohboy!” The thing I remember most from these many Christmas visits was joining my siblings around the tree one Christmas morning with Nanny telling us that a noise had awakened her in the middle of the night. She got up to check on the cause of the sound to find Santa with his back to her putting presents under the tree. I can picture her in her flannel nightgown quietly scurrying back to her bed, because magic is a fragile thing.
Most of the other Christmases of my childhood come as images of me crawling stealthily beneath the tree and opening a seam or corner of gift wrap on my presents to see what I would be receiving. This never spoiled my Christmas morning. It simply changed the excitement of the unknown to the excitement of expectation. The joy of finally stripping the wrapping paper from a football helmet or Coleco hockey game that I couldn’t wait to play with. I am not ashamed to note that this excitement did not extend to the packages bearing shirts and sweaters.
Beyond that my snippets of South Carolina Christmases are mostly glimpses of a tree, an ornament, a smile. One thing that was universal to every Christmas in the Handal household was my mom’s dogged efforts to ensure she spent the same amount on each child for the under-the-tree presents, and carefully planning for the same number of knick-knacks for each child’s stockings. This latter habit brought to me my biggest Christmas smile one year when I was back from Clemson for the holidays. As was the tradition, when we kids got up Christmas morning our stockings were the first thing we went for. Never knowing what to expect. This time when I emptied out the lumpy red velvet boot, out popped a magazine, some baseball cards, maybe a yo-yo, and a can of tuna. Grinning I turned to mom as she explained with more than a little undeserved embarrassment that she had miscounted my share of stocking stuffers and needed to add one more item to even things out.
As an adult, the memory of any Christmas day is murky at best. This surprises me because I would think that especially the addition of Jean-Marie and the kids to my life would place most Christmases complete in my heart. But it is the spirit of the day that persists, the happiness, the chaos, the grazing on cookies and leftovers from the Christmas dinner. The larger memories for me with my wife and children are the whole of the season where I see Christmas parties that filled the house, and I am once again scouring the city with Jean-Marie to find those things we think the kids will love, driving around to see all the neighborhood Christmas displays that delighted us so, and the taking of turns on the phone talking to in-laws and out-laws, siblings and friends.
It is all of these moments of Christmas that scatter before me each year. They are not pieces that when rearranged complete a puzzle. They are snow globes, one scene in each. And as I pick up ones at random, I give each a shake, place them before the light and see what arises as the white flakes settle and the water clears. I get new snow globes every year. I have quite a wonderful collection.
Merry Christmas
Thank you, my friend.
I still see her often. She comes to me through the songs of the powerful women she loved and shared with us -- her children and the second ones she opened her heart and arms to as you so beautifully shared. She comes to me through the raptors she loved, whether on telephone polls or wires or in trees or flying over our farm surveying as she once did for her own flock. She comes to me as a fan at football or basketball games and other sporting events, just as she did with your parents in the stands surrounding the courts, fields, and tracks the many decades ago when we played. I will transition from work to retirement on the date when we lost her in a few months. I expect she came to me in some way to have chosen that day.