A goose to my rear end, and I might have decapitated myself and risen headless there in the early morning hours of Christmas. I was on my hands and knees, thrust through the broken pane of a French door that divided the living room from the kitchen. Beyond that door lay our Christmas toys set in separate piles, the wrapping paper catching the light from the tree and glinting like a small, unique galaxy. I was peeping at our coveted toys without waking my mother, who slept lightly in the next room.
"What you see?" Bruce whispered loudly, nudging me with his foot. "Let me look."
What I saw was a wonderful scene of packages wrapped quickly in Christmas paper, a fir tree cut from the woods behind our house and dressed in tinsel, glass balls, strings of holly berries, and popcorn, a sock from each of our feet nailed to the mantel and stuffed with fruit and candy. The air smelled of greenery and citrus fruit. I withdrew my head reluctantly, tucking in my chin to clear the edge of the broken pane.
My brothers and sister and I all went insane each year in late November. The first holiday catalog, usually either from Kmart or Sears or JC Penney, infected us. We'd rip through the pages, eyes bugging at the collection of trucks, bikes, games, cap pistols, and other cheap toys. Within the first week we wanted a hundred different things but then would have to narrow the list to fit the number of gifts my mother decided we could budget. The number usually ran around five presents of our choice, plus a surprise. Our Christmas gifts were supposed to supply our year except for something on our birthday, maybe a toy boat or airplane purchased in midsummer. Each selection was made with careful thought and agony, hours spent poring over slick pages. Our choices reflected much of our individual ages and personalities.
My sister, Karen, two years my senior, was the firstborn. She inherited my mother's brown eyes and hair and gentle, nurturing character. Her choices for Christmas were the same as most other girls', baby dolls and tea sets when little, later on LPs of the Beatles and Tommy James and the Shondells, clothes and dime-store makeup as she grew into adolescent and teenage years. As a female and big sister to four younger brothers, she suffered most in the hard financial years of our youth. She was acutely aware of the appearance of our house, the lack of an indoor toilet, her often outdated fashion in clothes. I remember her tears of frustration and shame when my brothers and I would burst laughing from behind a tree or fence where we had spied on her attempts to learn the steps to the Twist or Mashed Potato. She endured, usually behind a forced smile. When I was thirteen, and my parents built the small brick house that stands as the homeplace today, she was rewarded with her own room, while the brothers continued to sleep two to a bed. Today, she has been married for twenty years, her warm eyes and smile untainted. Her oldest son will soon graduate from the state university, the vanguard of what I hope is a new tradition for his brothers and cousins.
Bruce was born eighteen months following me. He has always been a meat-and-potato man, quiet in his thoughts and quick to anger. When eating dinner, he devours each item on his plate in turn before changing to another food. As a child, his toys were things with wheels -- trucks as a kid, a bicycle when his legs were long enough. Today, he drives a semi for Yellow Freight, will give you the shirt off his back if he thinks you need it, but is still as guarded in revealing feelings and thoughts as the tousle-haired child I slept with.
Keith, the knee baby of our family, as child and man is a curious mixture of Bruce and myself. As a kid, he also loved toy trucks and dirt, but was also the only one of my siblings who shared my interest in looking through my telescope. As a kid, he was a bit of a crybaby, a tendency that Bruce exaggerated almost daily for having bumped him from Mama's knee. Once when we were kids and piling brush my father had cut to clear a pasture, he announced with wide eyes and extreme seriousness, "We are really here on earth. We are really alive."
"Of course we're really alive, dummy," the rest of us hooted and laughed.
"But have you ever thought about it?" he continued above our catcalls. "We're really alive."
As a teenager he experimented heavily with drugs and rebelled most against my parents. The philosopher in him thrives today. He repairs heating and air-conditioning units now, owns a Harley, but is happily married and the father of two children. I talk most easily with him of life and the possible afterlife; he likes to sit in the cool of the evening and watch his nesting martins swoop in while he daydreams of riding his bike slowly across America. I doubt he ever will. He realizes his fantasy of traveling Easy Rider-style across the country would suffer at the reality of busy highways, hot, dry air, and bugs in his teeth.
Danny is the last of the brothers, born a year following Keith. He was a skinny, silent child, so timid he had to repeat the first grade. We'd trade him nickels for dimes by comparing the size or persuade him to do our chores with simple words of praise. For Christmas, he loved anything that was wrapped and new, but could spend hours playing with a shoebox dragged on a string. Today, all that has changed. He grew into a six-foot-three-inch electric company linesman with arms the size of my calves. He is gregarious, lives at home with my mother, loves the land, animals, and open spaces.
I never believed in Santa or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. Even at age eight, the thought of a man who flew in a sleigh pulled by reindeer didn't hold water for me -- a kid who had seen Saturn through his telescope. None of us kids believed in Santa, but that did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm. We knew our gifts were bought during our mother's Tuesday trips to town and hidden at Mrs. Bell's house. She was our closest neighbor, a quarter mile down the road. Tuesday was payday for my father, and Mama would drive into town to get his check, cash it, buy groceries, and pay past-due bills. We would sneak across the field when we saw Mama pass our house on her return, and watch through the bushes as she made a couple of trips into the old woman's home, carrying oddly shaped paper sacks.
The days till Christmas crept past agonizingly slow. Two weeks before Christmas, school let out for the holiday. I began marking the days off on a calendar. This was still in the days when television holiday specials and cartoons were pretty scarce except for maybe a Bing Crosby White Christmas Special. The Grinch and Charlie Brown and all those characters were still on comic pages or in people's minds. Chores were scarce in the winter, and with no homework there was not much to do all day but hunch over the catalogs and mentally play with our new toys. We scanned the sky and hoped for signs of snow, but I can remember maybe one real snowy Christmas in my life. With a few days to spare, my father found a shapely fir in the forest and cut it and brought it home. My mother kept a large box of tree decorations in a closet top, and the first night of the tree we trimmed her with glass globes and fake ice tinsel and those fat, non-blinking colored lights. We strung red holly berries and popcorn on sewing thread. The presents my mother bought for her brother and for my grandparents were wrapped and placed under the tree. Karen gathered us boys in the bedroom and reminded us that we'd bought nothing for our own parents. We planned a secret trip to the store. We had only a few quarters between us, maybe a wrinkled dollar, some dimes and nickels. The money was found in either the washing machine or by searching the folds of the couch and armchair. I explained to Mama that we needed another dollar, but I couldn't tell her why we needed the money or why we all needed to walk to Mrs. Smith's store. She nodded and faked ignorance.
Walking through Beard, we gawked at the Christmas trees and wreaths decorating our neighbors' houses. We bought my father a jar of Aqua Velva shaving lotion, my mother a pair of hose and a box of chocolate-covered cherries. Somehow, the money Karen held in her fist was just enough to satisfy Mrs. Smith. She nodded and smiled over our good choices, even added a few pieces of penny candy to the sack. We slipped the presents into the house and wrapped them with newspaper and baling twine.
Christmas Eve finally arrived. That day has always held a magical quality for me. The air is clear and sweet. Even cold rain beads on tree limbs and wilted grass like jewels. We always gave the animals a little extra feed, a pat on the head or scratch on the belly for the tame pig or cow. I had read that animals talked on Christmas Eve, and though I didn't believe it, I liked to imagine they would speak highly of us for the extra rations. The day dragged by impossibly slow; we scanned the catalogs again and worried that we had not chosen the right toys. We printed our names on school paper with big letters in crayon and taped the cards to spots in the living room where we wanted our gifts stacked. I read to my brothers stories about the red-nosed reindeer, the baby Jesus, and Santa. We dressed and prepared for bed early, even though usually we were as hard to get in bed as we were to get up in the morning. The house had no central heat; I remember glasses filled with water and left by our beds crusted with ice occasionally on very cold nights. Mama warmed our pillows on top of the living room heater, and when they were close to scorching, we dived under the cold covers, private heaters in hand. As always at night, she read us a passage from the Bible, then prayed. Of course, on this night she read us again the story of when the angels visited the Christ child. Her last words were for us not to budge from bed until she called us the next morning.
Soon after the lights were out in our room, I heard the truck crank up in the yard. My brothers and I scurried from our twin beds, Karen from her cot that sat in the corner of the same bedroom. We all gathered at the window and watched the taillights as my parents drove up to Mrs. Bell's to fetch our gifts. After a few minutes, they returned, and we heard their whispers as they brought armloads of presents into the living room. Occasionally we heard them laugh, the clunk of heavy objects, the clink of tools needed to put something together. The air smelled of coffee mixed with the good odor of pine boughs and orange peel. Finally, the noise stopped, and I knew my mother and father were retiring for a few hours before he had to rise and go to work at the bakery. My brothers were sleeping, air whistling through their mouths. I tied my alarm to one of my big toes.
My alarm was made of several tin cans tied close on a string so they could rattle. The string was looped through a nail driven into the ceiling and bent double, then tied securely to my toe. My theory was that when I slept I always pulled my knees close to my belly. If I went to sleep on Christmas Eve -- perish the thought -- I'd wake myself when I drew my legs up by rattling the cans. String tied in place, I lay stiff on my back, legs stretched straight, and imagined what all those gifts would look like stacked under the colored lights.
I always went to sleep, the alarm never quite worked, but always somehow I awakened in the early morning hours, usually a couple of hours before sunrise. I bolted up in bed, jerked the string from my toe, then sneaked to the closed door and listened to hear that all was quiet. Then I woke up everyone and we trooped to the French doors.
My father always worked on Christmas Day, usually reporting to work about four in the morning. I never remember him watching us open the gifts that he worked such long hours to provide. In his youth, he had been one of seven children raised during the Depression. If the fall crops had produced well, he might get a fresh orange for Christmas, or if he was very lucky, an article of clothing. I thought that impossibly sad. My mother had grown up easier. Her mother was a nurse, her father a clerk. But their failed marriage caused her to spend many of her holidays rotating between two households. Though my father could not express his feelings in words, I know that as he cranked his old truck and drove away from our lighted windows on those early Christmas mornings he left in pride. Through the window were warm sleeping children, a wife he loved, wholesome food, and a tree surrounded with gifts.
Our whispered chatter woke up my mother. She warned us to get back in bed. We obeyed her for a few minutes, then lined up to peek again. About six in the morning, the sun still an hour and a half from rising, we begged her from bed. She made us lie down again while she turned up the kerosene fire to warm the living room. Finally, she told us to line up, opened the French door, and said, "Go!"
I hold mild contempt for people who have the restraint to open gifts by carefully removing the ribbon and unsticking the tape. We flew into our gifts, elbows and hands a blur, shredding paper and tearing through pasteboard and plastic. The first gift was pulled from the box, given about two seconds attention, and laid aside, another started on. After the last gift was opened, the socks were pulled from the nails on the shelf, contents spilled on the floor -- fruit and hard candy, maybe a plastic racing car. We sat with our gifts stacked between our legs, our mouths filled with candy, and looked and touched and gaped for a few moments before sorting out which one to begin playing with first.
The scientist in me showed through at Christmas. My choices from the catalogs were plastic dinosaurs, a chemistry set, a battleship, and a launchable rocket. As the room warmed, play began, a race of toy trucks around the couch, under bombardment from my scale destroyer, G.I. Joe attacked by brontosaurus. The play rocked the cluttered room while we waited for the sun to rise enough to allow us outside, and the air filled with the good smell of eggs cooking along with bacon.
Joy goes fist in hand with heartbreak. I can't remember a Christmas that a bicycle was not pulled from the crate minus the handlebars, a toy truck with a broken wheel.
When I shot a spring-loaded missile from my battleship toward Keith's truck, the missile arced across the room and landed on top of the kerosene heater, slipped between the slats on the grille, and fell on top of the scalding fire drum. Despite my frantic attempts to retrieve the missile, before my eyes it shriveled, then caught fire and burned, filling the room with black smoke and a terrible smell.
On another Christmas, dawn finally illuminated the fields and pasture. The day was blustery; a chill north wind blew that was mixed with sleet. I carried my rocket outside. The foot-long missile launched on a thick rubber band was supposed to dart skyward a couple hundred feet, then return to earth by parachute. I stood in the front yard and slung that rocket into the air, saw it leap toward the clouds, where it hung for a moment, then began to fall. The top of the rocket opened, the chute unfurled and blossomed. The launch was perfect. I jumped up and down shouting with joy and excitement until I realized how strong the wind was. The last I saw of the rocket, it was whipping back and forth on the breeze as it traveled over the tops of several distant trees.
But there were other presents inside. The loss of one rocket, a truck minus a wheel, or a baby doll minus her bottle, could never spoil such a day.
We ate Christmas dinner at midday at my Granddaddy Raymond's house. He was my mother's dad, a big man with a quick temper who never was very fond of small children. He was married the second time to a woman named Mollie who was very sure she didn't like step-grandchildren. We sat on the couch like timid mice and waited for dinner. Mollie brewed tea without sugar, the bitter drink sharply contrasting with the sugary concoction my mother made. In trying to drink Mollie's tea, I gained one of my first realizations that the world had no set rules.
My granddaddy gave us socks for Christmas. All of us, even Danny when he was barely out of diapers, got socks. That was also one of my earliest lessons in learning that sometimes it was important and polite to lie.
"Oh boy! Look, Mama, I got socks," I said, holding up my pair.
"I did too," Karen said.
"Me too," my brothers sadly echoed. We waved our socks like flags.
We usually ate supper at Granny's house. She was Mama's mother, a very serious woman who didn't even give us socks for Christmas. She did have something that more than compensated. She had a color television. She picked us up in her car in the mid-afternoon and drove us to her house, where we watched the Christmas specials, sitting close to the screen as if we were glued there.
My father met us after work at Granny's. He arrived in his white uniform, the creases dusted with flour, his person smelling of freshly baked bread. We gave him the gift we had bought with his money, and for a few moments he let down his guard, smiled, and even joked. He shook the gift, weighed it in his hand, smelled it, and listened to it for a clue. He guessed wrong. After tearing off the paper and faking surprise he opened the bottle and smelled it and smiled.
"Your eyes may shine, your teeth may grit," he said, "but this here present you ain't gonna get."
We howled with delight. He set the bottle back down, probably never to touch it again. We glued ourselves to the next color television program while baking mincemeat and sweet potato pie filled the house with good smells. As the day fell into shadow, I realized sadly that another Christmas was rapidly passing, and that the wonderful anticipation and enchantment of awaiting Christmas Day was worth much more than a lapful of opened presents. Christmas rose high above reality, was a time when a child or parent could truly believe in Santa Claus, the Christ child, and reindeer that flew. Maybe the new year would bring a bout of flu, disease might strike the hogs, and the bills would start to roll in. But for a brief few weeks those worries seemed trivial when compared to one's dreams. My father as a boy had delighted in a fresh orange for Christmas; he and my mother gave me plastic rocket ships. But more important, in the warm glow of that kerosene heater, I possessed the security and confidence that one day I might fly a real rocket to the moon. I could give no more valuable gift to my own children today than that trust. Tear into that tinsel, child, through ribbon and cardboard, cast it all aside, and go for what you know lies inside. Worry about the future next week or the next; this charmed day, this era in your life, will pass too soon.
From A Very Southern Christmas, edited by Charline R. McCord and Judy H. Tucker. Originally published in Keeper of the Moon, Down Home Press, copyright 1991 by Tim McLaurin. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman Publishing.
