Silent Night… or Silent Dawn, two of my favorite times of the day on the farm. Especially during the holidays when the tree brings a soft glow to our home. Ahh, joy, the winter holidays! I haven’t always been excited about anticipating this time a year; in fact, I dreaded it and couldn’t sing a Christmas song without crying and stopped singing entirely for several years after I lost my sister; I had nothing to sing about. Daddy, Mother, my late husband Bill, my oldest sister Mary, Randy’s mother Betty, and my dearest four-legged companion, Red Dog, were all lost near the winter holidays. Of course, it wasn’t just the losses that left such vivid reminders. All the winter smells, sounds, and adornments that accompanied that time of year could instantly conjure memories that would come waving over me when I least expected them, like the repercussions of an earthquake. November and December hold the birthdays of many of my loved ones who are missing from our table. It really didn’t matter if I tried not to think about what date it was; I would often experience something that I have come to name mine as “cell memory.” My body knows the day whether I am conscious of it or not. Have you ever had a day that just wasn’t going well, and you couldn’t put your finger on why then at the end of the day you realized the date played a significant role in your life? This is the type of memory of which I am speaking. There is a great deal of exciting research and anecdotal stories about “cellular memory,” especially in transplant patients. If you are interested, more information is easily found online.
Now that Randy and I will soon have spent 11 great holiday seasons together, my Christmas is a very different celebration. Most importantly, our home is filled with family celebrations and merry-making while holding all the memories and love of Christmases Past. One of the things that I now love most about Thanksgiving is that I start pulling out the boxes of Christmas decorations, sorting through them, and planning how to dress up the house for the next holiday season, so it will feel warm, welcoming, and festive until we ring in the New Year. As we have gotten a bit older (or maybe busier) and with the new house having a 2-story ceiling in our great room, I made a life-changing decision to purchase a large artificial tree that I could set up and take down whenever the mood struck me. It worked out well last year with Covid because having the tree up early and the house looking festive made me feel like at least one thing in our quarantined lives was normal. This year I decided to put decorations up at Thanksgiving to enjoy the rest of the holiday and entertain family and friends without having to worry about the exhausting job of decorating. But the truth is probably much deeper than that.
I have far too many boxes of Christmas decorations. I use about half of the boxes that I have in storage. My son has encouraged me to get rid of what I don’t use. I explained that I like to change things up occasionally, and I don’t want to get rid of things that I might want to use later. The truth of it is that I would feel like I was giving away old friends that had brought a lot of joy to my life in past Christmases. Like the candleholders, and night light nativity scene that Uncle John bought from me when I was selling Christmas cards and decorations when I was about 10. He gave them to me for Christmas since I was his shopping consultant. The night light lives in a special spot with other items that are filled with memories, in the glassed case in the great room. I can soak up some love anytime I look at them in their glasshouse. Maybe next year I will consolidate my boxes and keep only the most precious… or maybe in ten years. Those boxes are full of memories and many of the decorations are well-used hand-me-downs from my family.
I may have a new house, in a new location, in a new town, on the opposite end of the state from where I have spent so much of my adult life; but when I put up my Christmas decorations it feels like the home that I have always lived in, with a man that completes my life. Randy and I have acquired many new Christmas decorations for inside and out, but our home is full of things that my mother made for me, his mother gave to us, and decorations made by all my children and grandchildren.
When I sit in my favorite chair, I can look up and see the paper mache Angels that my mother made and gave to me in 1973. They have been with me every Christmas since. The older I get, the more precious they have become, and now that mother is on the other side, they are priceless. When I look at them, it takes me back to the days she spent meticulously creating and painting. She made all three of us girls a set of angels for our homes. In years passed, they always got top billing on top of my piano, but now that we spend so much time in our Great Room and kitchen that overlooks it, I moved them to a place where I can enjoy them all the time.
The Christmas tree is the main attraction and the heart of every Christmas. Its limbs wrap around and caress some of my most precious possessions, the homemade decorations gifted to me by my children, and grandchildren, several with a picture of the child who made the decoration. Included in my tree treasures are two letters to me that were handwritten by the two youngest grandsons, wishing me a Merry Christmas. Neither were in school yet, which means they wrote them at least 12 years ago. They rest on my tree every year and when I read them I am transported back in time and decorating the tree with those sweet little guys. Their notes are more precious than my hand-blown ornaments. I have several “Babies First Christmas” ornaments and socks. Each year I tried to purchase a special ornament for each of my children that sang to me and reminded me of the child, I have a few that have survived all their love and attention. When I look at them it takes me back to the age that they were when they made the decoration and all the memories of their delight in unwrapping gifts, Christmas pageants, and Christmas trees of the past. My mother made me a set of decorations that are stuffed and quilted, they include an angel, a dove, and two stars. My elf that adorned the top of a homemade Christmas floral arrangement that my dad made and anonymously delivered to me at work, always has a perch of honor. He is a little worse for wear since he will soon be 50 years old. It didn’t help that I had a black lab puppy that decided to ingest one of his legs, and through the years some of the felt has worn thin on his elf suit, but that doesn’t matter to me, he still holds my memories of my sweet daddy and his quirky sense of humor. While I am taking him out of the box and finding the right place for him to sit on the tree my dad is with me the entire time. I laugh about how funny he thought his gift was and how he pretended to not know anything about it. For just a moment, I hear his laughter, see his smile, and then remember his beautiful return home that I experienced at his bedside while holding his hand the day he passed. As I hang the collection of dated ornaments from the Christmas Tree Farm, I revisit each trip to the farm, with family, dogs, friends, hot chocolate, and hayrides. They go back to when the kids were young and a few that Randy and I have collected together at the very same farm. There is no end to the stories and the memories that cover our tree. Slowly, over the years, I have been weeding out the ones that carry no sentimental value to make room for more memories. I think that is a good affirmation that my life has always been full of love (even when I wasn’t feeling it) and I have created so many valuable memories worth preserving and displaying that I can fill a large tree.
I also have my mother’s boot tree that a dear family friend gave to her so she could have a Christmas tree in her room at the assisted living home. I update it occasionally and this year it got a new set of red truck lights and multicolored fairy lights. I know that mother enjoyed that little tree and her beautiful angel for hours on end and when I spend any time enjoying them, I can feel her right here with me. The house is full of Santa’s. They aren’t just any Santa’s, most of them were gifts from my oldest sister. She would travel from Illinois and spend Thanksgiving with me and my family. As part of our tradition, we would make a trek to our favorite family-owned tree farm in Herman, Missouri, where after the perfect tree was chosen, we would each buy a Santa without the other seeing it and exchange them as part of our Thanksgiving celebration. She always chose the perfect Santa for that year. After she passed, I bought myself Santa’s in her memory, and one year my best friend who is like a sister bought a large ceramic Christmas tree for me that is always the center of the Santa display.
Along with my treasures from my childhood, I have my grandmother’s secretary and the Santa and reindeers that I helped put on that very secretary every year until I moved out as an adult. Now it greets guests in our foyer and Santa and his reindeer who are older than me are in their place and ready to take off to their next stop. I still get as much pleasure putting them in their rightful place of honor as I did as a small child. The mistletoe bell that hangs in my foyer hung in our living room when I was a child, it still contains the same magic it held when I was young, as it hung in the center of our living room and beckoned for people to stand beneath for a kiss.
The piano that lives in my library was the family piano and the heart of the family. If objects hold cellular memory, this piano is full of them. This is the one that we all used to practice our piano and voice lessons and gathered around with the whole family, where I would sit and play song requests for my dad so he could memorize them and later play by ear as he didn’t read music. It was the piano where Mary and I spent literally hours singing together when she would come home for holidays. I lost my voice more than a few times due to the long songfest that would transpire shortly after her arrival and periodically during her visit. This very piano has been played by people who later became famous musicians and was the backdrop for more family photos than I could count.
All my growing up years the piano was the base for our family’s primitive Christmas village that grew out from the centerpiece of a white plastic church with a steeple that if wound up would play Silent Night. On either end were candles that Mary bought that looked like glittering snowballs. They were never lit and carefully wrapped every year, so they always looked new, sparkly, and delicious. When I enjoy my different village scenes it reminds me of every childhood Christmas with the paper buildings with cellophane windows, miniature flocked trees and bushes, and the tiny metal people that were walking to what I imagined was the Christmas program in the little church. In more recent years the piano has held my set of handmade angels that my mother made for me in 1973; this Christmas it is where the two large fiber optic angels stand guard. My sister loved angels, and my mother gave me one for my home after Mary died, and she kept one for herself and later took it to the assisted living home with her. It has been on display in my home since the year my mother died, yet I looked at it a few days ago when I was searching for the perfect spot for them and noticed for the first time that the angel, she kept for herself, had two cherubs hanging on to the angel’s skirt. Now I realized that my mother must have felt like that was her two babies waiting for her in heaven, my brother David, and my sister Mary. Mary’s picture of her sitting at that very piano is in the center of the angels. It makes me feel like they were all meant to be together during the holidays.
To others, the house may look festive or filled with decorations, but for me it is filled with memories, and we are surrounded by small pieces of our loved ones through gifts, things that they loved, and things that they created from love. I am sure by now you realize, that when I have all my decorations up, I feel like I am surrounded by loved ones. It makes my heart happy and it gives me the opportunity to relive so many moments from my past.
If you only decorate with a few things try using items filled with love and memories. Love is the only thing that lives on eternally. It lives on in those that we give it to and continues to live when they pass it on to others. It is truly the reason for the season. If you are only going to do one thing, make it LOVE. Give and receive it freely, it cost nothing, and it lives on forever.
As Christmas is quickly approaching, may your days be filled with love, making time to create new memories while taking the time to sit with your old ones. Welcome your elders from the other side as they spend time with you during your reminiscing. I am so grateful for the life we have created on the farm and I look forward to the adventure of what each new year brings to our family and to yours. Make 2022 your best year to date!
And now you know why
I LOVE THE FARM
And
I LOVE YOU RANDY!
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A VERY HAPPY 2022
CITY LIFE 2 FARMERS WIFE 