…and now we reach December…
After my grandfather died my little gray-haired grandmother started simplifying Christmas, just started giving money to each of the grandkids.
It made sense. What you say today applied back then too: these kids these days, they got everything they need; who knows about all their little gadgets and toys; why waste all that time and money on buying them the wrong thing? So she’d buy a cheapie Christmas card and in her English-as-a-second-language-handwriting she’d scribble out “love, ma-ma,” and that was it…
…except for the fifty dollars in the card. Thinking back, that was a chunk of money.
I was the older brother and took the role seriously. I would open my card and start “reading” what Maw-Maw had written to me, out loud, and in hearing distance of my little brother and sister who were also opening their envelopes, and they’d hear me say, “You are my favorite grandchild! Please don’t let your brother and sister know that I’ve given you this Hundred Dollar Bill!”
I’d always smile and give the joke away, but then I’d do it all over again the very next year.
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All those Christmases, all those gifts, and I can only remember a few gifts. I guess that’s just the way it is. I remember the tiny leather jacket Christmas and I remember the first G.I. Joe Christmas. I remember the Soap-on-a-Rope Christmas, where somebody had roped us in to Avon and all the men got soap-on-a-rope, and there’s a snapshot in my memory, of the grin on my grandfather’s face, wearing his gift like a bell cow.
I remember the Christmas that my little brother and sister got tricycles. I remember the rice-cooker Christmas, where all the women got one, and cooking rice was never the same. Later there was the microwave Christmas, those early models, heavy as a spare tire, expensive as a TV, and all anybody could trust them to do was warm up lukewarm coffee and cook popcorn.
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I remember last Christmas. Christmas Eve and we are gathered. This is how I wrote about it in an Uncle P Bedtime Story:
“My brother, the least churchy and yet maybe the most sincere of us all, he makes sure it goes like it should go, that before a present is opened, that there will be an appropriate hush, and we stand and make a chain of held hands, and we all look to Dad, and I said, “Pray us up, Pop,” and here he goes… He’s 84 and his mind is full and it shows in everyday moments, but he’s no stranger to prayer and we three kids of his, we hear his prayer-voice, it always begins with a little cough, and then he goes preacher on us for a little bit, familiar ground, been preaching Bethlehem and praying Christmas since before I was a gleam.
“I know you’re supposed to keep your eyes closed in a prayer, but I didn’t. How long do we have you, Pop? How many more? I study him. I see how his jaw clenches, and later, how he actually smiles during a prayer. He isn’t performing a prayer, he’s patriarch beseeching The Patriarch, it’s so Old Testament, this moment, it’s Moses on behalf of the wishy-washy Israelites, my father stands between us and Him, a line of stability, saying on our behalf, bringing grace on our behalf.”
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Mom always did the Christmas shopping. Most of our gifts were a surprise to Dad as they were a surprise to us.
When she died it fell to him to be The Grandparent. Like his mother, he started giving cash as gifts. That first year, he signed everything, “From Poppy in Sulphur and Nana in heaven.” He doesn’t want her forgotten as the family goes on without her.
My father was an honorable preacher. He was in it for souls, not for money. Jesus walked. He rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey. The 12 disciples went hand to mouth and meal to meal. That’s my Christianity.
Where his mother could give $50 dollars Dad can only give $20. He goes to the bank and asks for the bills and the teller offers him a little money envelope that has a gift bow printed on it.
Here is how I wrote about it last year:
“And there I sit as the envelopes come. A twenty is small these days, even to his grandkids. It’s always 20, and we all know it, but we open up the envelope and yes, there it is, and we look at him over there, and nod and smile our thank-you’s to him.
“The outside of my envelope said, “To Pierre, love Dad and Mom”.
“Up in the flap, when I opened the envelope, in his left-handed scrawl, was this, “We love you more than $20.” Six short words.
“The envelope will outlast the $20. The writing on the envelope is priceless. My father, in his decline, every year a squeak-by against Time, and so nice to find, that as he ages, and without Mom to lean upon, he reveals his softer side, speaking the High Things, like Love, in the no-frills way of a man of his generation. Good for you Dad.”
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We didn’t know what we didn’t know last Christmas. Last year he and I went to the family cemetery in Kinder. It didn’t seem urgent. I remember him saying, “I feel good, but you never know what little t’ing might be growing inside you.”
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This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we think a full heart should leak, to say, to feel, to fill.
Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories are posted three times a week on Eighty-one’s Facebook page, Sunday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, about pillow time. Uncle P can be reached at 81creativity@gmail.com.
*If certain someone’s read this and thought, ‘Hey, I don’t remember Maw Maw giving us $50!’ then maybe it’s a memory thing, or maybe I really was her favorite grandkid, or maybe I just got you again, wink, wink…
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