Oh, Christmas Tree

Christmas trees. I love them. I didn’t know what being in Hawaii at Christmas time would be like. Our most gracious host offered to put hers out for us to use. I thought we probably just wouldn’t have a tree this year.

There’s a  silly video I especially love this time of year. “Look at the tree!” It’s very silly and very true. I’ll post a link at the end.

For most of our years together, Ed and I have had  live Christmas trees, ones with a root ball. We  then plant them at Epiphany. They’ve made  a fence line along the busy street of the (very urban)  flower farm we call Felder.  You do have to be a little forgiving when it’s a tree you can plant. Obviously it can’t be as big as a cut tree, and oftentimes it’s not perfectly shaped. I’m ok with that. We have some amazing trees in the garden now. 

.We had real trees when I was growing up, some were cut trees, but many of them we planted . I still have a handful of the tiny cones from the hemlock I picked as our tree one year. Hemlocks shouldn’t be asked to grow in the south, but I didn’t know that. I asked, she flourished. I grew up on a street in Memphis called St Nick Drive ( I’m not kidding 🎅🏼), and the last time I drove by, my hemlock was still there, towering over the huge homes that have replaced the 1950’s ranch homes of my childhood.

The  year we trekked to Georgia to be with my grandmothers for Christmas we got a sparkly aluminum tree. I loved it. You know, as an adult I’ve always wondered-how did my parents do that?? Four kids at 4 am, piled into the back of the station wagon with blankets and pillows and of course no seatbelts… I think what I really mean is how did Mama do that. Somehow Santa always knew where we were.

 I still have that sparkly aluminum tree. It’s  a happy extra for me. I love it so much, but it’s not my Christmas Tree. I’m also going to have a REAL tree every year.

I love my Christmas tree.

But our relationship, my tree and I, has a checkered past. These days I know what I want, and I usually get what I want, pretty much when I want it. I can get along with a few different varieties, some others not so much. The tree is up sometime mid advent, lights on. Ornaments might take a few days because the grands are  eager to help. But my tree and I are loving each other while wait for that quiet silence of Christmas Eve.

That hasn’t always been the case.

When Ed and I first married we spent our Christmases around our parents’ trees. We even spent the night at Ed’s parents  the first year to go to midnight mass down the street at Grace St Luke's. By year 2 we were less than 2 months from being parents. I can’t quite remember, but I know we didn’t have a tree year 3, the first year we were parents. We were living at St Columba by then. What I do recall is coming in Christmas Eve with a tired and cranky baby to the tornado of homemade Christmas gift- making I’d left behind. We dropped all of the presents we’d just received along with diaper bag, dishes from dinner and who knows what else in the kitchen before falling into bed.

The kitchen  sink was somehow left dripping. And plugged. We woke up to a flooded kitchen and some soggy gifts.

That year I “met” Gertrud Nelson. Her book, To Dance with God, was water for a thirsty mama.  Her stories of community and family celebrations set me off on a path and I haven’t looked back.

https://www.paulistpress.comhttps//www.paulistpress.com/Products/2812-8/to-dance-with-god.aspx

We decided it was time to grow up, time to figure out who we were as a family. One choice we made was to do our family gift giving on St Nicholas day rather than Christmas Day. Our kids still got oodles of presents from grandparents and cousins on the 25th, but Nicholas came to visit our house on the 6th.  I’ll tell more about that another time.

We also thought we were ready for a Christmas tree.

Somewhere along the line, we decided we really wanted Advent to be Advent and Christmas to be Christmas and,  therefore, we wanted our tree to go up on Christmas Eve. You know, like Clara and Fritz in the Nutcracker.

This meant that Ed and I STILL were up all night on Christmas Eve putting up the tree.

When the trumpet fanfare of Adeste Fideles, David Wilcox style, filled the house on Christmas morning, the kids would come downstairs. Lots of filled mangers to find, stacks of Christmas  books that had heretofore been hidden away, it was always a pretty fabulous morning.

So the Christmas trees…

First year- it was a 14 ft cedar cut from Ed’s family farm in Tunica. It went in the hallway where the ceiling went to the second story. It was impossible to decorate and seemed like it might fall at any minute.

Second year- Live tree. We got it a little early because we wanted to make sure we could get one to plant. Ed put it in a wheelbarrow outside. Rootball froze to the wheelbarrow. Ed thought that was no problem. He wheeled it into the house. Christmas tree in a wheelbarrow. He sorta kinda draped a tree skirt over it. He thought that made it GREAT. I was 25 years old. 2 babies now. I don’t think I’d found my voice yet.

3rd year- This time it was 2 trees, each so pitiful that  we put them together to try to make one happy tree. Obviously I was still working on finding my voice.

4th year- By now we (Ed) had taken to the idea of waiting until Christmas Eve to get a tree. Usually the tree lots were abandoned by then and we often came away with a free one.

5th year- this year the tree was beautiful and full and heavy and a little unbalanced. Ed did an elaborate tying in. Twine around the trunk that went to a nail in the base board on one side, about waist height into the molding around the porch door on the other side. That part is important.

I think we got to bed around 4 am. Soon after 5 Nathanael and Rebekah came bounding into our room. I told them to give me a minute, go sit on the stairs. Nathanael came back in a second later. “ Mommy. I didn’t mean to look, but the tree is upside down.”

Just like Dr. Seuss. It was bouncing from the twine where it had flipped.

6th year- We cut it close this  year. Seemed all the tree lots were completely sold out. I sent my father and sister to check a lot near mama and daddy’s house. It was abandoned, a sign declaring all trees free. The exorbitant price tag was still on it. Somewhere there’s a picture of my father and sister wearing dark glasses and hats. Daddy was sure it was stealing and didn’t want to be recognized.

7th year- By now our children were old enough to be embarrassed. It was bad enough that we drove to church with a dead tree (Jesse tree) on top of the car in early December while everyone else was driving home with their Christmas trees, but now we were driving to Christmas Eve service, stopping to look in dumpsters for trees. My children early on  mastered  the art of slumping in their seats lest they be spotted.

You get the point.

 I found my voice. I chose the trees,  and I’ve had many lovely trees these last 35 years.

And now we’re in Hawaii and we’ve returned to our roots.

I have to say, I’ve loved it. We did buy the strand of lights. Everything else has been foraged. I would’ve loved a Norfolk (Cook’s) pine. They’re everywhere here and many are being cut down but we never found a top of one. So Ed in his Gilligan hat hit up the dumpster.

The rest is magic.

Look at the tree…  https://youtu.be/RTs5eKZ0i1E

Sara Rachel and Emma Mae and Raggedy hearts

I wrote this two years ago. Facebook memories reminded  me and I decided I wanted to save it here. 

As it turned out, Ed officiated the funeral in Memphis a few days later where we celebrated Sara Rachel’s life.. Dale and Kathleen and their children, Lyle and Sara Rachel were amongst our earliest new friends after we married. Dale and Kathy demonstrated Hospitality in ways that formed me. From 4th of July omelets and cantaloupe to Rivka stew to  anything aubergine to celebrations in which a beautiful and very large round of cheese was the focal point, we celebrated. Life brought changes, many of them painful. In the rift that death brings, I was fortunate to, on varying planes, reconnect with folks who live large in who I am. 

And, to demonstrate what’s important and what isn’t… I have no recollection of whatever it was that I let get to me that day. 

————————————————————————

Yesterday   my heart was just all raggedy. I took something personally that maybe wasn’t all about me, but it opened up a hole and I couldn’t find my way back. I tried to get outside of myself- and sort of did- but I still had a lump in my throat all day. I went to see the Mr Rogers movie and cried all the way through. Then last night, just as I was getting in bed, I got a message from a friend. His daughter died. My raggedy heart felt his pain from far across the country.  💔💔💔  

These felt decorations were made by my grandmother, Emma Mae,  to decorate the front of a tablecloth for a tea she hosted. Gra had a raggedy heart, too. She was widowed when my daddy was only 4, another baby already in the grave. I don’t know why she sewed all those tiny little beads on there, but I love them.

“ The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me...he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to release the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1 

As the waters cover the sea

 On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King,Jr was assassinated in Memphis, TN He had come to Memphis to support the striking sanitation workers.

I was 10 years old.

I remember how the sanitation workers carried big aluminum tubs balanced on their heads while they walked down our long driveway to the back side yard to collect our garbage from our aluminum garbage cans.

I remember when daddy came to my bedroom door and told me Dr King had been killed.

Schools were closed. Weddings were cancelled. Curfews were enforced. Daddy offered to drive Ellen, our longtime housekeeper (we called her our maid) who was African American, home. She refused thinking it might be unsafe for my father.

That was about the extent of it for a little white girl in a white neighborhood.

When we went back to school, my handful of black friends would be absent on Mondays. Black Mondays we called them. Protest, but I was unclear about what.

Five years later all of a sudden (or so it seemed) I found myself in 10 th grade at St Mary’s episcopal school for girls.

My mother continued to teach in public schools. Both of my brothers had graduated from public schools. 

And here I was at st Mary’s. I wasn’t thrilled.

Here’s why:

•All girls??? You’ve got to be kidding me.

•Bobby socks and saddle oxfords? I had prescription saddle oxfords (for flat feet) until I was 12. I wasn’t going back.

•I’d been at White Station since 1st grade. I had every intention of being in the 12 year club.

•Friends. I was 15. Needs no further explanation.

The decision was made. My little sister and I packed up the mile high stack of books and started our first year at sms.

Today would have been my mama’s 93rd birthday. I would have loved to ask her more about why. Why did she choose to send us to st Mary’s? Yes, it was in the neighborhood. And, yes, the public schools were reeling. But there were schools popping up left and right as frightened white people tried to justify the need for their establishment. My parents had some very noble qualities… well maybe sort of noble- but absence of racism was not one of those qualities. They were products of their time, their birth and the long long history of systemic racism I’m still uncovering and understanding layer by layer even today.

Why did they choose st Mary’s instead of one of the others?

St Mary’s was started by the Sisters of St Mary’s, A long time ago. And while it was VERY( but not entirely) white, it was built on a strong foundation of light and life that continues to serve it to this day.

Let’s talk about all girls. I got past that stigma in no time. When Mrs Daniel came into our 10th grade English class, told us to take our out books, asked for volunteers to read Guy de Maupassant’s  “The Necklace” out loud, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Dozens of voices volunteering. What??? Back in coed life, we girls had reached the unfortunate age where it wasn’t cool to be enthusiastic about anything school. The Cute Boy might see you and roll his eyes. At St Mary’s  I could freely and happily and enthusiastically participate in class?? I LOVED participating in class. I was sold.

Bobby socks and saddle oxfords came two weeks later.

Leaving White Station took some grieving, but I had a lot of homework and not a lot of time to be too sad.

Friends- some of us kept up. And I made new friends quickly.

Perhaps the most extraordinary bit about st Mary’s happened every morning at 9:10. 

Every morning at 9:10, every girl from every class, every age made their way to chapel. At the doors we all got a little rectangle of white fabric, gathered at one end. We put these chapel caps on our heads and went in to sit with our class in the wooden pews of Holy Communion. I wasn’t an Episcopalian, but I quickly learned the cadence of the prayers from the Morning Prayer service in the Book of Common Prayer. Within days I could say the school prayer:

 

Almighty God, Fountain of wisdom, be with us, we pray thee, in our work today. Endue all the teachers with a sense of their responsibility, and with grace and strength for its fulfillment. Keep the students in health of mind and soul and body; make them diligent in study, guard their inexperience, and save them through all temptations. Bless the patrons and alumnae of this school, and enable us all, more and more each day, to advance in that knowledge which is eternal life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

And sing Day by Day.

It didn’t matter what else might be happening.

Chapel happened.

I didn’t hear the word “mindfulness” until sometime in the 21st century I’m pretty sure. 

St Mary’s trained me in mindfulness in 1974.

We sang hymns from the 1949 hymnal. I didn’t know a lot of them, but I soon had my favorites. The youngest children alway picked “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God” or “All Things Bright and Beautiful”.

I still know every verse by heart, and  I sang them to my children.

The first time we sang “God is working His Purpose Out” I felt it in my bones. The tune is ominous, heavy, it bears the weight of the words.

And we sang it in rounds.

No one told us to. Generations of St Mary’s girls had been singing it in rounds, passing the practice on to the younger girls year after year. So we sang it in rounds..

600  young female voices singing  at 9:10 on a Wednesday before a trig exam… or on the Friday before prom… or on a Tuesday after you checked your mom into the hospital on Monday.

Singing  about God moving through history.

About God working God’s purpose out.

Dr Martin Luther king talked about the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice.

That’s God..

God is working God’s purpose out.

As the waters cover the sea.

God is working God’s purpose out

As year succeeds to year.

God is working God’s purpose out

And the time is drawing near..

Nearer and nearer draws the time

The time that shall surely be

When the earth shall be filled with the glory of God 

As the waters cover the sea.

https://youtu.be/g6s9MdQ7dsY

And that, my friends, is  what Joseph saw today on his way to Bethlehem.