CHRISTMAS IN BIRDLAND

IN BIRDLAND, CHRISTMAS MORNING IS A QUIET AFFAIR

WHEN I SEWED THAT FIRST STOCKING,
I CUT IT SMALL ON PURPOSE.

IN BIRDLAND, CHRISTMAS MORNING IS A QUIET AFFAIR. Gone are the days when small boys would pry us from the bed before daybreak, while we laughingly feigned a surprised sleepiness. Come to think of it, the sleepiness was authentic. This year Chandra is home from the West coast and Dylan has stayed over from town. Having my two oldest sons home for a little while is the best present I could hope for. They'll each sleep for a while longer. Even Ellis seems to have learned that whatever's under the tree will still be there if he sleeps in for a while longer. Following a long Christmas Eve tradition, the big boys helped my youngest write Santa's note (this year full of teenaged wit tinged with some helpful dietary advice) and lay out a platter of cookies and a glass of milk. I went to bed long before the low rumble of conversation and laughter stopped and the lights went out one by one.

SHE NEVER LETS ME LIE IN BED LONG

This morning I lay in bed for a little after waking, long enough that Ursula came in and damply nosed my hand. My dog must hear me stirring, or perhaps listen for a change in my breathing when I waken. She never lets me lie in bed long. She has ideas about frisbees and breakfast, but I have a date with a turkey and a 400 degree oven. I let Ursa out and grab half a cookie from the plate on the buffet. What's left of the cookies is mostly a crumbly mess. Santa has left his own response at the bottom of the boys' note—a bit petulant this year if you ask me (not that I blame him after that crack about his waistline).

HAVING MY SONS HOME IS THE BEST PRESENT I COULD WISH FOR

I see the stockings have been filled. When I sewed that first stocking over 30 years ago, I cut it small on purpose. To my mind, a stocking should hold an apple, an orange, a few nuts and chocolate treats, a toothbrush and dental floss, and maybe a small surprise. Some years I wish I'd cut it a little bigger, but mostly I think it's just right. I glance at the modest pile of presents under the tree. This year was a little lean, and I took the opportunity to go back to basics and be creative. Can there be anything more comforting a soft pack of fresh underwear and socks on Christmas morning? I also wrapped up some Lord of the Rings special edition DVD sets I got used, but like new, at our local computer repair shop. I labeled them “for the geeks in the house” and that could pretty much fit all of them. I thought we could have some family movie nights while my boys are here. I also knit a bunch of long scarves with leftover yarn. I put them in a basket to make a game of letting each one choose their own (an idea I stole from one of my knit and nurture friends). I am still hoping for inspiration to strike about the rules of that game, but I'm sure it will come. I go to the closet and pull out the five pairs of slippers I made as a last minute addition to the gift pile.

The pile under the tree is still modest and I am reminded of a Christmas at my mother's when my older boys were small. We were wrapping presents on Christmas Eve, and my mother was feeling a little down. Like most young grandmothers she wanted to give her grandkids fabulous presents and make “the best Christmas ever” for all of us. Looking at the humble collection of presents we were wrapping she thought she had failed us somehow. My sister came up with an idea to increase the number of presents under the tree to cheer my mother up. It started with the phone book. She wrapped it up in paper and put someone's name on it. When my mother wasn't looking, we would grab random items to wrap: a teapot, the scissors, a coffee mug, towels from the bathroom, a cookbook, my brother's glasses. The pile of presents grew until we ran out of wrapping paper. The counterfeit presents were mixed with the real ones, and the next morning these were first met with puzzled looks, then incredulous laughter. It really was “the best Christmas ever.”

I grind coffeebeans and begin cutting up bread, onions, celery, for stuffing the turkey. The house fills with the warm aroma of coffee and Michael joins me in the quiet morning to help with the turkey and wait for our boys to wake up.

Present Beauty; Receive Peace; Merry Christmas

O CHRISTMAS TREE

MY FATHER AND HIS SIBLINGS PLANTED THE CHRISTMAS TREES UP BY THE CORNER CEMETERY UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF THEIR GRANDFATHER, PAYNE HEATH. I imagine Great-Dad giving stiff orders, tossing bundles of bare-root white pine seedlings into 8 piles, kneeling in the soft earth to straighten a crooked tree, bending slightly to pat one of my aunts on the head, stifling arguments amongst the kids with a firm look. I am, of course, idealizing the story, but I can clearly see the patriarch with his grandchildren in the sun on the terraced land. My great granddad was a learned man, and I’m guessing that my father inherited his love of nature and of teaching, from him. I’m sure that tree-planting day included lessons in soil make-up, tree identification, agriculture, and history. In those days, the farm had fences and hedgerows, but they, along with the terraces, were plowed under long before I arrived on the scene. Only the terraces hidden in the piney woods remain.

 My dad once told me that selling the Christmas trees was to furnish college tuition for the grandkids, and were to be harvested the year I was born. My dad was the oldest, my youngest uncles not much older than I am. Unfortunately, that was also the year Great-Dad died—he and I shared a mere six months on this planet—and the trees never got harvested. Instead they quietly grew to great heights of 40 to 50 feet.

 I remember the first time I saw them as a child. One Christmas my father brought us out to cut our tree. Perhaps they were not as tall then as they are now, maybe only 20 or 30 feet high, but to my eyes they were giants. You cut a tree, and then top it. To me it didn’t matter that the branches were crooked and showed a lot of bare trunk, or that it was not really shaped like a Christmas tree or that the needles were too limp to hold an ornament; going out in the snowy woods to cut a tree was quintessentially romantic. I think we probably did this only once when I was growing up, but when we moved out to the farm we continued the tradition.

 The piney woods were an artificial monoculture—by now they have grown into a little more diversity—but I loved them. They have an aura of an enchanted grove. Regular rows of great tree trunks curving along the terraces, dark and cool (even in summer); and dreamy, cushioned by a foot of rusty red needles, scented by sticky pine sap, it’s quiet in there. They grow so close together that the light doesn’t get in. They’re green only at the top and you feel like you’re deep in the interior of the forest. I say we are thinning them since they’re so crowded, but at the rate of one a year, I’m not sure the plot will ever be thinned by our Christmas tree habit. Along the edges the undergrowth blocks access and you have to find the secret entry. You walk back to the edge of the bean field and step carefully over the downed barbed wire, balancing the chain saw that was carefully sharpened for this ritual. Everyone looks up, craning their necks trying to see the shape of the treetop from below. You try to find one with room to fall, but even so, they usually get hung up on another tree halfway down. When that happens you cut the felled trunk again, as high as you can reach. Sometimes you have to cut the trunk three times before the top finally comes crashing down in a splash of needles and cones. Then you top it, hold it up to check the shape (though we rarely reject a tree once we’ve cut it—checking the shape is mostly ceremonial), and drag it back to the car.

 Once home we stand it in a tub of water and weight it down with bricks and stones, balancing the trunk carefully. We wrap it in garlands and strings of lights, hanging the strange ornaments we’ve collected over the years. We hang stockings by the wood stove and string up Christmas cards in all the doorways. I’d like to say that this year we had hot mulled cider and cookies, but our decorating was accompanied only by chamber music on the radio and me, reading some of the more interesting letters inscribed in the Christmas cards, explaining to Ellis who sent some of the older ones—friends we may have lost track of before he was born. I smile at the messages, the pictures, and think fondly of these friends, enjoying my annual visit.

COLLECT BEAUTY
PERSIST IN PEACE
BLESSED BE

Visitations

In Birdland we’re having a thaw. The lovely snow covering has changed my yard to a soggy bog interrupted by islands of dirty snow. The wind is warm, and the grass shows some green amongst the frostbitten brown, while robins (Yes, Robins!) hop around in my yard. Are we really deep in winter on the cusp of this new year?

Ellis has gone to Texas to see his cousins. The absence of my youngest makes a quiet house, and I’m taking advantage of my solitude to do some organizing. I pulled out everything from the living room closet. A couple of coats of white paint will make it brighter, and it will be easier to keep organized. That’s the theory, anyway. Every time I tell people what I’m doing with my break, they laugh, but I’m enjoying both the task and the metaphor.

It reminds me of a story my grandmother used to tell, about a chalice that was gleaming on the outside, but dirty inside. I used to pay special attention to scrubbing out the insides of the cups when I did dishes as a child, thinking that as long as the cup was clean inside, the outside didn’t matter so much. At any rate, one final coat of paint, and then I’ll put things back in the closet in a more orderly fashion. I’m hoping it will be more difficult to put what I don’t really need back into such a nice, fresh closet, so I’ve got a box ready to fill with donations for the thrift store.

This year I’ve been behind since autumn. Usually we cut a Christmas tree on Thanksgiving weekend, but I’ve always thought it would be romantic to cut one Christmas Eve. My grandmother used to tell about lighting the tree, with candles of course, for only a few minutes on Christmas Eve, like a birthday cake to be blown out after a brief show. Her father would light the candles, keeping a bucket of water nearby to douse the tree if it went up in flames (as, I think, it sometimes did). Romantic or not, I got my wish; this year we didn’t get up the hill to cut a tree until Christmas Eve, and I woke up early Christmas morning to decorate it. I pulled out the contents of the living room closet, but couldn’t find my decorations.

They must be in the upstairs closet, in the room where Dylan, my middle boy, was still sleeping. In the living room closet I found only the shoeboxes of cards of Christmases Past. Stringing them on lines to border all the doorways is my favorite part of decorating, so I did that first. It took an hour or more, because I had to pause and read some, remembering old friends and wondering how they’re getting along. When I was finished, Dylan was still sleeping, so I decided to forget about the tin of decorations and use the leftover Christmas cards on the tree.

I like it; it’s spare and simple that way—no lights, and only a few strands of beads and ribbons for garland. It will be much easier to take down when the time comes.

I glance out the window to see more robins have joined the party. Seriously. On every side of the house, kitchen window, living room, bedroom…I run up to the attic, yes that side too… fifty or more robins hopping and foraging in the yard. They won’t stand still and be counted. More swoop down from the trees. I watch two dueling, their red breasts puffed up to bump chests like human athletes. I’ve never witnessed such robin aggression, but then I’ve never seen such a congregation of them before. I wonder where they are headed. Surely not back north yet?

The next morning as I finish up this letter, the wind is even warmer and the robins are gone—the yard is quiet and still, the snow shrunk to a few small spots in the shelter of trees and shrubs. I look around and finally see one last robin high in a tree. I wonder if that one will follow its fellows, or take its chances here until winter visits again.

Sing in Beauty; Roam in Peace; Blessed Be.

Mary Lucille Hays lives in Birdland near White Heath. She is interested in the many visitations to her back yard and wonders where the travelers come from, and where they are going. She wishes them well on their journey