The Christmas Pearl (2 page)

Whole pecan halves were separated from broken ones and later pressed into fondant, a sweet holiday candy like fudge that Pearl would dye pale pink or green. More nuts would be slipped inside of dates, rolled in powdered sugar, or cooked in butter, sprinkled with granulated and dark brown sugar. Tiny pieces were mixed into rum balls or sands. The rest were chopped up for nut cakes and fruitcake. Of course Gordie, being a normal boy who loved to cut up the fool, would snitch a rum ball, eat it, then pretend to be drunk, weaving around the kitchen bumping into things. I would be carried away with giggles until I fell to the floor with him. Even Pearl would smile and shake her head. Believe it or not, the fruitcakes of my youth were
delicious.
No one made jokes about substituting
them
for bricks or footballs.

There were none in 2006. Everyone is on a blooming diet or watching their cholesterol or some other fool thing.

Did we decorate? Mercy! This old house sprang to life, breathing pride and contentment with the trimming we did for the holidays. A week after Thanksgiving, Pearl, Gordie, and I would gather together on the back porch with Mother. First, we put long pieces of rope in the old tin washtub and soaked them in water overnight. The weather was usually mild enough to wear just a sweater. We wore old gardening gloves, as
it was kind of a sloppy business. Working as a team, helping one another, we would construct thick majestic garlands, heavy with pine, cedar, and magnolia, discreetly tucking the small branches in between the twists of water-soaked rope. When the rope dried, they held tight. We were positive our garlands were fit for a palace.

When Pearl or our mother measured, remeasured, and determined that one had reached the proper length, one of them would clip the rope and knot the end. Together, we would carry them inside, carefully, in a great procession, like long Chinese paper dragons, placing each one in some part of every room in the house. The staircase banisters were swagged, mantels were draped, garlands were hung around every doorway; we looped long pieces around the great-hall mirror that reached from the floor to the ceiling, and of course another one framed the front door outside. Naturally, there were wreaths made of greens and small pieces from a bush we called popcorn, because the small berries were lumped together and white. Sometimes we tied in baby pinecones, sprigs of holly with red berries, or lady apples when we could find them. We always had wide red satin ribbon, the same ribbon we saved from year to year, which Pearl would unpack and unroll. She would sing gospel music, like “Come en Go wid Me,” which was telling everybody to
ask for Jesus to come again. When she forgot a word or two she would hum while she gently ironed out the wrinkles from where the bows had been tied in prior years.

We all had our jobs to do. I’ll confess, some were more pleasant than others. Gordie and I didn’t mind wiping the magnolia leaves with an old dishcloth spotted with corn oil to make them look like patent leather, but neither one of us enjoyed getting the sticky pinesap all over our faces and arms. Somehow we always got blotches of it on us. My mother would scrub us in our old claw-foot bathtub until we howled for freedom. Gosh! I haven’t thought about that in years! Gordie surely could howl like a wild man.

No one makes garlands today. Or wreaths. Everything is ordered from the florist or a catalog or bought on the side of the road from the same fellow who sells fireworks in the summer. Or even more terrible, people use plastic fake things that give your home no fragrance at all. I find this very disappointing. You have to understand that the real fun of the season was in the
preparation.
The preparation fueled our frenzy of anticipation.

Naturally there were gifts. Gordie and I would construct bookmarks for our mother and grandmother. They loved to read. Our home was well stocked with books of every kind. We’d draw a flower or a bird on a long skinny piece of stiff paper, color it carefully, then
fringe the bottoms with manicuring scissors. The other side was then signed and dated. The bookmarks were enclosed in handmade cards. We hid everything under our beds until the tree went up.

A crisp morning would find us walking up King Street to Kerrison’s Department Store hand in hand with Pearl. With what little money we had earned by performing small chores like sweeping the steps or folding towels, we would argue and finally settle on a linen handkerchief or a necktie for our father. Later a card would be made for him, too. What to give Pearl was always a huge dilemma. Gordie or I would pester someone into shopping with us to find her a nice pair of gloves, a sweater, or a pretty scarf that would be from us. It seems to me now that way back then, the other adults made us
work
for their attention and affection. Pearl freely gave an abundance of both. Maybe there was a lesson there—a pearl of wisdom?

Anyway, the whole business took
weeks
to accomplish! When it was over, the house was festooned to a fare-thee-well and we were ready to be fattened up with all the goodies we had made to eat. By the time the Christmas tree was up and decorated, Gordie and I were bug-eyed trying to catch a glimpse of anything that might resemble a reindeer and our ears were peeled for the jingle of any kind of bell.

We had a beautiful crèche set that was carefully
arranged on the ancient mahogany entrance-hall table with votive candles nestled in more greens. In retrospect, it was probably a fire hazard! No one seemed to worry about those things then. You might ask why a Protestant household had a painted plaster crèche set. It had been given to us by a Catholic friend of my grandmother. She said it was a beautiful reminder of what the entire holiday was about. She was right! There was just Joseph, Mary, an ox, and a donkey in a humble stable. On Christmas morning we added the Baby Jesus, the shepherds that night, and then we took them away at the beginning of January when the kings arrived. The shepherds had to go back to work, didn’t they?

The family Bible was opened on another table to a beautiful artist’s rendering of the Nativity scene. Greens surrounded it just so in an Advent wreath of four candles, three purple and one rose-colored. They stood solemnly in shining brass candlesticks around the Bible, lit only at supper. One the first week, two the second…all leading up to the big event.

We were regular churchgoers, staunch believers in the true meaning of Christmas. Gordie? At his age? Be assured that he was in church and his eyes were squeezed tight while he petitioned the Lord for cowboy guns or a catcher’s mitt. I was right next to him, hands folded thumb over thumb, fingers pointed toward
heaven, fervently pleading for a doll that said “mama.” Since we finally had peace on earth and there seemed to be a lot of goodwill toward men, surely it was okay to ask God to help you out with Santa?

That’s just how the holidays were. We cracked nuts, we made our own decorations and most of our gifts, we went to church, and we waited for Santa. Everyone baked for the holidays—sweets usually. Most people didn’t decorate nearly as much as we did. I’m not sure if we tackled the season with such gusto because my grandmother, mother, and Pearl thought it would keep us busy and out of trouble or perhaps because
they
just couldn’t stop themselves. It didn’t matter. The house smelled delicious and looked gorgeous from all the greens and baking. Just the fact that we did these things together made us happier than I have ever been since.

Those days are long gone. Gordie, Pearl, my parents, and grandparents are all gone. My poor sweet husband, Fred, went to glory about ten years ago and I still miss him every day. Life surely is lonely without my darling Fred.

Gordie, who grew up to be a soldier and was every girl’s sweetheart, died in Normandy, the French shores of the world’s next terrible war. None of us ever recovered. How could we? We were proud and took some solace in the fact that our family had produced some
one who died a heroic death, defending our Allies in Europe. Still, the loss of Gordie cut a hole in all of us. We bore invisible punctures of grief forever. My grandfather died when I was just barely out of diapers. My grandmother went to heaven and then we lost Pearl. My beautiful mother died suddenly when I was thirteen. If my father were alive today, he would be one hundred zillion years old, so I’m not being morbid to speak of his demise. I mean, I miss them all. However, I’m not the kind of woman who gets maudlin, most especially over things I can’t control.

It’s just that things were vastly different then. I’ll tell you this much. Pearl, even my mother, would be appalled by the fake trees and wreaths, inflatable Santas, and that the pecans are so astronomically priced, sold half cleaned and in ugly cellophane bags. Pearl would be deeply disappointed that no one seems to make, eat, or exchange cakes or candies or that handmade gifts are almost unheard of in today’s world. Knit someone a sweater or crochet an afghan? Not anymore! They would be
especially
horrified that people give gift certificates via the Internet—whatever that is—that they think the fact that they spend a few dollars with a couple of clicks is an actual exertion. A great personal sacrifice! Priorities are hugely different in today’s world. I imagine all this technology is useful in many endeavors. But like private education
and small business, as you might have guessed I would have greatly preferred a handmade bookmark to a free meal at some chain establishment posing as a restaurant.

This is just me. Even though I feel as spry as I did, oh, thirty years ago, the fact is that I
am
an elderly lady. It was Christmastime again, everyone was here, and as I have pointed out, our crazy old house was giving us a dose of continuous holiday live theater, a protest from beyond the grave.

The walls were moaning, the pictures were askew, the lights were switching from dim to bright for no good reason at all except that the house itself or the ghosts in it didn’t like the way my daughter, her husband, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren were running their cockeyed show. I was just trying to stay out of their way.

Lying in bed at night, I privately admitted that a lot of the blame was mine. I was plenty vexed with myself for not encouraging Barbara the way Pearl pushed us to create holiday thrills. Here was something else I had been thinking about lately: I missed Pearl more than I missed my mother.

My mother loved the holidays, but she had Pearl to do everything while she saw to her social commitments. Yes, she would begin the season with us and liked to decorate, but as the parties rolled around, we
seldom saw her. Sometimes I thought I hardly knew my mother at all. Losing her at thirteen was so traumatic that I struggled for years to remember the details of her face in my mind, and so photographs of her were that much more precious to me. I took an oath that I would always be available to my children.

Later on, when I married and took over the house, I never had someone like Pearl to work for me. I only had Barbara. I made my share of cupcakes, but I wasn’t involved in activities outside the home. Barbara and Fred were easy enough to care for, and my father, who lived with us until his call to heaven, helped, too. Barbara was a quiet, understanding child who always seemed to find ways to amuse herself.

Now, don’t go telling this, but there was a time when Fred and I worried that Barbara would never marry. It was around that time that the house started to moan. The house and its spirits wanted a guarantee that another family would take my place and Fred’s when Saint Peter knocked on our door.

Poor Barbara! She had unfortunately inherited my grandmother Dora’s pronounced nose and some other quirks and personality traits that would never make her the belle of the ball. Thank all the stars in the sky that there truly is a lid for every pot because when Barbara was about twenty, Cleland Taylor appeared on the scene with his boyish but patrician looks. Cle
land was from a nice family, but was an unspectacular scholar who demonstrated a startling lack of ambition. However, he held a degree in political science from the University of Virginia and a job in a bank here in Charleston, rising to the position of manager—which in those days meant something more than it does today.

Privately, I would worry with Fred that Cleland’s proposal of marriage to Barbara was based on financial security. Not love. He said I was a skeptic. My Fred, ever the diplomat, never missed an opportunity to point out any evidence of affection on Cleland’s part. They finally made it down the aisle with our blessings. After a short honeymoon in San Francisco, they moved in with us, in the time-honored tradition of my family’s history.

On the surface, Barbara’s early years of marriage looked like mine—simple, quiet, orderly. The need for her to engage full-time help was never there, as I cooked and Fred was handy. More importantly, satisfactory talent never appeared on our doorstep. Women like Pearl didn’t exist anymore.

When Barbara and Cleland’s children came along, George then Camille, sibling rivalry soon reared its ugly head. Barbara couldn’t control their arguing, Cleland began to withdraw, and discontent became the order of the day. It was some sour pickle! The house had its next generation of tenants, but it was not
satisfied with the temperature of their waters. So, no surprise to me, the house moaned and rattled, using Thanksgiving until well after New Year’s Day to state its grievances.

By the grace of heaven and herculean struggles, Barbara brought George and Camille to adulthood then marriage. Each marriage has thus far born one grandchild. None of them are much to brag about so far because they have all sucked the life from my daughter. In my family, I love in order of birth and Barbara was there before all of them.

Even now, Barbara is plain-looking, not terribly fashionable, and painfully shy, but she has a heart of gold. Has that been enough to keep a petulant husband in line and to guide two difficult children? No.

It was my fault. I was the mother bird who never taught her hatchling to spread her little gray wings and fly. I had captained a rudderless ship, bound for the Land of Ennui. It was true. It was my mother’s death and Pearl’s shortly afterward that sabotaged my skills to imbue Barbara with what she needed. I knew what a mother was supposed to do up until a daughter was thirteen or so, but after that I was lost.