The Christmas tree in my mom’s house is covered in the “old ornaments” right now.
This past weekend, barely in time for the holiday, Mom, Boyfriend, and I got together and put the “old” ornaments all over it: painted gourds, first grade craft projects, tiny stockings my mother stitched for my first tree, and so on. It’s a glorious sight—red, green, and glistening silver. There are even the occasional collectible ornaments from my Dad’s brother-in-law who worked for Hallmark for many years.
We listened to Bing Crosby and Dean Martin sing about stars and stockings and silver bells while we covered the tree in nostalgia.
We were peppering my boyfriend with stories. “Oh! Remember the time…” And she or I would be off, reminding one another, except, really telling him, about the time we made ornaments in Care Bear soap molds and look how dark the varnish has become over the years! Or the way Dad always cut us a cedar for our tree—a cedar, always—and that cedar and peppermint and orange was the smell of Christmas to me. Or the time that my sister woke up before everyone on Christmas morning and opened every single present, depriving me of the joy of doing so. Oh! Do you remember how we had to… how we used to… when we were…
We told these stories, and my boyfriend smiled a listening-smile, and suffered being the target of our compulsion to remember together. To share.
Because I have no children to pass these tales on to. Although I entertained and considered the idea in my early twenties, it was not to be. At a fairly early age, perhaps nine or ten, I had absorbed the belief that my future would consist of taking care of my disabled sister someday. About the time I realized my parents wouldn’t always be able to care for her, I accepted the burden for myself. And the idea of having her and kids of my own sounded insurmountable.
When she passed away at fifteen, my freshman year of college, I had my life given back to me—all possibilities and opportunities and lack of direction.
My family had always been fiercely knitted with overprotection. We kept things tight—turned inwards from poverty, country isolation and stubborn independence, and the deepest of needs to keep my sister safe and happy.
I think when she passed, the whole scarf began to unravel. When Dad died eight years after that, I watched as the pattern began to disappear entirely.
But here we were, knitting the frayed ends back together. I could see the weft and weave of us again.
Mom and I shared our stories that night with a sort of fierceness in our small remaining family, reminding ourselves that yes, we were once larger, with my Dad and my sister, and we had traditions and… joy?
This was the happiest I had seen my Mom at Christmas that I could recall since my sister had passed. I loved it, basking in the glow of memories that felt truly joyful again.
“Do you remember this?” Mom asked, pulling The Letter out of the toe of my childhood stocking.
I rolled my eyes, then glanced at my boyfriend. Oh no. She meant for him to read it.
It was a letter “To: Santa,” folded into an pre-made child’s envelope the size of, perhaps three postage stamps. The Letter is penned in childish, hopeful script filling a half sheet of thin paper in the bleeding, cheap ink I can still recognize as RoseArt markers (the poor kid’s answer to Crayola). The letter reads, quite formally:
Dear Mr. Santa,I have not been perfet just good. I want the Barbie Ice Cream Shop or Teen sweet heart Skipper. Love Cassie
I found it two years ago when Mom and I first put the stockings back up. By my mother’s calculations, I was about six when I wrote this embarrassingly formal, appropriately misspelled, and compulsively honest little missive.
When I found it and realized I had not been “perfet” I laughed until I cried at the silliness of it. But seeing my mother pass it to Boyfriend, I felt… tender. Raw. Embarrassed.
He read it with the appropriate tone, missing completely the misspelling (don’t worry: it was pointed out to him).
He loved it. He noted that of course a young Cassie had not even tried to lie to “Mr. Santa” about my goodness, in hopes of scoring a better present.
We continued to decorate the tree, feeling the evening growing later. Boyfriend still tires more easily now, since his heart attack. So, soon, Mom almost haltingly, unwillingly, gathered up the remaining decorations to clear the floor and pronounce the tree complete.
As she folded the two remaining stockings—Sister’s and Dad’s—she muttered, “Oh this is in the wrong—” and then I heard her stop.
She withdrew a different tiny letter from my sister’s stocking. This one was addressed “To: Santa Claus.”
She scanned it and passed it to me, shading her eyes.
Dear Santa,
Sister has not told me what she wants anything will be fine. Love, Cassie & Sister
At three or four, my disabled sister was almost entirely nonverbal. She was still primarily expressing affection to me by pinching me until I yelled (a favorite game). She smiled, laughed, could toddle around a bit, having just gained her way on two feet, instead of pushing herself around by leaning on the top of her head like a tripod and scooting until she was bald on top like an old man. She was clever and onery, with eyes that gleamed—sometimes innocent as an angel, other times, more reminiscent of a troublesome crow. She annoyed six-year-old me fiercely, following me around, breaking my toys, tearing pages from my books, and sticking her fingers into my desserts.
And I had, in secret, written her letter to Santa for her, because I did not want her to be forgotten.
I had no idea that this letter existed. I couldn’t remember writing it. I cried. How I cried.
I had known I was not a perfet sister. But apparently, I was good.
...I cried, too. Perfet. Simply perfet.
Merry Christmas.