Motherlode
Sommerfeld: What Christmas taught me about my mother
December 13, 2010
Lorraine Sommerfeld
My mother kept a black book where she noted every year what she got everyone for Christmas. She’d write the year at the top of a fresh page and keep track all year of what she purchased. That way she didn’t repeat gifts, and she could also keep things even. Kids compare present hauls, because as much as you want to think the spirit of the season will lead to love and goodwill, it mostly leads to counting and whining.
I was 8 the year I discovered that book. I peeked once in a while to see how the shopping was coming along. I wanted a rock polisher I’d seen on TV. I dropped large hints and started collecting rocks to polish long before the snow flew. One day I opened the book and saw “tape recorder” next to my name. I was aghast. You couldn’t polish rocks and make fine jewellery with a tape recorder.
In a snit, I amped up my complaining. On Christmas morning, my younger sister got a tape recorder and I got a rock polisher. Within three days the rock polisher was gone. The process required a heavy wheel grinding rocks — 24 hours a day. It sounded like a gravel truck driving through the house, and my father threatened to throw it out the window. I didn’t become a famous jewellery maker, and I borrowed my sister’s tape recorder over and over for school work. I learned a lot about my mother that year, and about myself. I never looked in the book again.
Every year my mother would drape the dining room table with her special red cloth, and then overlay it with a white lace one. I thought this was beyond beautiful. The red would drop halfway to the floor, and my father would buy a huge poinsettia to go in the glass bowl shaped like a swan. We weren’t allowed to touch that bowl; the long, graceful neck could snap just like that, so we would just stare at it. We’d run through the room playing and the table would wiggle. You could hear my mother’s sharp intake of breath as the swan chattered against its glass platter.
Not only did this tablecloth arrangement signal Christmas, it also signalled a whole month when I could hide under the skirts of the table and do what little kids do best: eavesdrop. Lying on top of the chairs, which formed a cozy upper bunk, I was well hidden from my parents and their guests in the adjacent living room. A little girl can sneak into many places, and if she keeps very, very still, she can overhear many, many secrets.
Sneaking to my perch in the darkened room, I was never caught. I would listen to boring talk of the good old days, which apparently had been before any of them had any of us. It wasn’t hard to recognize the alcohol releasing the inhibitions of some, and I’d hear my father get argumentative just before he’d nod off in his chair.
The biggest problem was timing my escape so as not to set the glass swan clattering. With wool leotards twisting underneath your best Christmas dress, this was no small matter. One year I mistimed, trapped when guests had left in a swirl and my father had already headed up. I watched my mom lean down to unplug the tree and pause over an ornament that had been her mother’s. I watched her cry, not understanding that I was learning more about my mother from yet another unseen side.
I would never fully understand until I was holding the same ornament in my own hand.
Lorraine Sommerfeld appears Mondays in Living and Saturdays in Wheels. Reach her at www.lorraineonline.ca