Bill
Autumn reveals itself in spectacular vistas of woodland trees in great swatches of yellows, reds and purples reflected in mirror lakes, or as panoramas of rolling ridges, the colors competing with the other as far as the eye can see. Nice. If you live in Vermont or Colorado.
Autumn in Boston was called fall. There may have been individual trees that were spectacular and though Hyde Park, where I lived on the border with the town of Milton, did have its rural aspects, it was still Boston, an urban city. Lots of streets. Lots of houses. No place for an autumn view to take hold. Too many telephone wires in the way.
I did love those pictures on the calendar that hung in the kitchen. "Autumn Glory in the Adirondacks" "The blaze of autumn colors arrives in New Hampshire's White Mountains." If I searched a bit and was there at the right time, there were one or two spots I might get a semblance of that kind of calendar view. Along Brush Hill Road, if I stood in just the right spot and looked off to the Blue Hills, I might see the yellows and reds of the maples interspersed with some burnished purples to the beeches. “Fall glory arrives in the Blue Hills of Massachusetts." Maybe on a particularly good year.
Besides, the word autumn did not work in the season litany I knew as a kid. It was summer, fall, winter, spring. That was the order of the seasons. In my head the list played out as a song. I'd say it rhythmically, each word falling nicely before the next. There was no room for such a clumsy word as autumn. Summer, autumn, winter, spring. No, that still doesn’t work.
There is the lion/lamb saying about March but I thought fall had two faces as well, its September face and its December face. While winter at times could seem endless and childhood summer was a time you never wanted to end, fall was more quixotic. It started out linked to the warmth and light of summer. Then, somewhere along the way, it broke those bonds in favor of chumming around with winter as the holidays approached. Fall was about going back to school, raking leaves, the loss of light, the nip in the air, and the approaching holidays.
Fall could start hot but a hot day in September or a mild Indian summer day in October wasn’t the same as a hot day in July. A summer’s day was full of light. Fall had its own kind of light, bereft of true heat, leaner, and sadder. Summer trees were lush and full, capable of taking a summer breeze and deepening it to a sound that recalled all the delights and pleasures of summer’s long ago. The trees of fall did have moments of colorful hysteria but a wind through a fall canopy made a sort of crackling sound as stems unhooked from branches sending leaves twisting and turning down to the ground. Those winds denoted a shift from the balm of summer to the chill of winter.
Just as January and February were winter, May was spring, July and August were summer, fall was October. All the other months seemed to be time just coming and going.
By October you’re well into the new school year. The characteristics of the light have changed. Walking home from school in the afternoon the sun isn’t where it was in July. I miss its height. The chill is back at night. If the leaves haven't started to change yet, you get the distinct impression they’re ready to. Daylight Saving Time abruptly changes to Standard Time in October. Another important hour of light has been chopped out the day. By October you know fall is a peculiar season. Its starting out summer-like is not going to fool anyone. In October its true colors are revealed. Still, you have to give the season credit. It’s slide into winter is always cushioned by ending with Christmas. Good one, that.
Studying geography in school I learned not only about the seasons but also about zones. I felt bad for the kids who lived in the Frigid Zone. Summer there lasted mere weeks. Kids in the Torrid Zone never had to worry about the cold; it was always summer. Still, I preferred living in the Temperate Zone. Having seasons gave me a sense of the earth tilting this way and that as it traveled around the sun, all contributing to Boston's distinct seasons.
Spring and fall always seemed to move faster than winter and summer. Time stands still on a cold January afternoon, the trees bare, the sun weak, snow piled all around. But in March, early buds begin to appear watered by April showers, bursting into May flowers. A new set of leaves appears on the trees filtering the sunlight in hues of pale green. By summer the leaves on the trees are so lush I am lucky to see the sky. The shade they bring is a gift. In October amidst the collective glory of color there is a moment, maybe when I am sleeping, when the leaves come to the realization that it is time to go. One of the loneliest moments in winter comes when on a traipse through the snow in my back woods I come across a tree on which there are a few remaining dry brown leaves fluttering in the cold wind. Now deep in winter, even fall is a distant memory.
The seasonal transitions weren't just apparent in nature. In winter I wore a heavy jacket and gloves and even though it wasn't a cool look in junior high, a hat over my ears, and boots. You began to shed the clothes as spring gained strength. By summer you wanted as few clothes as possible. In fall, the summer winter hybrid, wearing a jacket to school in the morning often meant carrying the jacket home in the afternoon. The most obvious transition in the fall wasn't the turning of the leaves but the falling of the leaves. The critical tipping point was the day when there were more leaves on the ground than in the trees. There were leaves where there usually weren't any. In the gutters of houses. In the gutters along the street.
I always loved kicking the leaves in the gutters especially when they were dry and fragile. Down Fairmount Avenue on the way to school you could kick leaves almost the whole block, until the hill. Kick after kick would toss bits and pieces of dry leaves almost up over your head. The downside was that in school I’d be pulling bits of leaves out of a shirt pocket and a pants cuff. And my hair.
At some point late in October fallen leaves had hidden the grass in our backyard, and had covered the patio, the front walkway, and part of the driveway. It was time to rake.
There seemed to be one weekend toward the end of the month when, as if on cue, all the neighbors were out raking leaves. Some stuffed them in barrels or bags and took them away in their cars maybe to scatter in an empty field. Others raked them onto blankets, dragging them to that single giant pile in the middle of their yard. Others pushed them out onto the street where they would settle into the gutters or blow back into other people’s yards. It was a quiet process. There were no leaf blowers then.
It wasn’t, though, a clean process. If the leaves were dry enough my father would set them on fire. There were very few burning restrictions then. Fill the air with smoke was the prevailing consideration. We would make several small piles and light them up. One of my friend’s father would make a thin trail of leaves, light one end and with a rake add more leaves as the trail burned from one end to the other. However you did it, the idea was to burn all the leaves, leaving only a small pile of ash which would then be raked back over the lawn where it would disappear.
For a few hours the afternoon leaf raking took on a festive air. A big pile of leaves in someone’s yard would attract a group of kids. Running and leaping into the pile was a bit like running and leaping into a lake. It was risky. Leaves often had sticks pointing up at you. Sometimes they were wetter than you had thought. And often there’d be shrieks and shouts as you landed on some kid hidden in the pile. Running through the smoke was another activity that could end up costing you. Once the wind shifted just as I ran into a wall of smoke. For a few moments I was running in a white haze, eyes stinging. A few kids would get a lungful of smoke. All you could was wait for them to cough it out. The next day the remnants of smoke hung in the trees, lay curled up in someone's cellar stairs, and smelled not fragrant and crisp, but acrid and harsh. Still the fires of fall was a common occurrence for years as I was growing up.
Once the leaves went where they go, bagged, out into the street, left to decompose, up in smoke, there wasn't much left between the end of fall and the beginning of winter. Chilly mornings. Overcast afternoons. Cold nights. The false hope of a day or two of Indian Summer.
April is not the cruelest month. It’s November. I began to understand how seasonal changes could effect a person emotionally. The underlying mania and depression they can engender became apparent to me by the time I turned thirteen. We weren’t aware of SAD then but there was that Saturday in early November when my family and I had driven to my uncle’s house in New Hampshire. On the way back we stopped at a roadside farm stand where my father bought a large basket of apples. Late the next afternoon, I’m in my back yard thinking about what I’m doing in school tomorrow. The woods behind my house are beginning to lose the light. The sun has just set turning the trees above the house to silhouettes. That’s when I notice the basket of apples on the patio.
I pause a moment realizing there is something different in how I feel. Sadness. It isn’t a new feeling. But there didn’t seem to be any particular reason for it right then. I’m doing okay. My young life is good. But as I stand there in my yard in those last few minutes of dusk I see those apples differently. Months ago, when the light was different and the warmth was ahead of us, they were apple buds on trees, growing, ripening, then picked, sorted, stored, sold, now on our patio, soon to be eaten. Another cycle coming to an end. Another season slowly fading. I look around. The woods are dark, indistinct. A light goes on in our neighbor’s kitchen. If I knew the word then, melancholy would have best described my feelings that evening. The seasonal changes I looked forward to just a year or two ago have begun to show me another side.
By November summer has completely disappeared over the horizon. The weather is damp now, chilly. There’s more rain. Cold rain. Long dull storms that begin early in the afternoon, the rain still coming down when I leave school. I don’t use an umbrella so going through Cleary Square I tried to move from awning to store overhang until I got to the railroad bridge. Then it was a matter of putting my head down, tucking my books under my jacket and plodding along home. Looking out the windows of a school classroom on a day I expect rain, I am surprised to see the first snowflakes drifting down instead. Much better than rain. There’s another quick burst of snow on the way home from school that afternoon.
Those snow squalls could be fun to be in. After school, walking up to a friend’s, I liked that the front of my jacket was turning white. I kept an eye on the sidewalk and streets noting where snow began to stick, cold spots, and where it melted, warm spots. This was more vital when I was out in a squall on my bike. Stay away from the cold spots. On a bike, riding into the snow was tough on the eyes making me realize snow was ice before it became water. Flakes that got down my neck surprised me with how cold they were as they melted to flecks of cold water. Walking through snow showers with my back to the wind was much better. I’d watch the snow blow past me, eddy in small circles as it found space in front of me to whirl about carelessly before racing along the sidewalk looking for one of those cold patches. I’d turn for a moment to face the full force of the wind-driven snow knowing all I had to do was turn back around to be protected again. Up Milton Avenue I would walk, the snow coming around me. I’m just another obstacle from cloud to street. If it were particularly windy and I only had a light jacket on, I began to dread making the turn down Prospect Street at the top of the hill. Then the wind, and the snow, would be back in my face. I might break into a run, or crank faster on my bike. Or pause under the canopy of one of the elms, it’s few vagrant leaves offering some small protection. Often by the time I got to me house the flurry had petered out. The snow on my hair turned to a dribble or two of cold water running down a cheek. More serious snow was in the future but for the moment I liked the novelty of these brief outbursts from the unchanging gray sky above.
Aside from snow squalls, the coming winter also made itself known through frost. I wake up to it on the window panes. If it’s thin enough I can use the heat from my fingers to trace my initials on the glass. Outside, what’s left of fall leaves tucked around the trees in the woods may be coated with frost. Or it’s on the grass. By noon it’s gone.
Gray is the color of November. The light takes on a drab quality. The blues and greens have subsided. The color of the sky most days is described as leaden, without distinction. A chance of rain is the standard weather forecast. Then November surprises you. That surprise is fog.
Fog can show up anytime of the year. Warm moist air is cooled so that some of the water droplets precipitate out and hang in the air. It’s a cloud on the ground. Lots of fog on the Boston coast and down along the Cape early on summer mornings before the day heats up and the fog “burns” off. I lived on top of Fairmount Hill. Just that little bit of elevation would allow for even thicker fog than that which developed at sea level.
One evening in November I am taking the barrels out. I’d lift one from the patio in back, carry it along the driveway and place it on the sidewalk by the big maple. On the patio, light is shining through the kitchen window and along the driveway there is light from the back porch, so it’s not until I get out to the street, drop off a barrel and start to go back for the second one that I notice I can barely see the house. There’s a light on in the living room but through the window it shines like the lowest wattage bulb ever. Then I look down out street. It’s
essentially disappeared. Along with the house across the street along with all the houses up the street. Around me there is a growing white mist.
I take out the second barrel and then go in the cellar for a flashlight. I walk down toward Fairmount Avenue with the flashlight pointed downward toward my feet. Shining it in front of me just reflects the light back at me. I feel like I am in a small enclosed space shrouded in white vapor. I guess I am.
Halfway between the last two houses at the end of the street I shut the flashlight off. Hanging by my side the flashlight and the hand that is holding it disappear. I bring my hand up and hold it an inch from my face then slowly move it to arm’s length. It disappears again. I can not see my hand in front of my face. The fog has obscured my very being. This is great.
I realize I couldn’t hear, or see, a car if it came toward me so I snap the flashlight back on and move carefully toward the sidewalk. I move up against one of the big maples and turn the flashlight off again.
It is very quiet. The silent swirl of the fog around me is all I hear. I am in my own tiny space. The trunk of the tree, the front of my jacket, is all that is visible. Since that is all I can see, that is all there is. Then someone opens the back door of the house I am nearest. The inner light floods out creating a fog shadow, a dark rectangle of the door imprinted on the surrounding fog. It’s a passage to a darker place. The door shuts. The fog envelops me again.
I snap on the flashlight and put my hand in the beam to create a fog shadow of my own. The shadow isn’t crisp and precise like a shadow in summer. This shadow fights to present itself, the edges around my fingers vague, its center obscured by darker fog. It’s eerie. I spin the light of the flashlight up into the bare branches of the tree. The shadows I create form triplicate images of the branches, shadowing other branches, giving the tree a brief phantom life of its own. It would be great, I think, to have a huge powerful search light. That would make incredible fog shadows.
Fog has another quality, a penetrating dampness. I’m only dressed to bring out the barrels. Now I’m getting chilly. I walk back to the bright safety of my driveway and the warmth of my house. Later, before I go to bed, I look out from the attic window down to the street. The fog has dissipated a bit. I can just make out the streetlight on the corner. Is that someone underneath the streetlight? A kid like me exploring this odd world of mist and spooky shadows or is it something more sinister, a fog shadow come to life. I close the curtain, climb into bed to snuggle into the less complicated darkness of my blankets.
By November it’s a long way to spring. The saving grace. The holidays.
To me the holidays began with Halloween. But unlike today, candy and Halloween costumes to buy didn’t show up in stores until early October. Christmas cards and store Christmas decorations didn’t show up in stores until after Halloween. Turkeys weren’t in grocery stores until a week before Thanksgiving. Shopping for the holidays didn’t get ahead of the holidays themselves. It was seasonal in the best sense. One holiday ended before preparation for the next one began.
Whereas the success of Thanksgiving and Christmas was dependent on my parents’ enthusiasm and efforts, the success of Halloween was entirely up to me. Thanksgiving was based on my parents’ family traditions, the lead up to Christmas was riding that surge of building excitement with the knowledge that it could all end in disappointment Christmas morning. Halloween was a singular night. I was on my own, me and my friends. The role of an adult was unique to that night. To give kids candy and then leave us alone. Halloween was about freedom in the dark.
My first memories of Halloween were as a kid in Jamaica Plain. I lived there until I was eight. These memories of Halloween are likely from when I was seven. Halloween 1952. I vaguely recall being with my ten year-old brother and his friends. He must have loved me tagging along! The rumor then, and there were always rumors and stories and half-truths and urban legends associated with Halloween, was the old man on the top floor of that house on Dalrymple Street would drop a dead rat into your bag instead of the expected treats. My brother did little to assuage my fears. At every stop I imagined the worse. I stopped at every street light to peer into the bottom of my bag, just a paper grocery sack, hoping I would see only candy. Of course, that's all I ever did see. The sad thing is that it was very likely that old man on the top floor would loved to have had kids at his door, adding to their sugary treasures, just enjoying the brief moments of contact.
I was older for the Halloweens in Hyde Park. I moved there at the age of eight and essential left when I went off to college at seventeen. What I liked most about Halloween is that it was about the pleasures of being a kid, having a recognized permission to do all the things I would normally not do. Be out at night in the dark. Ring people's doorbells (and not run away). Instead friendly adults, for the most part, would appear and give you treats. You're standing at their door dressed in a costume, usually homemade, with a group of kids also in costume. Yeah, the whole thing is a bit odd.
In Hyde Park, even that first Halloween in 1953 when I was eight, no adult guided me around. I went out with several friends and my little brother. I'm sure I was given limits, "Stay within these blocks. Be careful of cars. Don't leave your friends." All reasonable without any dampening of the palpable excitement of being out at night, going from house to house, collecting free candy. Trick or Treat!
No question, the best years for me trick or treating were the junior high years, ages eleven to thirteen. Young enough still to be enchanted by the concept of Halloween, old enough to be energized with the fact I am in charge of myself the next few hours. Halloween was a time to celebrate being a kid. The night before and the night after, these same streets are empty and dark, only a few adults out, most front lights off. Tonight the streets are full of kids. It’s six thirty. Let Halloween begin.
I was never much for costumes. Some mothers and fathers had the skill and the time to transform their kids into dark demons, ethereal angels, a clown or a princess. My standard costume during those junior high years was an old heavy coat of my father’s that trailed to the ground, on my head a crumpled man's hat. I'd darken my face with charcoal smudges from a singed cork. That was my traditional “old man” costume.
I'd leave my house about six-thirty, a paper shopping bag in my hand. Not wanting to be recognized, I'd walk to my immediate
neighbor's house where my strategy was to hide in the back among a pack of younger kids thrusting my bag among theirs and withdrawing it when I heard the quiet thump of candy tossed in.
Then I'd head up to Warren Ave. to meet up with a couple of friends. Boys together on Halloween could be destructive. The traditional Halloween prank was to soap somebody's windows. If somebody had left out trash barrels or lawn furniture, they could expect to find them tipped over the next morning or even thrown in the bushes, but I never saw the point in any of that. I liked being out in the dark. I didn’t need any more thrill than that. Besides I didn't take Halloween very seriously. By eighth grade I knew I was too old for it anyway. Still the freedom the darkness provided, the camaraderie of my friends and the lure of free candy was too much to ignore.
This little gang of mine had a route. From Warren we'd turn down Summit Street toward the intersection of Milton Ave. At seven o'clock on a Halloween night this was a scene like no other. There were kids all over. Some up on stairs and porches, groups on the sidewalks and crossing the street. Some poking about in their candy bag for something to eat. This was what was so exciting about Halloween. Normally empty and dark tonight the street is alive with light and movement, the arc of a flashlight, shouts and laughter. Ghosts and cowboys, a queen or two. There's the devil. The majority of the costumes homemade and traditional. Not a spiderman or Ninja turtle in sight.
Mostly my friends and I would follow a group of kids up to a door, the flood of indoor yellow light spilling out onto the stairs, an adult good naturedly dropping something into the extended bags. Some adults would like to talk. "Who are you supposed to be tonight?" Sometimes to me, "Aren't you a little old for this?" There weren’t many parents escorting their kids, the few that were waited on the sidewalk for their angels or pirates to walk back to them without tripping due to an ill-fitting mask or a princess gown that dragged on the ground. After a while I noticed most of the kids had taken off their masks and dropped them into their goodie bags. Now they can finally see what they are doing.
On Summit Street the houses are plentiful and close together. It could become a bit of a frenzy with some of the older kids jumping off someone’s front stairs to go tearing across the lawn to the next house. During this peak hour homeowners never left their front doors. I am much more relaxed about getting candy. My bag is already getting heavy. I take stock. Way too many apples. Too few chocolate bars. I wouldn't have the whole picture until I got home.
Once we turn up Milton Ave, the houses are fewer and farther apart. Less kids up here. Fewer houses with any welcoming lights on. On a moonless Halloween it would be dark under the trees. Best was a Halloween with a full moon. To us not a Harvest moon but a Witches' moon. This is what I most liked about this night. The atmosphere created by the moon shadows as we walked under the trees, happily talking or trying to spook each other out. “Wait. I’m not kidding, there something weird moving over by the trees.” “Bobby, did you see that over there. No, I’m serious. It’s something big AND IT’S GOT A BLOODY AX!” There was just enough ambiguity to warrant some suspicion among the more gullible of my friends.
We are only up on Milton to get to our goal for the night, Howard Johnson's house. Howard Johnson owned the restaurant chain that bore his name. There was one a little way from us up on route 138 in Canton. It and all the restaurants were distinguished by the cupolas, the weathervanes and orange roofs. Mostly we knew about Howard Johnson’s because it was the restaurant that sold “28 flavors of ice cream” which was the company’s trademark. His house was set back from the street behind a wide sloping lawn. The first few Halloweens I was expecting a lot from this stop. After all this this is Howard Johnson's house! Kids would tell me how Howard Johnson himself would come to the door and load up your bag with candy and chocolates, hot dogs, even fried calms. Why did I believe any of this stuff? Maybe because it was just ridiculous enough. Besides let me repeat. This was Howard Johnson’s house.
Of course it wasn't good old Howard that opened the door, not even Simple Simon the Pieman, but household help. As for treats, the same as any other place, a single candy bar or a few pieces of wrapped fudge. As a matter of public relations, just a coupon for a free ice cream cone would have burnished the reputation of a Halloween stop at Howard Johnson’s. As it was, a long walk for very little.
It's getting late. We walk back up Milton Ave to Summit. The rowdier kids are supposed to be out now. If they exist. I've heard stories of older kids grabbing a younger kid's candy bag, dumping the contents on the street, taking a few things and then jumping up and down on all the rest of it. Of course the only person I ever heard something like that happening to was from a friend who said, "Yeah. My cousin in Ohio had a friend who said it happened to his cousins little brother.” Good enough for me.
There may have been tough kids wandering about but we never saw any. We did spot some mischief as we walked. "Look at that car. Someone soaped the windows." Or a tree might have a few runs of toilet paper hanging down. To pull such pranks, I thought, you'd have to carry around soap and toilet paper. I had enough things to carry around.
As we walk back along Summit the atmosphere has changed. The little kids are gone. Most porch lights are off. It’s time for us to get a little rowdy. There’s a barrel that is still standing upright. But its empty and made of plastic so what is the point. Paul grabs my old man’s hat and tries to sail it into the top of the barrel. Yeah, watch out. We’re a band of delinquents.
We stop under a streetlight to rummage through our bags for something to eat. Trading commences as I try to get rid of anything that has peanut butter or toffee in it. I look around at the quiet streets. Overhead the galleon moon sails through the clouds. I am with my friends. This is the best moment of Halloween.
Friends start to drop off, down this street or that, to go home. I walk the last bit alone. At the top of Prospect I just begin to notice that it’s getting chilly. On one side is an iron fence. The dark of the lawn behind it is mottled with moon shadows. Or are they something else? I walk a little faster. I pause a few moments at my driveway, think about the last few hours, a quiet sheen of fading moonlight on my face as the night moves to the first of November.
Earlier this Halloween afternoon I was sitting at my kitchen table with several bags of candy around me and a stack of napkins in front of me. Unfolding a napkin I'd drop a couple of candy corn, couple of Hershey kisses, a circus peanut, whatever my mother had bought for Halloween. Most of the candy was basically sugar and food coloring and this being 1958, most of it unwrapped. I’d fold up the napkin and then twist it before dropping it into the bag beside me. Our Halloween treats were ready.
As I sit at that same table Halloween night, I reverse the process. I dump out my stuff. Apples, the odd orange, stuffed tied in napkins, and candy just tossed in the bag. Lots of candy corn. I hated candy corn. Sometimes a bag of M&Ms or a Hershey bar. Mostly what we called penny candy then. It was exciting for a day or two. All this candy. Then I would lose interest. You can only eat so much candy. It became too much of a good thing.
A family story sums up the quirkiness of Halloween. It's about ten at night, 1957 or 1958. We're all back in. Upstairs. My mother is up there too. She has just washed her hair. It's frizzy. For some reason she has her head outside the window on my older brother's side of the room. A couple of guys are walking up the street. Looking for a window to soap? One of them points to my mother. "Look, a witch." My mother is not amused. "Fresh kids,” she says. My older brother can not stop laughing. Hysterically. My mother is not amused by that either. I remember thinking of the audacity of those kids. Saying to my mother what we would never say, or if we did, with consequences. Still, it’s Halloween and it was funny.
Shortly after Halloween the Sears Christmas catalogue showed up in the mail, one with page after page of toys. This was special. A catalogue that normally featured clothes, tools and appliances, adult things, now featured toys and games and model cars and trucks. I'd sit down with it, not just to see what I liked, but also to pump myself up for Christmas. With Halloween over and the advent of colder weather and shorter days, Christmas was no longer next year, but just around the corner.
I skipped the dolls and doll clothes to get to what I liked, the multi-piece sets. Castles, western forts, a safari camp. I liked the unique details. Horses with saddles, wagons, soldiers and Indians, campfires, a clump of rocks to hide behind, cross bows and lances, a moveable drawbridge, flags for the fort, banners for the castle, tents for the safari camp. Lots of little pieces you could move around to suit your own interpretive fantasies. (And a lot of pieces to get lost.) Just looking at the pictures gave my imagination free rein regardless of whether or not I actually received a castle or fort for Christmas.
I had to rein in my enthusiasm though. There was another holiday to be observed before Christmas. I liked the fact Thanksgiving was a day holiday and not a date holiday like all the others. Thanksgiving was always on a Thursday, no matter the date. Christmas could be any day of the week. I liked the stability of Thanksgiving.
The Wednesday before was half a day in school. Maybe we started with some English or geography, but by mid-morning the rules were relaxed. You could walk around the room, talk with your friends. Sometimes there'd be a little party. Someone would bring in a cake or some doughnuts. Juice or soda. Maybe even some left over Halloween candy. School as it should be.
Thanksgiving at my house was about the traditions my parents experienced as kids. My father would talk about the work involved in preparing a turkey when he was little. The birds were purchased with heads, legs, and feathers still attached. Innards had to be removed, the heart, liver and kidney saved to slowly simmer for numerous hours. Feathers were plucked. My father remembered doing this. The neck was saved to be boiled. Our turkeys were bought somewhat processed. Still there was a lot of work. Stuffing was prepared using hard crackers as a base. With the fragrant moisture coming from the pan of sautéing celery and onion and the aromatic smell of the Bell's poultry seasoning, the house began to take on the familiar aromas of Thanksgiving morning
The turkey was just one aspect of the preparation. Potatoes had to be peeled, sweet potatoes prepared, squash cut, onions made ready for boiling. All of it done by hand. I didn’t do any of this work but I did like to watch amazed how it all came together as a Thanksgiving dinner. Then there were the needles.
Though modern supermarkets offer minimally processed turkeys, most still have a plastic clip that holds the stuffing in the bird’s cavity. My father had several trussing needles which accomplished the same task. It’s likely the needles were his father’s and maybe they went back farther than that. Using a piece of cotton kitchen twine, he’d thread a needle and then sew up the cavity of the stuffed bird. Sometimes I’d stand nearby and watch as he deftly maneuvered the needle in and out. The final step was to tie together the birds legs. In it would go to a preheated oven. It was cooked very slowly. Every once in a while the oven door would be opened to bast the turkey. It afforded me the opportunity to judge the cook time for myself as the turkey transformed from pasty white to crackling brown. Of course, every time the oven door was open the singular aroma of Thanksgiving day would infuse the house. It was difficult to wait to eat.
To pass the time before dinner we would munch on candy and treats placed about the living room. My sister would fill dates with walnuts, some thing she said she used to do as a little girl at her grandparent’s house. My father too would emulate the atmosphere of his childhood Thanksgivings when his house would take on a special festive atmosphere. My mother did not necessarily approve of the all the candy put out on Thanksgiving morning. “This will just spoil your dinner,” she tells us. Hard candy was in one dish; there was a saucer of ribbon candy over by the window; maybe some chocolate. With the possible exception of Christmas, having candy around the house was a rare occurrence. We also had a nut bowl filled with walnuts, almonds, filberts, pecans, and Brazil nuts. The almonds and filberts were easy to break open using the nutcracker. Depending on how they shattered, separating the walnut meat from its shell could either be easy or require more crunching and squeezing of the nut cracker. Same with the pecans. The Brazil nut was the worst. Shaped sort of like a wedge of orange, its shell was particularly hard. It took two hands on the nut cracker to have any chance of cracking it open. Once you did the nut inside stayed attached to the shell. I stuck with the easier ones, almonds and filberts.
To get us away from the candy and to just get us out of the house for a little while, my father would take a drive with us kids over to the Arnold Arboretum, a public park maintained by Harvard University full of plants and trees, flowering bushes, paths, brooks, and small bridges. It was a Thanksgiving tradition to go for a walk there.
We’d park by the main gate. I particularly liked the stand of chestnut trees by a small stream as you went in. Often there were chestnuts on the ground under the tree. The outer wrap had spiny burrs so it was difficult to pick one up to open it. I’d look around for one that had partly split which I would then carefully pry open. Inside would be the smooth brown-skinned chestnut. I had been told you could eat the nuts boiled or steamed. Then someone told me there were poisonous chestnuts called horse chestnuts. That’s all I needed to know. I liked opening them and tossing them around but I never ate one.
The other thing I liked about the Arnold Arboretum was that many of the trees were labelled. I knew what an oak or a maple was but didn’t realize the paperbark maple was from China or that the juniper tree was from Japan. The labels told me that. I began to think everything should be labelled. Dogs could carry a label around their necks identifying not only their breed but if they were likely to bite or not, flowers could display a tiny label on a petal, even poison ivy could carry a large label saying, “Keep away.” I liked the idea but certainly never considered its practicality.
Walking about the arboretum gave me a feeling of calm. It wasn’t nature in an real sense. Nature is chaos, a proliferation of plants and animals striving to live in synch and maintaining a balance but often struggling to survive as each species competes for space and food. At the arboretum, everything had room to grow, space in which to breath, nourishment supplied by expert gardeners. It was unruly nature artificially tamed. Not knowing any better I took the arboretum at face value welcoming the serenity and calm I felt there as an honest reflection of the ideals of peace and bounty inherent in Thanksgiving day itself.
Getting back from the arboretum, they’d be a few hours left before dinner at 4. With all that candy about and the nut bowl still half full those few hours could be a problem. “Don’t eat any more candy,” was heard often. There might be a football game on. My older brother would watch. At age 11 or 12, the only thing I knew about a “down” was that it was the opposite of “up.” I might read, play upstairs with my younger brother, or if the weather was appropriate, ride my bike up and down in front of the house. Looking back on it Thanksgiving was an odd day. A Thursday with everyone home spending hours making an enormous dinner that would resonate for days in the form of leftovers, soup and turkey and stuffing sandwiches for school lunch next week.
By the time I was in high school Thanksgiving was a different holiday. Less about family. More about me. Now I am a teenager. I didn’t stay home during the day when the meal was being prepared Not even the candy was enough to keep me in. Let others go to the arboretum; I’d be out on my bike at friends’ houses from late morning until it was time to be home for dinner. At one friend’s I might be sitting up on their kitchen counter sipping an offered soda smelling their turkey as it roasted in the oven. Or I might be outside, a group of us on the corner, some sitting on bikes, some sitting on the curb, planning what we might do on tomorrow’s day off. At another house I might watch as the mother put together some stuffing for the bird, and wondering how anyone could add oysters or sausage or chestnuts (From the arboretum?) to their stuffing. “It was my grandmother’s recipe,” I am told. Outside on the street someone might be tossing a football around. Interesting but odd behavior on a weekday. But it’s not just a Thursday, it’s Thanksgiving.
My family ate later than most. I overstayed my welcome as my friends’ families began to set their tables for dinner. It’s getting late in the afternoon. I need to be home. Pedaling up Milton Avenue toward Prospect Street, I’d be the only vehicle on the street. Not a car driving by. All the cars were parked in the driveways of the houses I was riding by or filling the street in front, guests of the family inside, various uncles and grandparents and friends over for the holiday dinner.
It’s November. The sky is overcast, the air cool, the light beginning to lose its vitality, the trees bare, the leaves having gone to blight or smoke.
Coming in the back door I see the turkey on the counter, the potatoes draining in a colander, the giblets bubbling in the gravy on top of the stove, the aromas rousing my hunger. I sit at my usual place, at the end of the table, my father opposite me on the other end. The turkey is on a platter now. My father’s already sharpened the knives he’ll use to cut off a drumstick, detach the wings and begin slicing portions of white meat from the turkey’s breast.
My plate is piled high. A spoon of cranberry sauce and a couple of olives and I am ready to celebrate the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock in 1620. That happened, right?
One interesting personal fact about Thanksgiving. It’s when I first ate one food together with another. Before age ten my habit was to eat all my potatoes, then all my peas, then all my meat and so on. The food served at Thanksgiving seemed to merge so well on the plate, in look, in texture, in taste, that I began to take a little bit of potato on my fork and then before eating it add a few peas. Not bad. Then I tried some potato mingled with a little stuffing. How come I hadn’t thought of this before. What about cranberry sauce and some dark meat from the turkey leg washed down with cider. I’d become an epicurean.
Over the next hour, the turkey transitions to leftover status, the remains of the mashed potato and squash have gotten cold, the gravy develops a thin skin on top, the cranberry dish is empty, only a few olives left, a few peas bob in the water in the pan on the stove. The table is in its just having eaten phase. Dishes askew, stains on the table cloth, the cider glasses empty. It was a good meal.
In high school I might be out again after dinner, just in time for the end of a dinner at a friend’s. I might get a piece of pie or some kind of heavy duty fruit cake. At my house when I was younger and stayed home after dinner my aunt and uncle might come over, my mother’s sister and her husband. They might sit at the kitchen table with my parents having a cup of tea and some of those Nabisco Famous Assorted cookies which showed up at my house only during the holidays. I’d come in, say hi, scrounge a cookie and then go back to the TV. Those kitchen tea times were another insight to me into the differences between adults and kids. As a ten year-old, sitting around a table talking and drinking tea is something I could never imagine doing, even as an adult. Yet I did get a sense that it seemed comfortable and relaxing. I liked that my parents and relatives were out there. Visits were another aspect of how holidays were different from most other days.
The biggest holiday of the year was next. Christmas. During those few weeks in December everyone worked together, conspired even, in agreeable good humor to maintain the illusion of Christmas, of Santa, of Rudolph, of joy and festivity, even of peace and good will. That’s why my childhood Christmases were exciting; everyone was invested in them.
In medieval Europe Christmas was a winter festival, the time just after the shortest, darkest, bleakest day of the year, the solstice. Will spring ever come again? Let’s have a yule festival to insure that is does, to show joy and hope over the lengthening of the day.
With electric lights and oil heat, I did not have the issues of my Celtic ancestors. At age ten and eleven, I didn’t think Christmas and winter had anything to do with one another. To me winter began on New Year’s Day. Winter was long days in school, having just an hour or two’s light to play in after school. It was snow and a cold wind in your face as I walked over the Neponset River on my way to school. There was a bit of a reprieve on Valentine’s Day, the winter respite but March in Boston brought winter back and kept it going as long as possible.
So as the Druids kept the villages of northern Europe informed of the fall’s long slide into an ever-deepening winter, my friends and I kept each other in a state of excitement and anticipation in that three to four week period between back to school after Thanksgiving and the climax of trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve.
In the mid 50s Christmas promotions did not begin on Labor Day. With few exceptions, the buildup to Christmas began shortly after Thanksgiving. There was no Black Friday shopping frenzy the day after Thanksgiving. To me it seemed like an orderly progression. A large tree would appear by the Municipal Building, a few days later they’d be lights on it. By the second week of the month, there would be a Christmas card or two on the mantle above the fire place in our living room. As the next few weeks went by the mantle would become crowded with cards. As young kids the night would come when we would write our letter to Santa; as older kids we would have to learn to wait to see what might appear under the tree. The last week before Christmas, there might be a Christmas themed episode on Lassie or Big Brother Bob Emery. Dragnet ran a classic holiday themed episode in December 1953 about a kid, his wagon and a missing statue of the baby Jesus.
I noticed the transformation in my own way on my walk back and forth to school. Just before you got to the railroad tracks on my way home there were what I considered the outlier stores, small shops that hadn’t seen much change for years. I wasn’t even sure what some of them sold. One had a sewing machine in the display window, another was a cobblers shop; based on the random merchandise in a few windows, a couple may have been thrift stores. The window displays looked the same year after year. One or two featured more dust and grime than goods. Some Windex and a good scrubbing would have helped.
That’s why in mid-December as I walked by, it was a surprise to see a small Christmas tree in the back corner of one of the windows or a throw of holly by the front glass of another or a couple of plastic candles adding some cheery light to the selection of old shoes and cobbler’s tools in the shoe repair store.
Those drab windows came to life those few weeks around Christmas heightening my own anticipation. I would think that Christmas must be special if even these peripheral shops are dressing up for the holidays.
There was little thought of winter weather during December. Any snow was welcomed, at least by me. Well, not a blizzard. A couple of inches of snow added to the atmosphere, enhanced the Currier and Ives vision of cutting a tree in the stand of woods by the frozen stream, carrying it by sled across a snow-filled meadow toward a tidy house in the distance, snow on its roof, smoke curling from its chimney, soft rouge and azure lights framing its frost-paned windows. Looking at our Christmas tree through the front window blush the snow in the front yard with soft hues, I could for a moment think of my house in that appealing way as well.
Christmas was no longer a pagan holiday. In Boston, an Irish Catholic city, Christmas had rigid religious significance. The manger scene was a fixture in front of many public buildings. Still secularism was beginning to creep in. “Keep Christ in Christmas” was a phrase I heard a lot as a kid as one way the church tried to combat the increased commercialization of Christmas as a holiday. “Ok,” I thought, “as long as I still get toys.”
With a week to go before Christmas Day, this ideal of a total commitment to the holidays was realized. In Boston, there was little conflict over the holiday intersections of church and state. In junior high we’d sing Christmas carols, secular and religious, from little booklets distributed to schools by the Traveller’s Insurance Company. Much of the imagery concerned the adoration of the Christ child. I didn’t know much about that. I liked the song “Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful” because you would sing the phrase “Oh, come let us adore him.” first quietly, them moderately, and then as loud as you could.
I was quite naive in junior high, so phrases like “Round yon virgin, mother and child,” made me wonder why we were allowed even to say the word “virgin” when so much else was heavily repressed. I didn’t know what a virgin was, and why Mary was one, but it did have a faintly sexual connotation. Less controversial was that song about decking the halls with all its Fa La Las, and the open sleigh dashing through the snow. No Christ child or virgins along for that joyous ride. At one of those song fests, our music teacher had a set of sleigh bells. That’s what jingle bells are I realized. As we sang the teacher shook the bells in time. For a few minutes school is fun.
A pivotal moment in these whole progression toward Dec 25th was setting up our tree. Although it was odd having a tree in your house, that’s what made it so special, the uniqueness of it. A tree in your living room proved Christmas was sure to follow.
My father was in charge of assuring the tree would not fall over. My mother was in charge of recovering the boxes of decorations from wherever it was in the house they had spent the previous eleven months. I never knew. The only time I ever saw Christmas ornaments were those few weeks in December.
My father would stand the tree in the corner of the living room close to the window, judge how it would fit based on its size and then carry it down the cellar stairs, like his father did and perhaps his father before him, to gather some scraps of wood and with a few nails make a Christmas tree stand, nail it to the trunk of the tree, carry the tree back upstairs, (with my mother complaining about the trail of dropped needles), and then place it by the window where it would stand perfectly stable ready for decorating.
The first job was to untangle the Christmas lights. Every year they seemed more tangled than the previous one. When we took them off the tree it seemed everyone used care to make sure they went into a bag untangled. Gremlins at work I guess. I’d be holding a string of lights in one corner of the room, someone else would be moving slowly toward another corner unfurling the string as they went. The effort was made more complicated because there was a wooden star attached as part of one of the strings. It once was on the trees my father knew as a child. Once we had the lights in order we’d place an aluminum reflector over each socket and screw a bulb inside.
Starting from the top my father would attach the star and then begin begin to loop the string of bulbs around the tree. I might help move a branch or two or twist a bulb so it would shine outward. Then we’d plug the string into an outlet. Every year the expectation was the tree would light up in soft hues of red and orange and green. Every year there’d be disappointment. None of the bulbs lit.
My father was an electrician so he’d explain about a circuit in series. If any bulb was a dud, none of the bulbs would light. Now began the tedious task of replacing one bulb with another, the trial and error method, to discover which bulb had burnt out. I always liked it if I were the one that replaced the burnt out bulb. As I screwed a new bulb in, suddenly the string lit up. Now it’s Christmas.
Now with the tedious tree standing and bulb changing done, the enjoyable part of decorating began. A lot of our family ornaments were ones that my parents had inherited from when they were kids. We heard a lot about how old they were and consequently how fragile they were. Some were shaped like ice cream cones. I liked putting these on the tree and took particular pains to make sure the little wire hanger was affixed to a branch before I let go. Still every year there were a few decoration casualties. In spite of our best efforts someone always dropped one, littering the rug with tiny shards of colored glass.
I liked seeing my old favorites year after year. Here is the wooden sleigh. I’ll put that right in front. Here is the paper Santa I made in third grade. That will go here with a bulb to light it up. The tree begins to transform from an anomaly that doesn’t belong in a living room to a Christmas tree that represents in the most classic way the holiday season. We’d step back, see where more ornaments are needed, maybe one in the back or by the window. One final step I never wanted to do was hanging the tinsel. I just found it tedious. My tendency would be to take handfuls of it and throw it on the tree. No. It had to be hung individually with most of the strand hanging down to catch the reflection of the lights. Luckily it was my mother’s favorite part so I was generous enough to let her do it.
Those Christmases from age eight to about thirteen were the special ones. I was young enough to welcome many of the myths but old enough to realize everyone was indulging in a happy conspiracy. I was neutral about Santa Claus, neither believing nor disbelieving. It did seem a bit preposterous that one person could deliver all these toys to everyone around the world in one night. But toys were under our tree Christmas morning. I had to have some faith just in case it was Santa.
I suppose there was some of the Celtic past in my head, a Jungian memory scape, that enhanced the atmosphere of Christmas in my mind. Like then, the light in Boston begins to fade by mid-afternoon. It’s dark by 4:45. Even the street lights do little to brighten the darkness of these winter afternoons. It’s cold out as well as it would have been in the vast expanses of northern Europe a thousand years ago. Back then only tents, crude log homes and smoky fires would have mitigated that cold. Inside my house it’s a different world. Warm with an incandescent glow. You can walk around in pajamas. Sometimes my mother would shut the lights off in the living room letting the illumination from the Christmas tree cast soft hues of blue and red into the dark corners.
As a kid it was difficult for me to fall asleep Christmas Eve. No surprise there. Christmas morning was a particularly unique time of the year. Waiting for it to arrive was a particularly unique ordeal. When else did new things appear under a decorated tree in your living room. Toys, books, games. Stuff that a kid would actually like. Underwear and socks, we got those too, did not count.
I’d go up to bed about eight or so, my younger brother in the bed across the room. We talk in the dark, try to guess what we might get, discuss ways we could get to sleep faster. Then it would be quiet. My mother might have already left to go to Midnight Mass with her family. I’m the only one awake, the only kid awake in the world. Every creak is Santa on the roof. Every rustle is a reindeer shaking his head as they wait impatiently to go on to the next house. I didn’t think too much about the logic of it all. I lie on my back, follow the light of a car’s headlights as it passes on the street tracing patterns across the ceiling. I slowly drift off.
My eyes pop open. The usual morning grogginess is absent. I am ready to jump out of bed. But there are rules. At least one parent must be up to call us down. It’s not a rule anyone adheres to. We kids are anxious and excited; my parents are tired from having been out late. The early morning winter sunshine is powerless to heat up the day but I hear the click of the oil burner. It will be warm downstairs.
I look across the room. My brother is sitting up in the bed looking over at me. “Should we go down?” We slowly came down a few stairs until we could peer over the railing. The living room is dark but we can just make out things under the tree that weren’t there last night. Santa, or my parents, never wrap anything. Sometimes there was a label, “To Billy, from Santa” in my mother’s handwriting. It’s these few moments looking down into the living room from the stairs that are the best. There is a delicious sense of mystery now. And no more waiting!
Often my brother and I would run over to the tree without putting any lights on making it even more difficult to determine which present belonged to which kid. Until my parents got up to clarify who got what, what I thought was a gift for me turned out to be for my bother and I had to hand it over. I hated that. But in the half light of early morning it was all excitement and no disappointment. That came later
Over the years there were a number of fun, interesting gifts under our family Christmas tree. Some of them were actually meant for me. One year, 1955 maybe, there were two model cars under the tree. Not tiny. Not Matchbox. A Buick and an Oldsmobile. About 9 inches long with all sorts of detail in the lights, the grille, the tires. One for me, one for my brother. One year I got a rock collection. I spent a good part of that day outside looking for local samples of quartz and feldspar. In Jamaica Plain when I was seven I was given an electric train set. Track, a transformer, a Sante Fe engine and several cars including a caboose that ran on the track. For several succeeding Christmases I’d get accessories to go with the trains. A train crossing sign that actually flashed red. A series of brown plastic telephone poles which I could never get to stand up. A small white house with a red roof that I’d snap together when I set up the trains and unsnap when I put them away. Also some paper billboards advertising cars for the sides of the track so the imaginary passengers on the train could realize there were other forms of transport available to them. Funniest one was a little plastic outhouse with a half moon on the door.
My father wanted us to know how to use our hands to make things so over the years there were wood burning sets, an Erector set, a Van de Graaff generator which threw off bolts of static, even a small steam engine that would burn tiny charcoal pellets to heat water into steam. The Rosemoyne hook and ladder fire track I got one year went to a lot of fires over the years. It’s one of the few toys I kept long into my adulthood sitting on a shelf in a corner of several basements.
My older brother got a number of things that some day would be handed down to me including a Chemcraft chemistry set with dozens of little bottles of chemicals with names like sodium bisulfate and ammonium chloride along with a rack of test tubes and several beakers to mix the chemicals together and maybe blow up the house. He also got a metal castle complete with battlements, a drawbridge and all sorts of figures and objects with which to create mayhem during battles.
I liked Christmas in the living room. It was a warm and cozy place in which to play with your toys as Christmas morning became Christmas day. But the room my father had built in the cellar was finished by 1956 and it was decreed by my mother that’s where Christmas was going to be that year. The tree would come in through the cellar door, be set up in the cellar room and go back out the cellar door. Not a single pine needle would ever litter any upstairs floor. Since it was my mother, of course, that did the cleaning, it was difficult to argue to keep the tree in the living room.
Now I loved the finished room in the cellar as I’ll detail in future blogs. I began to think of that room as my own after a while. But the same reasons I had such a proprietary feeling about it were the very reasons it didn’t work as a room for Christmas. It was in the cellar. There was one little window high up on the wall which let in no natural light. No one outside could see our Christmas tree through that window. The room didn’t have the comfy feeling of our living room which now without the tree in it looked like it did every other day of the year. I’d miss sitting on the rug in the living room. The cellar room floor was ceramic tile. I’d miss the couch. The chairs in the basement were hard plastic. Worst of all, when me and my brothers came down the stairs from the attic, there’d be nothing to see. We’d have another flight of stairs to get down to see what Santa/my parents left for us. Some of the mystery was gone.
So that first cellar room Christmas, 1956, was a disappointment despite coming down Christmas morning to find a J C Higgins bicycle in the corner of the room waiting for me. Thing is, it wasn’t a surprise. A couple of weeks earlier I had just come home from school to have my mother tell me there was something wrong with the bulkhead entrance to the cellar and not to use it. I was in and out of the cellar through that bulkhead all the time. She wouldn’t tell me any particulars so, waiting until she was upstairs, I quietly went out into the back and lifted up one side of the bulkhead. Wedged inside at an angle on the wooden stairs was a large cardboard box. My bike. Startled, I lowered the bulkhead, quickly glanced above me to my mother’s bedroom window which was just above the bulkhead. No one there. I quickly walked back into the house determined to keep Santa’s secret.
I was getting what I had asked for. A bike. No surprise ruined for me. I preferred knowing. The one down side, even though I loved my bike, was as an expensive present, it was all I got that year. Christmas was over fast that morning. Well, maybe I got some underwear. I had to do with enjoying the things my brothers got including my older brother’s transistor radio. The radio, one of the first of its kind, was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It came with an ear plug and cord which did nothing to make the sound any less tinny. Still music played the instant you turned it on, and unlike portable radios which were the size and weight of a lunch box, my brother’s new radio weighed just ounces and could fit inside your shirt pocket. The battery for these innovative radios was a 9 volt which had been developed just to power transistor radios.
By 9 am Christmas morning is over. By now we’ve figured out who got what, and whether we’re disappointed or not. A stuffed turkey dinner was coming later in the day. I’d sit in the corner of the couch in the living room having brought few things up from the cellar room with me to look at or I’d be up upstairs in my room with my brother playing with something that had been under the tree a few hours ago.
If the streets were clear and the weather wasn’t too bad, I’d be outside Christmas Day afternoon. A kid with a new coat, new gloves, and a new hat would whiz by on a new bike. Kathleen next door has a new pair of roller skates. Someone else is shooting off the new cap gun. Play while I can. The chill winter sun begins to fade as early as 3:30.
Sometime in those seven days between Christmas and New Years, winter arrives. The holidays are over. New Year’s Day wasn’t a kid holiday. It’s the day before you went back to school. January could be a long month. In the distance is Valentine’s Day and a week off for Lincoln and Washington’s birthdays.
New Year’s Eve had its moments. Again with the parties and alcohol, there wasn’t much for kids. There were a few gatherings at my house in Hyde Park that I remember. Mostly a living room and kitchen full of relatives and friends of my father’s from work I thought it funny to see some of the adults with tiny party hats perched on their heads. And I did love the party blower, that paper tube flattened and rolled into a coil which when you blew into it unrolled to make a squeaky noise. Couldn’t have been that sanitary although I never considered how many people may have blown into it before I did. I didn’t stay up until midnight so my experiences with things like the party blower happened the next morning when I’d come down to a living room and kitchen not yet cleaned up from the festivities a few hours before. New Year’s Day morning there’d be glasses on the shelf over the fireplace and scattered around the kitchen sink, dishes stacked on the counter, empty bottles, the funny party hat forlorn on the living room couch, several party squeakers on top of the TV, the remains of last night’s party when one year inexplicably became another.
Christmas season can be a time to be contemplative. There were some large houses at the top of Prospect where it connects with Milton Avenue. On one of the vast lawns around those big houses were a number of blue spruces. Early in December as I rode my bike on my way home I’d see that lights had been placed on several of the trees. Every once in a while when it was dark and I happened to be passing, I’d park my bike just off the street and climb over the stone wall to walk over to one of those trees.
I stand by the branches of the tallest tree, the glow of the bulbs, steady and luminous, enhances the calm I feel. It is so quiet. There are no stores, no gifts, no people, no anticipation, no disappointment. Just several trees glowing in the dark. Silent night. All is calm. I look up toward the top of the tree, my gaze guided by the strings of lights that define its dark outline. Its needles click together softly in a light breeze. Above the tree top are more lights, far away, settled deep in the universe. I’ve been told one of those stars is the Christmas star. Wondrous star. Lend thy light. I know these feelings won’t last long but for a moment the world is as it should be, the way I would like it to be. It’s Christmas. Soon a new year begins. Summer, fall, winter, and then spring. With the lights on the tree tinting my face red and green, I look far up into the night sky at the millions of Christmas stars all around me. In that singular moment I am at peace.
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