Tying a Bow Around the Years
December 2023 Issue
Inspirations for Better Living
The calendar says December 1970 something, and I sit at the dining room table of my family’s three-bedroom home in the heart of Watson Addition, single-hole punch in one hand and the front portion of a previous season’s Christmas card in the other. My attention focuses on my delegated task. Charged with punching evenly spaced holes around the perimeter of the card, my tiny hands tackle the job with pride and precision. Based on the geometric attributes of each card, I select greetings from yesteryear for Mom to crochet together to form a colorful, festive box to house fruit, cookies, and candy. Mom’s local chapter of the Stitch and Chatter Club prepares weeks before the Christmas season for their community involvement project of sharing the handmade holiday spirit with the town’s elderly residents.
– Excerpt from Walking Old Roads: A Memoir of Kindness Rediscovered by Tammy Hader
Science tells me the time lapse of a year is longer than a minute. If this is true, then how did so many decades go by in the blink of an eye? The idea of aging enters my thoughts more in December than any other month. Ticking off another Christmas and ushering in the New Year brings the cycle of life front and center as I review the hardships and blessings encountered over the last twelve months. The depth of the past and the fragility of the future are more visible to me this time of year. I see Mom grow frailer with each passing year. She still lives by herself in a cute little 2-bedroom senior apartment, but I help her with a growing list of chores. She needs me to put gas in her car, vacuum her carpet, haul groceries into the house, and carry Christmas tubs out of the storage closet so we can deck the halls for the holiday.
Christmas feels a little different for us each year. People come and go along with the ebb and flow of life’s tide. I notice the marks of repeated use on the decorations we unbox for the season. Once upon a time, Mom and Grandma Maggie orchestrated our Christmas celebrations from tree trimming, to shopping, to cookie baking. We orbited around them in the homes they created for us. Burl Ives sang about Santa, snowmen, and reindeer on the stereo while my brother and me iced homemade sugar cookies and poured fudge into buttered platters. Dad hung lights outside for all to see and gifts circled the base of the artificial tree that was dripping with shiny tinsel and wrapped with a chain of colorful paper rings as it took its dutiful position in front of the living room picture window.
Traditions move on.
Published in the December edition of Inspirations for Better Living.
