Christmas on Mason Lewis Road

Christmas on Mason Lewis Road

I was sitting in my kitchen a few nights ago. It was disturbingly quiet, which is rare for most of us that have a family. The house was void of all light except for the twinkling Christmas lights on my tree and the new addition of curtain lights that I had proudly displayed a few weeks prior. A feeling struck me very deeply, like it always does during the holidays. I could smell the Christmas cookies that my grandmother made for us every year and I could feel the heat coming off the old stove that my grandfather always had blasted at what seemed like 150 degrees. I could, in the dead of the quiet, hear my aunts and uncles discussing the gifts that they had purchased for my grandparents. I could hear the singing of four cousins, one of those being my own tiny voice, as they planned their annual Christmas play to perform for the family. A play that would be practiced as if it were a Broadway performance, yet would never be acted out in that tiny living room that belonged to my grandparents because of distractions. We were too busy searching for my grandmother’s cookies that she would hide from us after we had eaten our designated two. According to her, they were much too hard to make, and she couldn’t allow them to be squandered away within minutes. They had to be savored over a few weeks. We had to find the chocolate fudge that she would hide from us in hopes of having some for herself at the end of this hectic evening and the country ham was absolutely off limits, but not if we could help it. The only phone that rang was the one on her kitchen wall that had a long cord attached to it that would coil up on her kitchen counter. After waiting for what seemed like the longest two hours of our lives, the announcement would be made. It’s time to open the gifts! All the adults would crowd and cram themselves onto the couch and a few dining room chairs that had been pulled into the living room. The cousins and I would all find a spot in the floor and wait in anticipation. For the life of me I can’t understand how we all fit in that tiny room with my grandfather’s stove blasting that blistering heat into our faces, but we didn’t seem to notice, nor did anyone seem to mind. My grandmother and grandfather would sit front and center of that room, each in a dining room chair. They were the first to open their gifts and never was there a complaint from a child. We held a respect for them that wasn’t discussed and there was not a drop of envy. We loved watching them open those gifts as much as we loved opening our own. I can still smell that little tiny house and if I try really hard, I can grab hold of the feeling that I had when I was in it. Since the passing of my grandparents, I have held the family dinners at my home in hopes that the family could somehow grab that feeling back. I know now that it cannot be recreated. You cannot recreate a feeling. You cannot recreate a moment. I still make those same cookies that my grandmother made for us and this year I think that I just might hide a few of them from the kids. Merry Christmas to those who give us something that cannot be wrapped in paper or placed into a gift bag. I remember the smells, the decorations, the magic, and I even remember the sweaters that my grandmother wore. The one thing that I can’t seem to remember is what was in those gift boxes that had my name on them.

Kristen Hamilton