Yule Sea

Adrift now, wishing it was already deep into January, past the vulgarity of the present. Behold, I show you a mystery: the death of an old dog can unsettle a man to the point where he sees fissures in all that he stands on. It can make him fight for balance. It can make him weary beyond sighing.

When I was a boy, we got our Christmas trees from a lot one block over, next to the railroad tracks. The tree, holy and perfect and aromatic, was nailed to a wooden cross, and we saw it as a being both aware and benevolent. My honor as a child was to carry it on my thin shoulders to our house and place it on the linoleum. I did this with all the gravity and reverence I use when lighting candles these days. We were unlearned about the liturgy of the tree, and we didn’t understand about tree stands and water. It’s a great mercy that the old-fashioned lights, large and hot and painted their various colors, didn’t ignite the thing as it stood in the corner, freighted with yards of garland and pounds of icicles. We didn’t understand about ornament hangers, either; my sister and I would pinch and pull the little wire widget things out of the cheap balls and squinch them around the branch tips and reinsert them into the balls. They didn’t dangle and they didn’t move. But they caught the lights and they reflected our pale winter faces as we waited to see if our cat would talk at midnight on Christmas Eve.

My mother made me several delicacies every Christmas season. No fine confectioner’s shop can contain their equal. Pound cake, heavy with butter, with an immaculate tawny crust. Divinity, snow-white and light as air, with half a pecan pushed into each piece. Peanut brittle, thin and buttery with tiny bubbles in its blonde matrix. And fruitcake, one priceless knobby loaf, heavy with candied fruits and walnuts and raisins, set aside for me. And for Mother. We were the only two in the family who would eat it, just as we were the only two in the family who would touch the humble store-bought eggnog in the bright green carton. Mother would sprinkle nutmeg on top of its yellow surface after she poured it into our mugs, and we would toast each other and eat fruitcake and drink eggnog and listen to Christmas music on the radio in the little low-ceilinged room heated by the gas stove.

At Christmas time, Mother would also wrap the pot containing her Christmas cactus in bright gift paper, and she would set it near the tree. It seemed a part of our celebration, our waiting. It all felt like waiting, and the waiting was better than the day itself. Mother gave my wife a cutting of her Christmas cactus years ago. For her, the act was as significant as elevating a host or sprinkling holy water. It was a sharing of life and meaning and symbolism and hope. Like my mother, my wife’s Christmas cactus grows in an old enamel saucepan. Who knows what fingers will someday tend its flat green panels ?

Something is stirring within me as we approach Christmas. It is not quite dread, and it is not quite sadness, and it is more than resignation. I am unmoored and rocking in the wake of recent weeks. I want to feel I am moving towards something. I want a star to follow. I want a story in which to believe. And I want a piece of my mother’s fruitcake.

~ S.K. Orr