December 11, 2011
Sunday

(This is the next installment of Here Are Poinsettias: A Child’s Christmas in Harrisburg, a memoir I wrote in 2000. My recollections begin in about 1954, when I was seven. For the Preface, go here.)

The snow was deeper then, and it came earlier, or so it seems now. Fifth Street was lined with trees, and we spent the whole of December walking to school under a canopy of frosted branches. It was colder them, too, so we wore boots and snowpants, scarves, gloves, and hats with ear flaps.

The boots went on over our shoes, shiny red and blue and yellow slicker boots that rubbed against the backs of our legs. We tucked our skirts into the snowpants and the snowpants into the boots. Over everything we wore thick wool coats that closed with wooden toggles, so that as we moved toward Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament School we looked like a procession of sausages or spacemen.

At school we hing our snowpants and coats in the cloak room. We put our boots along the back wall, under the germ lights that were supposed to protect us from colds. Heaters under the windows hummed all day to keep us warm. We put our hats and gloves there to dry, and the smell of the wet wool rose and swirled through the room.

All the Christmases melt into the others, like the snow from all the boots making one puddle on the floor. I try to keep the years separate, each in its own box with a ribbon and a tag that says 1959 or 1961 or 1954. I carry them in my bag of memories, slung over my shoulder like Santa’s pack. When Advent begins, I put the pack down, reach in and feel around. The edges of the boxes are worn blunt from all the years bouncing on my back, and the tags are creased and unreadable. I must open each one to see what it holds, and in naming what I find there — folded stars, Glass Wax stenculs, the poinsettia song — I dream myself home.

(On this Gaudete Sunday, 2011, the tree is not up, and it might not get there. But the two most important components of decorating for me — the Advent wreath amd the crèche, are. Gaudete! Gaudete! Christus es natus, ex Maria virgine! Gaudete!)