November 27th, 2007
Today I went to my gramma’s house. She was not there, of course, because she died some years ago. I haven’t been there since. It was kind of creepy because the house is exactly the way I remember it – grampa hasn’t changed a thing. He even left up the photo montage of the kangaroo surfing, and framed pictures of monkeys doing various household tasks like ironing and sweeping (I loved her, but not because she had great taste).
Anyway, my gramma was hugely into Christmas and I thought, maybe I could go through her Christmas things and take some stuff. I’m not sure why I never thought of this before! Grampa was fine with it so I spent the afternoon rooting around under the stairs through old boxes of decorations. Most of it was pretty junky – Gramma didn’t have a lot of money and poor plus bad taste equals a lot of plastic santas. But there were some special items that I took: some old blown glass hanging ornaments, a lace tablecloth, tin soldier pate spreaders, and the NOEL candle holders.
These holders are a family tradition. They are four separate items, each a candle holder in the shape of one of the letters, which put together spell “noel.” These are older than I am. And every year, some wise guy would swap the letters around to spell “LEON,” which drove my gramma crazy because not only was someone messing with NOEL, but they made it into a Jewish name, which is hardly in keeping with the Christmas spirit. Or at least not my Catholic gramma’s Christmas spirit. Of course she was in on the gag – she dutifully rearranged the letters and then wandered out of the living room, providing ample opportunity for LEON to come back. It’s one of those bizarre rituals that don’t make sense to anyone but us. Anyway, when I found them, I was quite touched. Now my dad and I can argue about who gets to keep them. For now they’re at my place but I have a feeling they’ll be at his pretty soon.
I’m very happy to have some of her things, but the more significant part of the day was being back in her house. Going through her boxes was wild – I found stacks and stacks of Christmas cards. She never threw out a one. I also found boxes filled with nothing but other empty boxes and plastic bags – she was a great recycler, as many folks who lived through the depression were. Nothing was thrown out if it had even a hint of future use in it. It was a nice feeling to find those things. I felt close to her. But of course it was sad also – instead of being all over the house, her things were stuffed under the stairs in a dark crawlspace with mouse droppings and cobwebs. Kind of makes sense, I guess, since she’s gone.
LEON was awesome, and one of my favorite parts of christmas at Grandma’s.
I think about her a lot too over some of the littlest things.