This week, we will publish our Christmas section featuring special Christmas memories. As I have read through some of the items that have been submitted, it reminds me of my own.
I have many special memories of Christmas through the years, but one in particular keeps coming back to me. I have reflected on it a lot in recent days.
My Grandma Deal loved Christmas. We always met at her house on Christmas Eve and gathered in the living room to “have tree” as she called it.
Dating back to the year construction was completed on it the week before Christmas of 1949, there was always a house full of people on Christmas Eve. Many of them, including her, are gone now. Her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild are left to carry that on.
The evening was always filled with food and merriment and love. It’s been like that all the years I can remember, too.
A few years before her graduation to glory, Grandma got it in her mind to have an old cedar tree for a Christmas tree. It would be like all those old fashioned Christmases she grew up with and her boys, my Daddy and his brothers, had known from their childhoods.
After hearing about it for several years, I finally relented. It was Dec. 17, 2001, a brilliant late fall day. It was probably in the 50s, but the air had a bit of a nip to it. She put in to go — unusual for her — because any time after September was winter to her. She put on a long, blue overcoat and her Atlanta Braves hat.
At the time, I had been unceremoniously disemployed from my job in Nahunta (it was all my fault) and had been off work for a couple of months. She was gleeful about that because I was around and could help her when she needed something. Though I wasn’t quite 30 years old, I think she hoped I had retired.
We set off on our little adventure traveling less than a quarter mile down the road to her fish ponds — a couple of clay “borrow pits” dug when the Mikell Lake Road was paved years ago.
Cedar trees had sprouted up along the sides of the steep bank of one of the ponds. We found one we thought would be suitable.
Armed with an axe, I braced myself and clumsily slid down the slope toward the water’s edge. I cut through bamboo to get to the trunk to cut it.
Grandma stood up on the bank yelling instructions and encouragement.
“Watch out for snakes. Have you got it yet? Don’t cut your hand! Don’t let it fall on you! Do you want me to come down there and help you?” with hardly a breath in between.
I finally got it and trudged back up the bank dragging it behind me.
“Phew!, that was hard work,” she said, although she had not worked up a drop of sweat.
We didn’t have a pick-up truck at the time. All we had was her trusty old 1984 blue Chevrolet Caprice. It was bequeathed to her by her only sister, Carrie Thornton. She kept it until she went to heaven, too. Now, there was a car. It handled well and was strong as a tank. Grandma was only five feet tall with shoes on, but through the miracle of electronic, adjustable seats, she could sit high enough behind the steering wheel and still reach the pedals.
For all its advantages, the cedar wouldn’t fit in the trunk.
After a clumsy struggle, I managed to grab hold of the tree trunk and letting the window down, I held it alongside the passenger door. She drove home. That must have been a sight to any passersby.
It was larger than we thought, but once trimmed and decorated it turned out well. Maybe she had some sense of those dear Christmas memories of long ago.
I hope so. I guess that’s what I’m looking for just now.
I think back to that old hymn she loved dearly. The congregation offered it beautifully at her funeral in September, 2003. It begins with the line “Precious memories, unseen angels, sent from somewhere to my soul...”
I caught a glimpse of my own tree in the living room and my eye centered on an angel ornament gleaming in the lights with its wings outstretched.
Yes, it was sent from somewhere to my soul.
• Jason Deal is the news editor for The Blackshear Times. Reach him at [email protected].
