Holiday Retail

Golden pearl necklace
Originally uploaded by tanakawho

“Sure, just bring them over,” I heard Mom say.

It was two days before Christmas. I knew what the person on the other end had said because the same conversation happened each year before the holidays. Soon the doorbell rang and one of the city jewelers handed my mother a package bulging with several manila folders of pearls.

“I’ll be back to pick them up tomorrow,” he said and then he hurried off to his car.
During other weeks of the year, Mom took the bus downtown, filling her purse with the cultured pearls she picked up. She did this at least once each week. Each envelope also contained the selected clasp of silver or gold, and the specifications for the necklace. Each packet had a date indicating when the customer could pick up the completed necklace. Most were promised in a week and rush jobs cost the customer extra. Mom kept a tally sheet describing each job and the price she charged the jewelry store for her work. At the end of each month she would write out an invoice and drop it off for payment.

Before the holidays, and especially two days before Christmas, “rush jobs” were predictable. Mom would return from her trip to downtown and within a few hours the telephone would ring asking if she had the time to do just a few more.

Before I was born, my mother had worked in department stores. She still made fun of the desperate husbands who would come into the store on the afternoon of December 24th with no idea of what to purchase for their wife or lover.

Working from home, my Mom didn’t see the faces of the customers anymore. She would unload the satchel delivered to our door and begin work immediately at the jewelry table. The table faced one of the windows in my parents’ room. My father had constructed it of plywood to meet my mother’s specifications. There was a rim along each of the four sides to protect beads from rolling off and onto the floor. One at a time she would empty a packet, placing the beads in a row on the grooved hardwood sorting-board she used to organize the beads before stringing them. My Mom’s fingers and thumb would glide the thin wire-needle deftly through the hole in each pearl. Between each cultured gem, she formed a knot in the thread and slid it into place tightly. If the necklace broke no pearls would roll free and be lost.

Most days before Christmas, my mother sat at the jewelry table for five to seven hours each day. She would often be there when I got up in the morning and I would hear her return after she had tucked me into bed at night.

The jeweler would be back early the next morning, probably before his store would open for the day. Mom would hand him the pearls strung to the specified lengths and adorned with bejeweled clasps. He would graciously wish her a Merry Christmas and hand her a bottle of liqueur decorated with a bow.

It was Christmas Eve and too late for any more jobs except to bake cookies for Santa.

Decorating the tree

Decorating the tree
Originally uploaded by Polyhymnia

Friday we invited a tree into our house. It is a Fraser Fir, a bit asymmetrical, but then who isn’t? Standing upright by the glass doors that lead to our back yard, it looks as if it is glancing at its relatives the loblolly pines. The loblolly branches are high about the roof of our house. They are reaching for sky and the bark on their trunks look like scabs.

We filled the tin bowl at the base of our tree guest with water. We were busy with our human tasks, so it had a full day to get used to the space where it will spend the next month. The branches form a tight tangle around the trunk. We can smell the aroma of its sticky sap through the house. I wonder why we feel the need to decorate it. It looks so lovely unadorned, plump, and green.

Saturday we emptied the storage closet of the boxes containing strings of lights and ornaments. Putting on the lights is the hardest part: crawling on the floor around the tree to attach the lights to the lower branches, untwisting the curled cord that connects each light then walking around and around the tree, slowly and carefully spacing each bulb before it is attached to a branch until one of us is standing on the ladder to set the last lights in their place. We complain to each other about our aching knees and back. The older we get the more we wonder why we bother with this ritual.

“This might be the last year we will attempt to do this,” we say to each other. “I always forget how much work it is!”

Sunday we pulled the ornaments out of their storage containers. Many we made ourselves over the years. There are ones of felt, ribbon, lace trim and painted wood. I can still smell the cinnamon hearts we made by mixing the spice with glue years ago.

“This is one your mother gave us.”

“Here are the miniature birdhouses your father made one year.”

“We must put up these needle point snow flakes. You finished making them when you were in the hospital one year.”

“Susanne made the felt mouse that appears to be sleeping in a walnut shell bed!”

“Didn’t we buy the partridges in the pear tree in a gift store in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia?”

Decorating the tree is not something we can do quickly; there are too many memories to be touched before putting each in its proper place. Together the jumble of joy and sparkle of peace tells a story about our lives.