Re-Thinking Christmas with my Mother

I can remember exactly when I started to get a little weary of Christmas. It was when my dearly departed mother got a little miffed when she learned her grandson would be getting more presents than she. Those were the days when everything in the household not tied down could and would be wrapped. This included that Christmas pudding from seasons’ past, the still fresh kitchen towel, and an old Saab key chain. During these halcyon days, gifts were measured in meters and degrees of displacement. In other words, how high was your pile and how much of the plush carpet did that mound require? Let me add that I was not innocent in these shenanigans.

Mother had a keen eye and a wonderfully understated way of displaying her disappointment, such as looking off to the east, the Big East, from whence she came. She would remember fondly Christmases with her family in Hythe, Kent, England, being sure to provide this lengthy geography down to the postal code. It was a game we all enjoyed playing because it reminded us of the “hot and cold” exercise of our youth. As mother’s gift pile increased, her recollection of the Hythe family hearth seemed less rosy. As this 80-year-old pushed into the lead with a season high 37 presents, she turned her back on Christmases past, reminding us that America is the land of plenty and she felt, in her joy, that she had died and gone to heaven. She did die seven years later, right before Christmas. After her first heart attack, she was still asking whether certain presents had been mailed and/or received. The gifts even trumped the Jesus card.

I wrote in a psychology paper a few years ago that my mother had survived two husbands, seven children, and two wars. I’m not counting the other wars her four sons went off to fight. My instructor simply wrote “WOW” on the paper, which I took as a tribute to a courageous woman who above all survived and endured.

I’ve reflected on this powerful psychological footnote for some time and have come to realize that I didn’t know much about my mother at all. I was recently chatting with my older sister, who just turned 91 and seems to know, with William Faulkner, that the past is never really past. She recalled losing her father when she was seven, watching her two siblings go to an orphanage and our mother struggle through war and an economic depression. My sister recalled mother marrying my father and bearing three sons during another war. “I cannot fully describe the hardships and depravation our mother had to endure,” she said. And she will take these secrets to her grave.

A few years ago, I received a letter from a family friend who knew my mother. She had informally “adopted” him and brought him into the family. He is in his 80’s now and sharing his wisdom. My mother apparently spoke to him at length about the utter terror of the German bombs and rockets over London, and her fear of death and the unexpected. My friend concludes: “I found her to be most kind, considerate and filled with hope for both now and the future.” As a single child, he “was most pleased when she said that I fitted right into the family, even as another son. That was a terrific observation. I had clicked with different families but no one else had ever expressed it that way.”

It has taken me a long time and the wisdom of others to realize that the bric-a-brac memories of my mother that I fashioned into a personal and sustaining narrative is, semantically speaking, a map that doesn’t necessarily fit the territory. This is especially true of the psychological territory. Psychologist James Hillman in “Lament of the Dead” reminds us not to place too many burdens of memory on our birth parents. He writes that “When I was doing therapy, I always tried to escape the parents, which was the story that the person wanted me to tell me — what their mother did and what their father did.” Hillman refers to the freeing up of the child and parents as a necessary part of one’s psychological growth.

This Christmas I will reflect on when I was ten and woke to real candles on the Christmas tree and the gift of writing paper and pencils for me to begin my craft. These items stand out in their utter simplicity and utility. No embellishments required.

Thanks Mum.