Sweetened through the ages... by Liz Flaherty and Helen DePrima

by Liz Flaherty

Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories, sweetened through the ages just like wine. 
by Billy Strange and Mac Davis, written for Elvis Presley

I've written so many Christmas memories over the years that I'm always in danger of repeating myself, causing much eye-rolling and interruptions of, "I know. You told me that. Several times." It's one of the downfalls of being older. I remember every visit with my Aunt Gladys included several of the same stories I'd been hearing since I was a kid. She lived a long and adventurous life and I used to wonder why she always related the same memories instead of sharing different ones.

But now I'm there. Now I understand that it's only certain moments in time that shine out with clarity that bears repeating--sometimes more than once. There is much I don't remember about places Duane and I have been and experiences we've had, but there are pieces, like film clips, that play over and over again.

This is how and where traditions are born, isn't it? It's why I prefer Gold Medal
flour and Clabber Girl baking powder--I remember the packages from my mom's cupboards. It's why our families like Jergens orginal hand lotion and my sisters-in-law still use Pond's cold cream. I remember my mother-in-law smoothing it onto her face each night. She had the softest skin...

Those are how my memories fall. They're in pieces. The year of the sewing machine and my daughter's Holly Hobby dress. The year our family shot ping pong balls at each other, so helpless with laughter we couldn't talk. My aunt's cookies with a nut half pressed precisely in the middle of the top. The Christmas Eve we came home in the snow and deer crossed the road in front of us--the kids wondered if they were looking for Santa and the sleigh. The bicycle-size gift bag that's been in the family for years. Grandchildren in dress-up clothes.

Are you rolling your eyes yet?

Traditions, and memories. Pieces of our lives that were well-lived and well-loved. I have been blessed. I hope you are, too.

Merry Christmas.



by Helen DePrima

In fifty-two years of marriage, I can’t recall my husband and I ever buying a Christmas tree already cut. Our first five years, we paid five dollars every December for a permit to cut a tree in one of the National Forests in Colorado. Our tiny rental cottage near the Colorado State campus, built in the late 19th century, had twelve-foot ceilings, so we felt obligated to haul home huge trees lashed to the back of our 1967 Beetle; invariably we had to make several stops to rescue our load from dragging behind us.

We moved to New Hampshire after Carl graduated from vet school and continued to cut fresh trees from the numerous Christmas tree plantations scattered around the state, our son and daughter trudging along to choose exactly the right tree. No more monsters like those in Colorado – standard eight-foot ceiling – but plump spruces which filled the house with their perfume. I missed only one expedition, laid up in a long-leg cast after breaking my ankle during a November snowstorm, but Carl and the kids carried on the tradition without my input.


For the last twenty or so years, we’ve made an annual pilgrimage to the North Country to cut our tree, a project requiring anxious scrutiny of weather forecasts. Should we go this weekend, with a possibility of meeting snow through Franconia Notch or chance even worse weather by waiting?

Before the actual cutting, we fortify ourselves with lunch at the Littleton Diner, serving real diner fare since 1930; their clam chowder tops any on the seacoast. Next we stop at the Brick Store in Bath, New Hampshire, the oldest general store in the country, hard by a long covered bridge linking New Hampshire to Vermont. The Brick Store offers basic necessities plus local cheese and smoked meat, gimcracks and gewgaws, a dozen or more flavors of fudge plus fishing worms and night crawlers in a separate cooler under the dairy case and deer-butchering during hunting season.


Finally, on to Mountain Star Christmas Tree Farm. We’ve cut trees in bright sunshine with grass underfoot, other times wading through knee-deep snow and slithering home white-knuckled on the narrow, winding mountain road. This year’s conditions were somewhere in between, sunny but cold, with only a few inches of snow. Increasingly, the tree-cutting carries a special poignancy – now in our late 70’s, will we be able to make the trek next December? Damn straight, we will!


Comments

  1. What a treat to trip down your memory lanes with you this morning, ladies! I love your sentence, Liz, “pieces of our lives that were well-lived and well-loved” and these are the best presents ever, aren’t they? And Helen, thank you for the tree hunting expedition...I can picture you and your husband driving there for many years to come. Awesome!

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    1. Thanks, Janice. The holidays make us reflective, don't they? Merry Christmas to you!

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    2. From your mouth to God's ear, Janice!

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  2. We never cut down a Christmas tree. Until the silver trees came out in the 60's, we always had a live tree. Then I moved out and had a small plastic tree in my one-room apartment. I still have that tree. It's two feet tall and I used to take it to my office and set it up there every year. It means so much to me and the memories of those days when I was just starting out. Thanks for rekindling that time.

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    1. We did have a small tree one year when our son was just starting to walk; it sat up just out of reach. Guess it's just not Christmas for me unless I'm vacuuming up spruce needles from the carpet.

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    2. I have a two-foot one in my kitchen that I just love. I put it away in a trash bag each year on on occasion, I strip it down and redecorate it. Merry Christmas, Shirley!

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  3. I love your traditions! I keep my sugar in a Maxwell Instant Coffee jar with the original Maxwell House coffee lid. Can't believe I ever drank instant coffee! lol. But the jar belonged to my mother-in-law and should be around 55 years old.

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    1. That's the kind of tradition I treasure, the ordinary everyday keepsakes that keep memories alive. My aunt in Kentucky was mad about horse-racing and stashed her non-winning tote tickets from Churchill Downs in a blue granite ware coffee pot on the kitchen table. I now use it to hold my Black Rifle coffee pods.

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    2. Oh, I love that. I have my aunt's granite ware tea kettle on a shelf above my window stuffed with flowers--right next to two teapots my mother-in-law gave me. Treasures all.

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  4. Thanks for those posts. Sounds like you both enjoy your holiday. I'm sure you get some eye-rolling over your stories, but so what? Have fun with them.

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    1. The best memories and traditions often defy logic.

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    2. Yeah, logic doesn't have much to do with it, does it? :-)

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  6. Wonderful Christmas traditions! I like to collect ornaments on vacations and special times, so when we put them on the tree we remember that trip. There's a rocking horse from Herrods, a clothespin hula dancer from Maui, a snow scene from Colorado, and many more. Plus, the soccer balls and homemade ornaments from my kids' childhood. Happy times.

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    1. I wish I had always done that. I do have old and dear ones, plus I have an affinity for shiny, so I add new ones, too. You're right--happy times.

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  7. Let people roll there eyes but know deep in your heart that one day they will be passing along some of those same stories to their children and nieces and nephews and grands and get to be on the other side of the eye rolling. The holidays are all about family and tradition. I laughed about buying what your mother did. I grew up in a Jif house and my husband in a Skippy one. We were married five years of some contentious grocery shopping before he admitted he liked the Jif better. Forty five years later we still buy "my" peanut butter. Wishing you and yours all the blessings of the season!

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    1. Lol. We bought Peter Pan forever, then I accidentally bought the store brand one time and found out we liked it just as well for a lot less money! Merry Christmas to you!

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  8. This is one of my favorite parts of Christmas time and New Years...hearing other people's holiday memories. The sharing of your hearts and loves makes the magic of Christmas. Never stop, Liz and Helen. Never quit...you would be so missed.

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