Strawberry-rhubarb jam in shining mason jars with paraffin on top
Purple concord grapes (not for eating, but I did and swallowed the seeds)
Cooked and dripping from a white cotton bag to make jelly with Certo
And quart after quart of peaches sliced and sugared for winter desserts
Picked ripe from three backyard trees safe from swooping June bugs
That was a hot August afternoon.
Sour half-ripe seedless green grapes hanging lush in a rickety arbor
Or a slishy juicy peach sun warmed in the tree low enough
For me to pluck when I was only six.
That was a summer afternoon
Sticky pink watermelon juice running down my chin and arms
Black seeds to spit out on the grassy lawn when I ate outdoors
Swatting away the hungry bees that swarmed never stinging buzzy bees
That was a summer evening
Buttery sweet golden corn flavor bursting past my teeth
Eat it round and round or straight across
Like typing on Dad’s typewriter
Only corn for supper, all I wanted, ear after ear
That, too, was summer way back when.
Bright red cranberries bursting in syrupy juice
Succulent brown turkey, cloud-light mashed potatoes
Crowned with melted butter, yucky peas and carrots in gloppy white sauce
Fruitcake and cinnamony pumpkin pie and even one sip of sweet red wine
That was Thanksgiving every year.
Bright green peas popping raw from their pods into a tin pan
Deep dish loganberry pie or crusty cheesy macaroni in a big brown casserole
Ground lamb patties, bacon wrapped with mint jelly on the side
Little composed salads on small plates, often forgotten in the icebox
And always sliced bread on the bread tray, iced tea in summer even for me.
That was supper at our house.
Roast beef and brown gravy over soft white bread
Or roast chicken with dressing, always mashed potatoes
Cold velvety ice cream slices – strawberry, oranges sherbet/ vanilla
Chocolate on plain old vanilla with Hershey syrup crinkly-crankly or all in a puddle
That was Sunday dinner and cold cereal at night.
Artichokes dipped in melted butter, cheese dream sandwiches
Vegetable soup with floating orangey blisters of fat
Sandwiches of leftover roast or chicken or meatloaf
Never soup from a can or bologna and I hated peanut butter
Early morning, cold and shivery
Burble of percolating coffee, fragrant and forbidden
The smell of bacon sizzling, turning crispy crackly good
To follow tangy grapefruit with its gritty sugar topping.
That was a winter morning in my mother’s kitchen.
After eight years of writing in Marlene Cullen’s Jumpstart Writing Workshops and hundreds of prompts, this is one of my favorites.
Kathy Myers
Muriel’s piece is evocative and a sensory delight. The detailed description of a years worth of food provides a foundation for the reader to imagine the setting and the people involved in it’s preparation. I can see mother tearing a pile of white bread to be smothered by cream gravy and shaking a teaspoon of sugar over the grapefruit.
Mouthwatering, rich images. Well…gotta go and raid the fridge.
mcullen Post author
Love your comment, Kathy. Sensory delight indeed! And mouthwatering. Me, too. Time for a snack!
mcullen Post author
Muriel, Your writing on these memories of scents has stayed with me all these years. A lovely trip down memory lane.
I lead a charmed life! I am infatuated like a man head-over-heals in love. Every day I celebrate the wonderful things that happen to me. This is because of my brain dysfunction. My neurons are awash with a surplus of dopamine. You’ve heard the saying, “Every cloud has a silver lining?” Well, I never see the clouds, only the silver. I turn everything that happens to me into a positive experience.
What does this have to do with memories?
My rosy view leaves me with no “bad” memories. I turn them into “good” memories or forget them. You might think this is useful, might even wish you had the same ability, but it does have some side-effects.
For example, it is easy for me to forgive (and forget). It makes me appear very compassionate. I lent money to a man in need, even though two years ago I had lent him money which he didn’t pay back. I only knew he borrowed the money two years ago because I have a book of the loans I make. I found his previous loan when I was looking for a page to write down his current loan.
Another example, I am very trusting of people, even if I don’t know them. Luckily, in my experience, the vast majority of all people deserve my trust. But it has also exposed me to significant risk, times when those around me warn me to be more careful. Like the old man who warned me that the young man walking behind him had a gun. In that case, I chose to ignore the “cloud” and see only the “silver”. Unfortunately, I was proven mistaken as the young man pulled me into an alley and robbed me at gunpoint. Because of this, I considered getting a gun to protect myself. But after a couple months I felt safe without one once more.
Even more disturbing was my realization that most of my greatest epiphanies may not be so grand as I imagined. As I survey the piles of papers towering from every horizontal surface in my office, I see how my rose-colored glasses combined with my active imagination have held me back. I have kept my ideas as daydreams, which was safer than risking the judgment of the rest of the world. There is no applause louder than those imagined.
After 59 years, including several recent years of clinical depression, I have learned the world is much simpler than I thought it was. The mistaken complexity comes from my perception, which is all in my head. Though painfully humbling, my new-found understanding has freed me from martyrdom. I have found peace in knowing that the world depends on all of our actions, not just on my own.
Still, I am wracked with questions. Have I failed to meet my potential? Not given my best? Am I protecting myself from my disappointment with my life? From the insignificance of my death? I really don’t know. But I do know I have done a good job at being a human being. If I were to die today, I would be satisfied with my life and the choices I have made. And others would say, “He was a good man.” Or is this yet another example of the conclusions of a selective memory?
The tree is up, hung with lights and garlands, decorated with memories of children, memories of parents, brothers, and sisters, memories of a child whose excitement was so pure and alive with love and life, whose belief in goodwill was unshakeable, whose belief in wonder and joy was instinctual, whose belief in love was unconditional. In those days, when my years were a single digit, I would overflow with anticipation during the days before the winter solstice celebration I knew as Christmas. It was this time of year that the calendar seemed to stand still, the ten days before Christmas becoming unimaginably slow in coming, the day itself becoming so distant that my mother posted a large piece of paper casually scrawled with a number, filling the whole page, announcing the number of days before Christmas. She taped it to the cabinets above the kitchen pass-through where she hoped I would see it and not ask how many days until Christmas, where she pointed throughout the day when I posed the question, where I would tilt my head and lift my eyes every morning, hoping that somehow, because Santa was magic, that the sequence would unexpectedly jump from 10 to 1, from 9 to 1, from 8 to 1.
But it wasn’t as if I sat idly, without anything to do. Every day brought another tradition, traditions that had been repeated since the beginning of time, traditions that, if not followed, if not duplicated in exact detail, brought hoots of heartfelt displeasure and chastisement. How regular and ordered my childhood was around this most potentially chaotic holiday. I was taught to celebrate Christmas as the season of giving, which I only understood as the season of getting. But my father enforced a strict rule of don’t ask, don’t tell, and should I even accidentally mention what I wanted for Christmas, the rule was that I not get it. Presents were meant to be unmentionable opportunities for others to surprise me with their thoughtfulness, love, and care for me. The lesson was hard, though I learned it with only one painful failure, the Christmas my younger brother got the walkie-talkie set I had so wanted. The one time I had whispered what I wanted to my mother in a moment of desire, a moment when I was blinded by my perceived need and the excitement of getting.
And everyone was expected to give everyone else a present, even if it took an 8-year-old all year, and there was still only 30 cents saved to be divided between two parents and three siblings. What thoughtful gift could I possibly buy for 5 cents? But my father never set a rule that he didn’t enforce, and never let an obstacle keep anyone from discovering options and opportunities. He sat down with me to make a list family members and their presents, a list that ended up including various kinds of penny-candy, each piece thoughtfully chosen because of my knowledge of my brothers and sister. He was careful to excuse himself when it came time for me to choose what to get him. He reminded me that he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted and he didn’t want me to tell him what I wanted to get him. He reminded me that one doesn’t get what one asks for, teaching me by his own example that rule of law applied even to kings.
And I went with my mother to the A&P grocery store, where she filled our shopping cart to overflowing with food for our family and visitors, our special holiday meal, and the days before and after when shopping was not possible. I carefully read my list of names paired with my thoughtful choices of candy, and reminded my mother that I needed to pick them out by myself, lest she see what I was getting, thereby breaking the rule of don’t tell. And once I was alone I checked off my list, candy by candy, rechecking to make sure, because so many pieces of candy for so many people was a complicated task for a child distracted by his own imagining of what he might have bought for himself if it had been 30 cents he could have spent without thinking of others. It was then, at that very instant, when I was thinking what I would buy for myself, that I had the idea, the radical idea, an idea so dangerous that I looked over my shoulder to make sure my mother had not seen me think of it. I put the candy back, all the thoughtfully chosen candy, piece by piece, each into its own bin, until my bag was once again empty. Looking around one last time to make sure the coast was clear, I knew it was now or never, and I reached into the bin of bubble gum, nervously counting out 30 pieces, afraid my mother might appear and see what I was doing, her eyes growing round with amazement then narrowing, followed by a slap on the back of my hand. I counted them three times, 30 pieces of bubble gum, a candy not allowed in the house, not allowed in our hands, and forbidden from our mouths. And I closed that brown paper bag, rolling and crimping the top to lock its contents from prying eyes.
When I rejoined my mother I smiled, keeping the bag behind me, lest she infer its contents from the poking edges of the captured bubble gums, pressing their signatures from inside, as if prisoners crying out to be released, their message writ in recognizable patterns of crinkled brown bag, visible to those on the outside. And she did try to look, especially when I made it clear that I was hiding the bag from her. Determined to keep the secret, I shifted to keep my body between her and my quarry, as she cocked her head and leaned from one side to the other. “No peeking!” I invoked, and she stood upright, taken aback, then smiled, telling me I was right, turning her attention to the line of full shopping carts ahead of her. And as we approached, the closer we got, I realized that to get past the checker, I would have to expose my contents, lay them out, 30 pieces of bubble gum spread and counted for all to see. My secret Christmas gift plan would be, dare I say it, out of the bag.
I thought about hiding the bag, keeping it low, carrying it out of the store, stealing the candy without paying for it. It wouldn’t be the first time I had succumbed to such a temptation, a single piece of candy, a pack of gum, my biggest heist being a roll of Life Savers. But I was holding a massive quantity of candy, 30 pieces of bubble gum, too much to stuff in my pockets. I was at a loss, no ideas forthcoming, frozen in line, caught between my mother in front and the mothers behind. I could do nothing but watch. Each item in the shopping cart was put up on the counter by my mother, carefully inspected and recorded by the checker, and passed on to the bagger. When the last item was lifted from the cart my mother turned and looked down at me. My face must have shown my dread because it immediately brought a look of concern. A question formed, then disappeared as she nodded and smiled. “My son has a Christmas present he wants to buy without me seeing.” The checker looked over the counter at me, smiled, nodded her approval. I waited in wonder as the world unfolded right before my eyes. My mother passed the cart to the bagger, who filled it with our groceries. The checker told my mother the total, which was under $10 in those days. My mother opened her purse, pulled out her wallet, paid the checker, counted and stored her change in the little side pocket, returned her wallet to her purse, walked to the re-loaded cart, and guided it towards the automatic sliding-glass door.
I was suddenly aware of the open path before me, and reminded of the patiently waiting mothers behind me. The checker peered over, trying to see what I was carrying, which prompted me to put the bag up on the counter. I looked towards the door. My mother had stopped and was waiting for me, her back carefully turned to the business at hand. Everything went beautifully: the bubble gum made its appearance for a short time, then was returned to its hiding place. I searched the line of waiting mothers for potential informants, but was met with only reassuring smiles and nods. I dug into my pocket and fished out the 30 cents, putting it up on the counter, never doubting or mistrusting the checker with my year’s worth of savings. She confirmed, in a whisper, that the total was 30 cents, counted out the change, nodded, tapped in the payment. The cash register rang as the money drawer popped open. She dropped the appropriate coins in the appropriate places, closed the drawer with a click, tore off the receipt, and bent over to hand it to me. “Merry Christmas,” she said with a smile.
I took the bag home, kept it hidden from all prying eyes, until I could sequester myself in my room with a roll of wrapping paper, Scotch tape, scissors, and the want ads section of yesterday’s newspaper. The unwritten tradition, passed through the ages, was to wrap presents with the intention of fooling the recipient. With a sense of pride I took a sheet of newspaper, balled it around 5 pieces of bubble gum, and wrapped the crumpled ball with Santa-red with green hollies Christmas paper. I struggled with the round shapes, using a bit more tape than Santa would, but securely enclosing and disguising the contents. I labeled each with a small square of wrapping paper, folded over a name carefully written in pencil. I hid the balls under my bed, preventing any peremptory prying or poking.
And when the countdown finally reached “1”, I moved my presents from my room to under the Christmas tree. The next morning I watched with excitement, as my younger brother unraveled the first ball. The five pieces of bubble gum tumbled to the floor, followed by a scream of “BUBBLE GUM!” The announcement brought my mother, and her careful inspection of the gift, looking at me as if to decide if my intentions were good or bad, finally smiling, deciding in favor of letting stand one rule over another, and returning the bubble gum to its rightful owner.
My father was not so pleased and glared at me as if I had lied to him. But my mother saw it, too, and went to his side, whispered calming words that tempered the creases in his forehead and softened his regard, though never becoming a smile. It was my sister who next cried out, “Bubble gum!” But her cry was more one of horror than happiness, she being the oldest, the one who was so often told to take care of me and my brothers, the one who always had to be right, was afraid of not being right and doing the wrong thing. She, better than any of us boys, was fluent in the letter of the law. She ran to our mother, her preferred referee, complaining of an obvious foul, looking to get a penalty issued. Instead she was rebuffed with the the illogic of contradiction and the messy meting out of justice. A quick glance to our father showed his agreement with the decision. Unable to find resolution in their opinion, she waited for her chance, and at the first distraction took it upon herself to quarantine the easily identified unopened balls. Her mistake was to try to confiscate the illegal bubble gum from my brother, whose cries of foul were taken more seriously, and my sister was quickly pulled aside and instructed to repatriate all presents, even if they were bubble gum.
Later that morning, after all the presents were opened and the floor was awash in shredded strips of red and green, after the required rounds of thank-yous and your-welcomes, when quiet reigned as each played with his new-found favorite toy, my father came over, looked down at me with his hands at his hips, deciding what to do with me. He asked in a gentle voice that immediately warned of a trap, “I thought you were going to buy hard candies?”, the implication of which was clear: that I had bought unlawful bubble gum, sneaked it into the house under false pretenses, and distributed it amongst all present. I looked up at the towering figure, the giant that was my father, rule enforcer and king of the house, and said, “It wasn’t a surprise, you know, if you knew.” His face softened and I imagined the rules colliding inside his head. Still, his hands remained on his hips, so I launched torpedo number two, “And I thought bubble gum was a more thoughtful gift.” His eyes flared open, then narrowed, then he suddenly laughed. “Yes, I suppose it was,” he conceded. “Merry Christmas,” he said, reaching down to lift me, then deciding instead to hold out his hand for a shake. I would have preferred the hug, but was proud to receive the more adult shake.
I scanned the room, thinking for a moment about the expressions on my brothers’ faces, upon their discovery of bubble gum successfully in their possession. The moment was short, as I turned my attention to all the wonderful stuff I got for Christmas. But the memory remained long, becoming one of so many that decorate my tree.
writer
MY MOTHER’S KITCHEN
WAY BACK WHEN
by Muriel Ellis
Strawberry-rhubarb jam in shining mason jars with paraffin on top
Purple concord grapes (not for eating, but I did and swallowed the seeds)
Cooked and dripping from a white cotton bag to make jelly with Certo
And quart after quart of peaches sliced and sugared for winter desserts
Picked ripe from three backyard trees safe from swooping June bugs
That was a hot August afternoon.
Sour half-ripe seedless green grapes hanging lush in a rickety arbor
Or a slishy juicy peach sun warmed in the tree low enough
For me to pluck when I was only six.
That was a summer afternoon
Sticky pink watermelon juice running down my chin and arms
Black seeds to spit out on the grassy lawn when I ate outdoors
Swatting away the hungry bees that swarmed never stinging buzzy bees
That was a summer evening
Buttery sweet golden corn flavor bursting past my teeth
Eat it round and round or straight across
Like typing on Dad’s typewriter
Only corn for supper, all I wanted, ear after ear
That, too, was summer way back when.
Bright red cranberries bursting in syrupy juice
Succulent brown turkey, cloud-light mashed potatoes
Crowned with melted butter, yucky peas and carrots in gloppy white sauce
Fruitcake and cinnamony pumpkin pie and even one sip of sweet red wine
That was Thanksgiving every year.
Bright green peas popping raw from their pods into a tin pan
Deep dish loganberry pie or crusty cheesy macaroni in a big brown casserole
Ground lamb patties, bacon wrapped with mint jelly on the side
Little composed salads on small plates, often forgotten in the icebox
And always sliced bread on the bread tray, iced tea in summer even for me.
That was supper at our house.
Roast beef and brown gravy over soft white bread
Or roast chicken with dressing, always mashed potatoes
Cold velvety ice cream slices – strawberry, oranges sherbet/ vanilla
Chocolate on plain old vanilla with Hershey syrup crinkly-crankly or all in a puddle
That was Sunday dinner and cold cereal at night.
Artichokes dipped in melted butter, cheese dream sandwiches
Vegetable soup with floating orangey blisters of fat
Sandwiches of leftover roast or chicken or meatloaf
Never soup from a can or bologna and I hated peanut butter
Early morning, cold and shivery
Burble of percolating coffee, fragrant and forbidden
The smell of bacon sizzling, turning crispy crackly good
To follow tangy grapefruit with its gritty sugar topping.
That was a winter morning in my mother’s kitchen.
After eight years of writing in Marlene Cullen’s Jumpstart Writing Workshops and hundreds of prompts, this is one of my favorites.
Kathy Myers
Muriel’s piece is evocative and a sensory delight. The detailed description of a years worth of food provides a foundation for the reader to imagine the setting and the people involved in it’s preparation. I can see mother tearing a pile of white bread to be smothered by cream gravy and shaking a teaspoon of sugar over the grapefruit.
Mouthwatering, rich images. Well…gotta go and raid the fridge.
mcullen Post author
Love your comment, Kathy. Sensory delight indeed! And mouthwatering. Me, too. Time for a snack!
mcullen Post author
Muriel, Your writing on these memories of scents has stayed with me all these years. A lovely trip down memory lane.
James Seamarsh
I lead a charmed life! I am infatuated like a man head-over-heals in love. Every day I celebrate the wonderful things that happen to me. This is because of my brain dysfunction. My neurons are awash with a surplus of dopamine. You’ve heard the saying, “Every cloud has a silver lining?” Well, I never see the clouds, only the silver. I turn everything that happens to me into a positive experience.
What does this have to do with memories?
My rosy view leaves me with no “bad” memories. I turn them into “good” memories or forget them. You might think this is useful, might even wish you had the same ability, but it does have some side-effects.
For example, it is easy for me to forgive (and forget). It makes me appear very compassionate. I lent money to a man in need, even though two years ago I had lent him money which he didn’t pay back. I only knew he borrowed the money two years ago because I have a book of the loans I make. I found his previous loan when I was looking for a page to write down his current loan.
Another example, I am very trusting of people, even if I don’t know them. Luckily, in my experience, the vast majority of all people deserve my trust. But it has also exposed me to significant risk, times when those around me warn me to be more careful. Like the old man who warned me that the young man walking behind him had a gun. In that case, I chose to ignore the “cloud” and see only the “silver”. Unfortunately, I was proven mistaken as the young man pulled me into an alley and robbed me at gunpoint. Because of this, I considered getting a gun to protect myself. But after a couple months I felt safe without one once more.
Even more disturbing was my realization that most of my greatest epiphanies may not be so grand as I imagined. As I survey the piles of papers towering from every horizontal surface in my office, I see how my rose-colored glasses combined with my active imagination have held me back. I have kept my ideas as daydreams, which was safer than risking the judgment of the rest of the world. There is no applause louder than those imagined.
After 59 years, including several recent years of clinical depression, I have learned the world is much simpler than I thought it was. The mistaken complexity comes from my perception, which is all in my head. Though painfully humbling, my new-found understanding has freed me from martyrdom. I have found peace in knowing that the world depends on all of our actions, not just on my own.
Still, I am wracked with questions. Have I failed to meet my potential? Not given my best? Am I protecting myself from my disappointment with my life? From the insignificance of my death? I really don’t know. But I do know I have done a good job at being a human being. If I were to die today, I would be satisfied with my life and the choices I have made. And others would say, “He was a good man.” Or is this yet another example of the conclusions of a selective memory?
James Seamarsh
The tree is up, hung with lights and garlands, decorated with memories of children, memories of parents, brothers, and sisters, memories of a child whose excitement was so pure and alive with love and life, whose belief in goodwill was unshakeable, whose belief in wonder and joy was instinctual, whose belief in love was unconditional. In those days, when my years were a single digit, I would overflow with anticipation during the days before the winter solstice celebration I knew as Christmas. It was this time of year that the calendar seemed to stand still, the ten days before Christmas becoming unimaginably slow in coming, the day itself becoming so distant that my mother posted a large piece of paper casually scrawled with a number, filling the whole page, announcing the number of days before Christmas. She taped it to the cabinets above the kitchen pass-through where she hoped I would see it and not ask how many days until Christmas, where she pointed throughout the day when I posed the question, where I would tilt my head and lift my eyes every morning, hoping that somehow, because Santa was magic, that the sequence would unexpectedly jump from 10 to 1, from 9 to 1, from 8 to 1.
But it wasn’t as if I sat idly, without anything to do. Every day brought another tradition, traditions that had been repeated since the beginning of time, traditions that, if not followed, if not duplicated in exact detail, brought hoots of heartfelt displeasure and chastisement. How regular and ordered my childhood was around this most potentially chaotic holiday. I was taught to celebrate Christmas as the season of giving, which I only understood as the season of getting. But my father enforced a strict rule of don’t ask, don’t tell, and should I even accidentally mention what I wanted for Christmas, the rule was that I not get it. Presents were meant to be unmentionable opportunities for others to surprise me with their thoughtfulness, love, and care for me. The lesson was hard, though I learned it with only one painful failure, the Christmas my younger brother got the walkie-talkie set I had so wanted. The one time I had whispered what I wanted to my mother in a moment of desire, a moment when I was blinded by my perceived need and the excitement of getting.
And everyone was expected to give everyone else a present, even if it took an 8-year-old all year, and there was still only 30 cents saved to be divided between two parents and three siblings. What thoughtful gift could I possibly buy for 5 cents? But my father never set a rule that he didn’t enforce, and never let an obstacle keep anyone from discovering options and opportunities. He sat down with me to make a list family members and their presents, a list that ended up including various kinds of penny-candy, each piece thoughtfully chosen because of my knowledge of my brothers and sister. He was careful to excuse himself when it came time for me to choose what to get him. He reminded me that he wouldn’t tell me what he wanted and he didn’t want me to tell him what I wanted to get him. He reminded me that one doesn’t get what one asks for, teaching me by his own example that rule of law applied even to kings.
And I went with my mother to the A&P grocery store, where she filled our shopping cart to overflowing with food for our family and visitors, our special holiday meal, and the days before and after when shopping was not possible. I carefully read my list of names paired with my thoughtful choices of candy, and reminded my mother that I needed to pick them out by myself, lest she see what I was getting, thereby breaking the rule of don’t tell. And once I was alone I checked off my list, candy by candy, rechecking to make sure, because so many pieces of candy for so many people was a complicated task for a child distracted by his own imagining of what he might have bought for himself if it had been 30 cents he could have spent without thinking of others. It was then, at that very instant, when I was thinking what I would buy for myself, that I had the idea, the radical idea, an idea so dangerous that I looked over my shoulder to make sure my mother had not seen me think of it. I put the candy back, all the thoughtfully chosen candy, piece by piece, each into its own bin, until my bag was once again empty. Looking around one last time to make sure the coast was clear, I knew it was now or never, and I reached into the bin of bubble gum, nervously counting out 30 pieces, afraid my mother might appear and see what I was doing, her eyes growing round with amazement then narrowing, followed by a slap on the back of my hand. I counted them three times, 30 pieces of bubble gum, a candy not allowed in the house, not allowed in our hands, and forbidden from our mouths. And I closed that brown paper bag, rolling and crimping the top to lock its contents from prying eyes.
When I rejoined my mother I smiled, keeping the bag behind me, lest she infer its contents from the poking edges of the captured bubble gums, pressing their signatures from inside, as if prisoners crying out to be released, their message writ in recognizable patterns of crinkled brown bag, visible to those on the outside. And she did try to look, especially when I made it clear that I was hiding the bag from her. Determined to keep the secret, I shifted to keep my body between her and my quarry, as she cocked her head and leaned from one side to the other. “No peeking!” I invoked, and she stood upright, taken aback, then smiled, telling me I was right, turning her attention to the line of full shopping carts ahead of her. And as we approached, the closer we got, I realized that to get past the checker, I would have to expose my contents, lay them out, 30 pieces of bubble gum spread and counted for all to see. My secret Christmas gift plan would be, dare I say it, out of the bag.
I thought about hiding the bag, keeping it low, carrying it out of the store, stealing the candy without paying for it. It wouldn’t be the first time I had succumbed to such a temptation, a single piece of candy, a pack of gum, my biggest heist being a roll of Life Savers. But I was holding a massive quantity of candy, 30 pieces of bubble gum, too much to stuff in my pockets. I was at a loss, no ideas forthcoming, frozen in line, caught between my mother in front and the mothers behind. I could do nothing but watch. Each item in the shopping cart was put up on the counter by my mother, carefully inspected and recorded by the checker, and passed on to the bagger. When the last item was lifted from the cart my mother turned and looked down at me. My face must have shown my dread because it immediately brought a look of concern. A question formed, then disappeared as she nodded and smiled. “My son has a Christmas present he wants to buy without me seeing.” The checker looked over the counter at me, smiled, nodded her approval. I waited in wonder as the world unfolded right before my eyes. My mother passed the cart to the bagger, who filled it with our groceries. The checker told my mother the total, which was under $10 in those days. My mother opened her purse, pulled out her wallet, paid the checker, counted and stored her change in the little side pocket, returned her wallet to her purse, walked to the re-loaded cart, and guided it towards the automatic sliding-glass door.
I was suddenly aware of the open path before me, and reminded of the patiently waiting mothers behind me. The checker peered over, trying to see what I was carrying, which prompted me to put the bag up on the counter. I looked towards the door. My mother had stopped and was waiting for me, her back carefully turned to the business at hand. Everything went beautifully: the bubble gum made its appearance for a short time, then was returned to its hiding place. I searched the line of waiting mothers for potential informants, but was met with only reassuring smiles and nods. I dug into my pocket and fished out the 30 cents, putting it up on the counter, never doubting or mistrusting the checker with my year’s worth of savings. She confirmed, in a whisper, that the total was 30 cents, counted out the change, nodded, tapped in the payment. The cash register rang as the money drawer popped open. She dropped the appropriate coins in the appropriate places, closed the drawer with a click, tore off the receipt, and bent over to hand it to me. “Merry Christmas,” she said with a smile.
I took the bag home, kept it hidden from all prying eyes, until I could sequester myself in my room with a roll of wrapping paper, Scotch tape, scissors, and the want ads section of yesterday’s newspaper. The unwritten tradition, passed through the ages, was to wrap presents with the intention of fooling the recipient. With a sense of pride I took a sheet of newspaper, balled it around 5 pieces of bubble gum, and wrapped the crumpled ball with Santa-red with green hollies Christmas paper. I struggled with the round shapes, using a bit more tape than Santa would, but securely enclosing and disguising the contents. I labeled each with a small square of wrapping paper, folded over a name carefully written in pencil. I hid the balls under my bed, preventing any peremptory prying or poking.
And when the countdown finally reached “1”, I moved my presents from my room to under the Christmas tree. The next morning I watched with excitement, as my younger brother unraveled the first ball. The five pieces of bubble gum tumbled to the floor, followed by a scream of “BUBBLE GUM!” The announcement brought my mother, and her careful inspection of the gift, looking at me as if to decide if my intentions were good or bad, finally smiling, deciding in favor of letting stand one rule over another, and returning the bubble gum to its rightful owner.
My father was not so pleased and glared at me as if I had lied to him. But my mother saw it, too, and went to his side, whispered calming words that tempered the creases in his forehead and softened his regard, though never becoming a smile. It was my sister who next cried out, “Bubble gum!” But her cry was more one of horror than happiness, she being the oldest, the one who was so often told to take care of me and my brothers, the one who always had to be right, was afraid of not being right and doing the wrong thing. She, better than any of us boys, was fluent in the letter of the law. She ran to our mother, her preferred referee, complaining of an obvious foul, looking to get a penalty issued. Instead she was rebuffed with the the illogic of contradiction and the messy meting out of justice. A quick glance to our father showed his agreement with the decision. Unable to find resolution in their opinion, she waited for her chance, and at the first distraction took it upon herself to quarantine the easily identified unopened balls. Her mistake was to try to confiscate the illegal bubble gum from my brother, whose cries of foul were taken more seriously, and my sister was quickly pulled aside and instructed to repatriate all presents, even if they were bubble gum.
Later that morning, after all the presents were opened and the floor was awash in shredded strips of red and green, after the required rounds of thank-yous and your-welcomes, when quiet reigned as each played with his new-found favorite toy, my father came over, looked down at me with his hands at his hips, deciding what to do with me. He asked in a gentle voice that immediately warned of a trap, “I thought you were going to buy hard candies?”, the implication of which was clear: that I had bought unlawful bubble gum, sneaked it into the house under false pretenses, and distributed it amongst all present. I looked up at the towering figure, the giant that was my father, rule enforcer and king of the house, and said, “It wasn’t a surprise, you know, if you knew.” His face softened and I imagined the rules colliding inside his head. Still, his hands remained on his hips, so I launched torpedo number two, “And I thought bubble gum was a more thoughtful gift.” His eyes flared open, then narrowed, then he suddenly laughed. “Yes, I suppose it was,” he conceded. “Merry Christmas,” he said, reaching down to lift me, then deciding instead to hold out his hand for a shake. I would have preferred the hug, but was proud to receive the more adult shake.
I scanned the room, thinking for a moment about the expressions on my brothers’ faces, upon their discovery of bubble gum successfully in their possession. The moment was short, as I turned my attention to all the wonderful stuff I got for Christmas. But the memory remained long, becoming one of so many that decorate my tree.