I called my mother the other day with a demand: "Mom, I need you to make us popcorn balls and fudge and send it to us for Christmas. And they have to be
just like Grandma's. No tweaking, no changes. The popcorn balls
must be made with pink-tinted sugar, each one wrapped in wax paper, and the fudge
has to be sent in the old Russell Stover boxes. And even when you retire here, you need to mail them to us, not just come over with them. Okay? Do you promise?"
Like all good mothers, she accepted my unreasonable demands, not because she's a pushover, but because she understands my love for roots. And because she values time-honored traditions as much as I do, she's willing to take my grandmother's place and start making these Christmas staples to send to her grandchildren. Even if shaping the popcorn balls means she's going to burn her fingers repeatedly. Because that's what my grandmother did, year after year, and that memory needs to live on. She will be 95 this year, too old to burn her fingers making me popcorn balls, so my mother has agreed to stand at the helm and pass the tradition down.
I have noticed lately how many reminders I have of my grandmother in my home:
Two quilt tops, both intensely feminine and lovely--one a delicate rose I slept under every time we visited her and my grandpa, and later given to me when I graduated high school. The other is a beautiful purple and white, with butterflies in assorted calico, blanket-stitched in thick black thread. It reminds me of a lively Amish quilt;
An old, old,
old blue glass toothpick holder given to her when she was a young girl;
Salt and pepper shakers that sat on her kitchen table for years;
Piles of old sheet music, including an Irving Berlin's White Christmas original--I have happy memories of playing her ancient piano in the basement of her home;
Pillowcases with embroidery so exquisite I didn't believe she had really done it herself, until my mother told me that my grandmother made them for her trousseau and won a blue ribbon at the fair for her work. (They must be around 70 years old?);
Two strands of pearls and a gold locket on a long chain;
A set of tin biscuit cutters;
An apron that would now be "vintage," but was then just "an apron."
An old, beat-up metal flour sifter.
A picture of her sits on my kitchen counter--it has the high distinction of being the only photo in the kitchen. She looks lovely in a lavender sweater, smiling next to my dad. I look at it sometimes when I'm cooking, and wonder what life was like in the 20s, 30s, 40s. I cut buttermilk biscuits with the scalloped-edged cutter and am sure to tell Caiden that those were Grandma's. He looks at her picture and smiles, though he has never met her. He knows which apron was hers, and that my rose quilt is sacred, never touched without permission. I'm surprised, as the years have gone by, to see how many of her things, some special, some utilitarian, have collected in my home. Someday when she is gone, her memory will still linger, even among the hearts of children who will never meet her. They won't meet her, but they'll know her.
I wonder, as I look around our home, what Caiden's children will have of mine. Will my grandchildren or great-grandchildren value my jewelry, asking Caiden which heart necklace celebrated Aunt Addie's heart surgery? Did that sapphire ring really show up as just an extra gift in Grandmother Sarah's Christmas stocking? Will they treasure my books as much as I do, my copy of Robert Frost's poetry, once belonging to my husband's family? Will they know that my copy of Poems for Children held a precious place in my heart? Or will one of them have one of my mixing bowls, always placing it gently on the shelf, fearing a crack? I wonder.
Roots are important. We need to know our great-grandmothers' middle names; we need to see faded sepia photographs of our great-aunts, stiff and starched and unsmiling. We need something tangible we can show our children that proves that we are not the end-all of life. There were people before us; there will be people after us. Not just people, though,
our people. They may not have known us, and we may not have known them, but we are inexplicably linked forever. The more of my own history I can share with my children, and even just enjoy myself, the more I realize the importance of my special place in time. I am constantly leaving a legacy for others to sift through, realized or not.
So this Christmas, hopefully around the 15th, a large package will arrive at the front door in handwriting already familiar to six-year old Caiden. In it will be reused Russell Stover boxes with individual squares of fudge, each one with a halved pecan in the center. And popcorn balls, carefully molded together by burned fingers, will be individually wrapped in waxed paper and used as packing material to cushion wrapped gifts. And then, because it's tradition, my own family will huddle on the couch and watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," or "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and crunch those popcorn balls together, knowing they were made with a Grammy's love, in a great-grandmother's tradition.
And about 25 years from now, I will take my mother's place in the kitchen and stir liquid fudge, and burn my fingers on popcorn balls, and I'll send them to my grandchildren two weeks before Christmas. They will huddle on the couch, celebrating their own roots.
It's amazing, the things that make up a family. When I realize how important those little traditions are, I am encouraged to keep on, even when my efforts and actions aren't received with gratitude. Someday my family will look back and understand I did it not just for them, but also for myself, and for those who will come after us all.
