The more things change
Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, a French writer in the late 1880s, coined the epigram “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” in one of his journals, and I would argue that no truer words have ever been written.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” On Thanksgiving Day this year, my daughter arrived sporting a pantsuit that my mother wore some 50 years ago. We had discovered it stored in a guest bedroom closet as we began the process of clearing out my parents’ home after my father’s passing.
I found it and, on a whim, set it aside from Ramsey to try on. She really likes vintage clothing so I thought she might like it. She agreed and took it home, but I hadn’t seen it on her until she walked in at the Thanksgiving festivities.
The day was a bit of a big deal because it was the first holiday for us to spend without Dad, and pretty much everything had changed for my mother between his loss and her move to The Spires in Rome.
To further the upheaval, I transported Mom to our extended family celebration, a gathering she had been to once or twice before, but she hadn’t seen most of the folks there in many years.
Everything about the day was different for Mom, and yet in strolled a reminder of her past that she couldn’t possibly have anticipated. I couldn’t believe how perfectly the suit fit my tall and lanky daughter. Mom is tall, but my sister and I are taller and my daughter feels taller still with her long limbs and slender athletic build.
You would have thought the suit was tailor-made for her, and yet not a change had been made since Mom wore it just as perfectly in her younger days. So much has changed in those 50 odd years, and yet the genetics of the women of our family have apparently carried forward almost identically.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. As the turkey day dust settled, Ramsey and my sister, Jennifer, and I took advantage of the long holiday weekend to run up to Virginia and get a bit more done at Mom and Dad’s home, but I hoped to find time to secure a Christmas tree, a long-standing tradition for the weekend for Ramsey and me.
Over the years we have gone through various versions of the event, from traveling to North Carolina to traipse through a cut your own tree farm to scouring the selection at the local Lowe’s or Home Depot, to find the perfect tree.
For a couple of years we added a trip up to Whitetop, Virginia, to our holiday visit with Mom and Dad to find a tree at the numerous tree farms that the tiny town boasts. The rolling landscape of the area is perfect for not much other than Christmas tree cultivation, so there are trees for as far as the eye can see.
The top of Whitetop Mountain is one of our favorite destinations. It is the second highest peak in the state of Virginia and the highest point you can reach by car, and generally promises a good 20 to 30 degrees colder than the valley below.
The romance of bringing our tree home freshly cut from one of our favorite places was too delicious to pass up so, in spite of the business of our time in the area, we couldn’t help but take time out for a tree search on Saturday afternoon.
Our family has always enjoyed a good ride through the country, so it was immediately refreshing for us to hit the road. When we saw the first farm on the journey up the mountain, we felt like it wasn’t the right one so we continued on, only to discover that there wasn’t another cut your own farm to be found. There were gobs and gobs of trees, but not a single place that was inviting us to purchase one.
We could have turned around to head back to the place down the road, but if we kept going we would come down off the mountain on the Damascus side and we decided to take our chances. That’s what Dad would have done, after all.
We found a sign rustically bragging of $20 trees and headed up a dirt road until we came to an abandoned house and thought we might have heard banjos. I’m just kidding about the banjos, but we decided it was safer to turn back and continue towards Damascus.
Suddenly we saw a farm with a small red hut and a table top Santa and lots of cars and knew we had struck gold. In true Appalachian fashion, we drove across a small wooden bridge over a babbling stream into a muddy yard filled with chickens and turkeys mingling with enthusiastic customers.
We got instructions to walk up the hill and pick our tree, then wave down to them to come cut it for us. The two young guys who answered our wave were named Nicholas and Chris, and they said they hadn’t planned the connection to Father Christmas.
The entire scene was quaint and quirky and messy and wonderful. It was the perfect combination of old traditions and new adventures, just what the doctor ordered in our fragile new normal.
The more that life changes, the more aware we are of the things that keep us connected to each other and to the past. May we all be able to find those familiar notes as we roll through this holiday season, no matter how things might be different from before.
Monica Sheppard is a freelance graphic designer, beekeeper, mother and community supporter living in Rome.