Sometimes a flicker of faith is all you need
People, at first glance, might get the feeling that I live a charmed life. For a decade or two, I lived a “feast or famine” lifestyle. Big highs and low lows. I used to say that the reason I have thick fingers is from hanging off the sides of all those cliffs.
I finally figured out what I was doing wrong and corrected some things. I’ve become more conservative, although I’m still attracted to “shiny.” I’m pretty sure that comes from having lived a few of my childhood years at the borders of poverty.
In the 1950s, my two younger brothers and I lived with my mother out in the countryside of Middle Tennessee. She was a schoolteacher. Just like it is now, teachers weren’t paid squat.
Doctors get paid good money to keep you healthy. Attorneys make big bucks to keep you out of trouble. Yet, the dedicated souls who are tasked with standing at the chalkboard several hours a day and teaching our kids practically everything make one-third the amount that a plumber takes home.
Nothing against plumbers. Without hesitation, we’ll pay whatever it takes to unstop the toilet.
In those days, Mom always came up short. If the alimony payment was slow getting to her, it was near impossible to make ends meet with just her teaching salary.
Sometimes, she was able to negotiate making weekly payments on a past-due electricity bill. Those were the days when you could actually speak to a real
live person. These days, it’s all about the bottom line and computers. Computers have no empathy for a struggling single mother of three boys.
There was a blue jar on the kitchen drainboard in which Mom dropped her change. It was our savings account. Almost all of the money that I made doing odd jobs around town went into the jar.
I must admit, I usually held out a few nickels for peanuts and Coca-Colas. A Southern kid can’t be expected to carry on without an occasional Coke-and-peanuts snack.
All three Christmases we had while living with our mother were far from merry. Mom’s demons and her extreme depression seemed to intensify around the holidays. She thought too much about the wrongs in her life and, most of the time, ended up crawling back into bed.
There were no stockings hung. No Christmas decorations. Very few, if any, presents under the tree. Two out of those three years, we didn’t even put up a tree. Christmas was just another day.
Being broke and depressed affects kids just as much as grown-ups. Maybe, even more. Most especially close to Christmas.
I kept myself busy over the Christmas break working for practically all the elderly ladies who lived in our little town. My winter specialties were chopping wood and bringing in coal.
I got pretty good at chopping kindling. The pieces came out razor thin. A rolled up newspaper, a Diamond kitchen match and two or three sticks of my precision-chopped kindling, and you were on your way to a robust fire.
There were a few more than a dozen houses in the “downtown” area where we lived. Most of them were painted white, with big wraparound porches and brick chimneys. All of those homes were beautifully decorated with Christmas lights around the windows and across the gutters. Large green wreaths with snow-sprayed pine cones and colorful assortments of ornaments hung on a perfectly centered nail on the front door. Two or three front yards had elaborate lawn decorations.
The two spinster sisters who lived at opposite ends of the main road through town went all out. Aside from their permanent yard signs, proclaiming and warning of Jesus’ eventual return, both of them had Nativity scenes. And not just the manger and the swaddling-wrapped Baby Jesus. All across their lawns were replicas of Joseph and Mary, farm animals, including a donkey, a few angels, the Three Wise Men and the camels they rode in on.
Across the street, Mrs. Silva had me hang cloth redbirds and white doves in the cedar tree next to the sidewalk in her front yard. She had a big Santa, in full regalia, sitting in one of the front-porch rockers, and her beautifully appointed Christmas tree glittered through the front window.
Mrs. Clara Stephenson, the richest woman in town, had one of her farmhands, Leon, come into town, go in her garage and drag out the same holiday decorations she’d put out so many times before.
They were all light-ups. There was a sleigh, with Santa at the reins of all his reindeer, including a red-blinkingnosed Rudolph; four Christmas carolers, with stocking caps and mufflers around their necks; and a stand-up white candy cane with circling red stripes.
Leon plugged everything into two long extension cords that ran all the way back to the porch.
Sitting in her kitchen, sipping steaming cups of Ovaltine, Mrs. Stephenson and I would have our chats. She, being a retired schoolteacher, pretty much did all the talking. I didn’t mind. Her stories were always interesting. Besides, I think she rather enjoyed sharing her wisdom with me. There was always a history lesson and some Bible stories. Schoolteachers may retire, but they never stop teaching.
She would tell me about how the Wise Men put their faith in the heavens and followed a star in the sky to get to Baby Jesus.
She said that the star started out with a flicker, then to a bright white glow, guiding them. All the Wise Men needed to do was have faith and keep going.
I think Mrs. Stephenson suspected that my Christmas wasn’t going to be much. She asked me if I’d like to have that candy cane out in her front yard. She said that it hadn’t lit up in years but that I was “welcome to it.”
It had to be 6 feet tall. I dragged that thing all the way back home. I tried to make the cane light up. It just wouldn’t. I figured it was probably something to do with our indoor plug. Still, even without illumination, it was pretty cool to have our very own Christmas decoration out in our yard.
One Christmas Eve, Mom had gotten herself up and dressed. Gilly Truelove, a friend of the family, pulled up in his green Nash Rambler and took her to Woolworth’s. Mom came home with two sacks of presents and hid them in her bedroom closet.
She was a little groggy when she called me into her room and told me she needed me to wrap the presents. She was tired. Needed some sleep.
I was in the fourth grade. Even though I’d been given the straight scoop on Santa the year before, my youngest brother, Ricky, was still a believer.
It just didn’t seem right that I was the one wrapping my brothers’ Christmas presents. It got late. Only my dog, Prince, and I were up. I only had a few more presents to go. I looked around the trailer. Magazines stacked in the corners. Ashtrays full up. Beat-up furniture. We were poor.
I looked out the front window. The night was cold. It was stone quiet. I started to feel very lonely and sorry for myself. I began to cry.
All of a sudden, that big candy cane out in our yard started flickering. In less than a minute, it went to a hot, white glow. I stopped crying. Was that you, God?
I kept that candy cane out in our front yard till early March.
In a more recent sad turn of events, Jerry Frazier passed away this past Tuesday. COVID-19. He was a good friend and a great man. I’m gonna miss him. My deepest condolences to Tamera and the kids.