It’s the little things

In conversation last week with lifelong friend Ann Moles of Harrison, I realized how the seemingly smallest of things in our lives at Christmas are the ones that over time will come to mean most to us.

It wasn’t the big gifts or gorging meals that left their deepest mark in so many memories, but rather the little experiences, items and traditions.

In Ann’s case, the antique string of pearls her grandmother always donned on Christmas has become the same strand she now wears during this season.

“These pearls mean the most to me when I look back on all those years from childhood and on,” she said. “I always will remember her always wearing this necklace.” Slipping her hand beneath the 20-inch string, she lifted their radiance to the light with a smile.

A flash of deeper reflection became evident in her eyes.

That started me thinking about what pearls of my own I most fondly recalled from Christmases past. There were two. It was always a touching experience to retrieve ornaments, handmade by our children, and hang them each year in special places on the tree. Every ornament marked another Christmas spent together. And I was always moved by the excitement on their faces as they bounded into the living room on Christmas mornings.

Another friend said he remembered the cup of hot chocolate his mother always handed him on Christmas day as he sat in a chair, methodically eyeing his gifts and trying to decide which to open first.

Cousin John Arthur Hammerschmidt wasted no time listing his two favorite small things that best marked his Christmases past. “Mom always made chili on Christmas Day,” he said. “It was a ritual. Then we had a very old fork with a loose chip that rattled in its hollow handle. I always sought it out for Christmas day meals at my grandfather and grandmother’s house. In fact, all the kids wanted to use that special fork, just like my own dad had done when he was a child.”

Hammerschmidt said he still has the treasured rattling fork that had been handed down through the family from the turn of the century. “It was one of the main things I asked to keep when my grandparents were gone.”

Methodist Rev. David Smith of Harrison and Bergman told me his grandmother always had her lighted plastic cathedral (about a foot square) that tinkled the tune to “Silent Night” when wound from behind. “As kids we were always looking for that prized cathedral. We were warned never to wind it too tightly or it would break. So we always were careful not to. When I received the cathedral, I passed on the same caution to my children. Now that little cathedral still plays and has become a Christmas heirloom in our family today. It’s still never been too tightly wound.”

One woman said she remembered lying in bed staring at the ceiling through most of every Christmas Eve night, dozing off and on until the first rays poked through her window and her heart raced even faster as she bounded from bed. “It was such a joyful, wondrous feeling that only children’s hearts and minds can truly know,” she said.

Fragrance of a brightly decorated conifer tree that filled the room in the period before Christmas morning was the small thing that hearkened past Christmases for another friend. He’d said he’d break off little pieces from the branches to carry around something that smelled like Christmas all day long. It still triggers that memory when he catches a whiff of evergreens.

I’m betting most of you have a similar account of what seemingly small things at the time remain embedded deepest in your memories of Christmases past.

The one thing I see they have in common is the connection between our physical senses of this world and the spiritual aspects of this sacred season and day. It’s fitting they should confirm for us how, like pearls on a necklace, it truly is the little things that usually wind up mattering most over our lifetimes.

The jail break-in

It’s likely not a first. Yet it’s surely unique that two men in Pineville, Mo., just north of Bella Vista made headlines the other day after supposedly breaking back into jail after breaking out several hours earlier that day.

As a result, both men face felony charges of escaping confinement, which, if convicted, could extend their sentences of up to four years, the news account said.

Seems an anonymous source provided information that led the sheriff and others to review video footage of an open-air jail pod which purportedly showed that the inmates (not initially named) departed through a utility closet containing water pipes, then crawled across the attic and took off through an unlocked back room in the jail, only to return about five hours later.

No one seemed to know where the pair went, or why. And if they brought anything back into the jail with them, it certainly wasn’t obvious. All the authorities said they found afterwards was some tobacco.

Is this one mighty strange world or what?

Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail. com.