Granny’s Care Package

head lifted and froze. Alarm and guilt made her eyes wide. Oh, yes, it was Mercy.

She lay under her favorite tree in a fluffy nest of shredded wrapping paper, chewed-up boxes, and curling bits of ribbon. Presents, pawed from their packages, were strewn among tattered bows. Beautifully wrapped boxes had gaping holes. Fragments of tissue paper mixed with the last remaining evidence of gifts.

Clearly Mercy’s self-control had failed. She’d silently carried one package after another out the doggy door so she could pillage in private. Anything edible was gone, including cookies, chocolates, candy canes, and four pounds of Milk-bones.

Nature took pity on Mercy, and she survived her midnight snack. My parents were so grateful, they laughed off the ruined presents. Only one problem remained. With all the gift tags destroyed, how could they send out thank-you cards?

Mercy presented the problem, so Mercy provided the answer. A few days later, Polly returned to her easy chair to find Mercy guiltily licking a plate where a doughnut had just been. Polly snapped a picture of the shamefaced pooch and used it to make thank-you notes. The caption read, “Thank you for the ??” Inside, the whole story was explained. We all had to laugh. And everyone shared the sweet reminder that amid all the gift giving, it’s really a season for Mercy.

It was Christmastime, 1974. I was ten years old, but I was not looking forward to Christmas.

The previous spring, my mother and the man who was to become my stepfather had moved our family from rural Alabama to sunny Southern California. My little brother, Todd, and I were leaving behind our father and all of our extended family.

This would be my first Christmas away from Alabama.

My elegant mother took to California like a swan to a royal lake. My soon-to-be stepfather was a California native. My athletic little brother reveled in a climate that allowed him to be outdoors 11 months of the year.

I, however, was a fat, awkward child with a high-pitched voice and a heavy southern accent. My first day at my new school, I went to the front of my fourth-grade class to introduce myself.

All I said was my name and where I was from. The class erupted in laughter, with jeers of “He talks funny.”

It took the teacher two minutes to restore order, and she was angry at me for having caused a disruption.

I was so disillusioned that I went to a gas station after school and used the phone booth there to place a collect call to Granny Smith, my paternal grandmother.

Granny was my biggest ally. I was going to ask her whether I could return to Alabama and live with her, and whether she would send me the money for a bus ticket home. But the

line was busy, and despite several attempts, I didn’t get through.

To make matters worse, my mother was always encouraging and badgering me to lose weight. She had been a fat child herself and saw weight loss as the key to my happiness.

Granny Smith was everything good about Christmas. Her language of love was food. She would spend weeks cooking for Christmas Eve, when all of her children and grandchildren would gather at her house.

Every favorite dish, dessert, and confection was made to specification. Her table and sideboard groaned under the weight of the food. My cousins, my brother, and I would burst through her back door, our arrival announced by the chime of five silver bells suspended on red velvet ribbons from a plastic poinsettia bouquet, which hung on the door.

Her house was tiny and saturated with tacky Christmas decorations and cigarette smoke. But to my childhood aesthetic, it was glorious.

She sewed new pajamas for all of her grandchildren. She scoured catalogs, newspaper advertisements, and stores all over town to get us exactly the toy we had requested.

She was my solace. She was my resilience. She was magical.

I missed her desperately.

It was Sunday evening, and I was moping around the house, dreading Monday and the return to school. Fortunately, there was only one week left before the Christmas break. I was longing for my familiar southern Christmas.

The phone rang. It was Granny Smith. She often took advantage of the discounted long-distance rates after 7 p.m. on Sundays.

My brother and I chatted with her for nearly half an hour. She sent her love, asked us about school, and assured us she had found the toys that we wanted and that they would be there by Christmas.

But before she hung up, she asked to speak to our mother. This request made my brother and me very nervous. My mother considered Granny Smith to be in the enemy camp. They maintained a civil but strained relationship.

Granny informed Mother that she had shipped a Christmas package and it should arrive in the coming week.

My mother said, “Thank you, but I hope you did not have to spend a lot of money. It is very expensive to ship things across the country.”

Despite their differences, my mother respected that Granny was a woman of very modest means. She had been

GRANNY SMITH WAS EVERYTHING GOOD ABOUT CHRISTMAS, ESPECIALLY THE FOOD.

a widow for nearly 30 years and had worked mostly menial jobs. For her, money was always scarce.

Granny said, “It wasn’t very expensive at all, and I was happy to do it.” They wished each other a merry Christmas, and my brother and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Sure enough, on Thursday afternoon, the phone rang. But it wasn’t the U.S. Postal Service—it was Greyhound Bus Lines, calling to say we had a package waiting at the bus terminal in Claremont, California.

“I didn’t even know that Greyhound shipped packages,” my mother said to the clerk on the phone.

“Oh, yes,” the clerk said. “In fact, we’re far cheaper than the U.S. Postal Service because we don’t deliver door-to-door.”

This annoyed my mother because the bus station was nearly ten miles away. The clerk informed her that we could pick the package up at any time. So after supper, we drove to the bus station.

The clerk said to my mother, “You can pull your car around to the loading door.”

Mother said, “What for?”

“The package is too large to hand over the counter,” the clerk said.

He came to our car with a hand truck carrying a heavily reinforced cardboard box, large enough to hold a small refrigerator.

“This barely makes it inside the maximum size dimensions and weight restrictions,” he said as he hoisted the box into our trunk and went to get some twine to tie the trunk lid closed.

My brother and I were giddy on the way home, wondering what the box contained. Our mother was not in such good humor. She knew her ex-mother-in-law well and was suspicious of the box.

When we got home, we had to go inside and get our stepfather—the box was too heavy for us to get out of the car. He grunted as he set the box down in the living room and said, “What the heck did she send, a jeweler’s safe?”

We tore into the box. The smell of our granny’s house wafted into the air: a combination of fried meat, grease, furniture polish, and cigarette smoke. There, beneath wadded newspaper and excelsior, was our southern Christmas.

There were presents wrapped in decorative paper and bows to go under the Christmas tree. Neatly folded in brown paper was a new set of pajamas for each of us, plus two five-count packs of Fruit of the Loom underwear in the appropriate sizes for us both.

There were countless decorative tins and repurposed Cool Whip containers. We opened them to discover mounds of homemade Christmas treats:

Divinity.

Fudge.

Boiled chocolate cookies.

Parched peanuts.

A massive container of “nuts and bolts,” which is what southerners call homemade Chex Party Mix. A fruitcake.

A chocolate pound cake.

She even included our traditional stocking stuffers of candy bars, chewing gum, citrus fruits, and pecans and walnuts in the shell.

The box was as bottomless as Mary Poppins’s satchel. As each confection came out, my brother and I shrieked with delight and our mother moaned in defeat.

Mother tried to hide the sweets and dole them out a few at a time. But each evening our stepfather would search for them. Eventually, she gave up and left it all out on the kitchen counter.

Every Christmas that we spent in California, Greyhound would call and say that our package had arrived. Over the years, many treasures arrived in the box: handcrocheted afghans, an heirloom family quilt, handmade Christmas decorations. A check to help with the purchase of my first car.

For me, it was always the best part of Christmas. Even after I moved out of the house, the box continued to arrive. My college roommates were always delighted with the contents. My granny was able to package and ship magic and love.

Granny is long gone and missed more each year. Since her death, I have discovered in conversations with my cousins that Granny came to the rescue of all her grandchildren at one time or another, softening what would have been hard and harmful emotional landings.

She did it in such a way that we each thought we were her favorite.

Granny had endured a difficult childhood with a mother who suffered from mental illness. She understood the importance of a child having an ally when a parent fails.

Each year, a few days after Thanksgiving, I hang the plastic poinsettia bouquet with the bells on my front door to announce the arrival of holiday guests. I have mastered many of my grandmother’s recipes—though good divinity still eludes me.

When the Christmas season arrives, I lovingly remember Granny and cherish the magic and resilience she gave me. And when I see a Greyhound bus on the highway, I think to myself, In the belly of that machine may travel some child’s Christmas.

THE BOX WAS AS BOTTOMLESS AS MARY POPPINS’S SATCHEL.