My Mother's Christmas Present

When I was little, we always spent Christmas with my mother's family. We went to the house on Christmas Eve to be ready for Santa Claus to come. I was the only child that lived close, so I was sort of the star, or so I thought. Sometimes relatives came with children, cousins, second cousins, distant cousins. We kept in touch with the far-off as well as the close-by relations. For spending the night, it was often just Auntie, Tom, Jimmie, Momma, Daddy, and me.

On Christmas morning, we gathered in the kitchen where the coffee was brewing. I looked in at them; then we went to the living room where the tree was.

Auntie, who was actually my mother's aunt and my grandfather's second wife, came to offer me a glass of milk. To me she was a grandmother. I thanked her but refused. Her expression said she was crushed. She was tall and slender and sort of regal but oh, so gentle.

Tom was Momma's sister. She fluttered around the kitchen a little like Edith Bunker, making coffee, offering toast, and insisting on helping. I just wanted to open the presents. Yes, I know, Tom is a man's name. I always wondered about that, too. One time I asked Daddy why they called her Tom. I thought that it was a nickname. He said, "I guess they didn't want to say Zelma." Her whole name was Zelma Tom, but I didn't know that until I saw it on a legal document many years later.

I came back to the kitchen begging everyone to hurry. Jimmie was Momma's brother. "The gifts will still be there if I drink this coffee," He said, teasing me. He always looked handsome and sort of sophisticated, at least for our small town. This morning he was wearing a white shirt and slacks. His hands were manicured and smooth and he held his cigarette delicately in one hand and the coffee in the other. Jimmie loved to dance and taught me. I thought I was quite sophisticated when he took me dancing for my ninth birthday. I gave up on him and begged Momma to come.

Momma helped me with scouting the tree and the presents. We finally all got around the tree and I was allowed to deliver the gifts.

Momma always liked surprises, especially if she could surprise someone else. This year I had helped her wrap Daddy's gift. It was a pair of shoes. She wrapped them separately in odd shaped boxes. Of course, we knew that when he opened the first one, the game was up. I thought it was wonderful.

Daddy showed no excitement. He was always patient and seemed never to get in a hurry. It was quite frustrating. He was not handsome or tall like Jimmie. He gazed at me with mild humor. He was 16 years older than Momma, which, in my mind, accounted for his lackadaisical behavior.

Momma was patient as long as she could stand it; she began to shuffle the gifts and sort through the pile. She finally found the one from Daddy. He hadn't put it under the tree until Christmas morning. Sometimes he put it under the tree with no tag because she would open it as soon as she found it. She tore into the little package. I was completely disappointed. It was a box of bath powder. Nice bath powder, the kind she used, but hardly worth all this effort. She opened the box and finally found what she was after under the powder puff: the card. It read, "I would love you if you were a millstone around my neck."

She died of cancer the next August. I wish I had all the cards he ever wrote her. That kind of romance is hard to come by.

I Think of You

Roses are red, violets are blue.
I hear those words and think of you.
I see your eyes creased with laughter.
Determined, you got what you were after.


Blinded, I loved you from the start,
And failed to see how far we were apart.
So many things we should have shared
Were lost, for we were wrongly paired.

I wrote poems that bored you so
You quoted the want ads so I would know.
I shared feelings and things that I thought,
But you rejected the sharing I sought.

We were, for each other, completely wrong,
But love soared above the old sweet song.
It would have been charming, more like the books
To have had the romance and tender looks.

But the love we've known was a stronger kind
That surmounted the differences of the mind.
We've traveled far and seen many a season
And this love of the soul defies all reason.

                                by Gayle Haynes

The Man Shall Leave His Mother and Father

I wonder if the Biblical injunction for a man to leave his mother and father and be joined unto the wife and become one flesh with her is honored in this century. I think my mother believed it. She may have been less interested in becoming one with his family, but she was comfortable with joining with him in this very deep communion. Some people seem to accomplish this joining better than others, or at least to observers it looks like it. Maybe they are more alike to begin with when we see this level of agreement: they were meant for each other. Or maybe one becomes dominant and consumes the other.

I remember and hold onto the idea that my mother and father were the former kind of lovers. Neither lost identity, but both were enriched by their love and marriage. I think they still bless me with their joy in one another. I wonder if they were familiar with Genesis 2:24?

Who Was My Mother?

Sometimes I have thoughts that don't fit a category, and I don't know how to title the post. Today is such a day. Today I am thinking about my mother. She died when I was ten. I never knew her as a person. I mean I knew she was strict and expected me to mind. I knew she loved my father. I knew she had good friends and enjoyed playing bridge and social events. But I only have the barest intimation of what she thought, of who she really was.

It occurred to me when I was grown that I wished I had known her as an adult. Now I think she would have been a really neat person. Then she was only "Mama." She read and talked to friends and enjoyed music. Who was her favorite band or singer? Marlene Dietrich was high on the list. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and the Barrymores were high class celebrities to her.

So much I don't know, but a few things, I do. One thing I do know: she loved me. She told her cousin Mary Frances that she had taken me to a birthday party when I was three. The children did what children do at parties. "Mary Frances, I was embarrassed for all the other mothers because Gayle was so superior to all the other children."  I had a picture from one such occasion and I thought I looked just as ordinary and plain as all the others. I cannot believe her evaluation was unbiased or clear sighted, but it does speak of her adoration of her only child. There is something truly blessed in such love.