A Poem in the Making
The gift of past scents and sounds, sights and textures, unwrapped in a quiet Christmas moment
So much of Christmas is wrapped up in memories. At the same time as we are experiencing Christmas anew, we are reliving Christmases we have known. In many ways, Christmas is experienced in the past as we’re in the present. Our experiences during this Christmas are becoming future memories. I wrote my poem specifically for the Christmas with Hot Apple Cider book.
I really did close my eyes to see what happened when I concentrated on “Christmas.”
However, first came the sense that scientists believe is the most influential of all—SMELL. The poem’s setting was my childhood Christmas, but some scents were more recent. The sweet-smelling children were our own. Slab firewood burned in that iron stove. Logs burned in fireplaces in our first owned house, in several manses, a United Church Toronto, Ontario mission house apartment, and, in our present Petawawa, Ontario, home.
Next, I experienced full-surround SOUNDS, tumbling over one another.
The squeaky-snow footsteps tiptoed in from my Renfrew, Ontariio childhood to mingle with sounds repeated through the years. The whispered secret reminds me of our younger daughter whispering in my ear, “It has a handle and soft bristles, and makes your hair shiny, but it’s a secret, so I can’t tell you what my present is.” (I still have it).
There were always tapes and paper and snapping crackers and readings and carols, and, almost always, a cat.
Since I wanted this poem to trigger others’ memories, not just mine, I deleted our opening our stockings on our parents’ bed, being careful to hide the contents of a package which had a similar shape until brother or sister had opened his/hers. Waiting for others to open is not, I gather, the practice in most homes.
The TASTES I recall would probably be common Christmas experiences.
Well, apart from that of the golden, translucent cod-liver-oil football-shaped pill in the two-shaded blue and dark blue box with plastic window, or the wooden box with branded design of fisherman with cod over his shoulder, (Now, readers could experience retroactive gratitude for something they did not receive at Christmas.)
There would be slight variations, but generally, the main meal indulgences would be like those which had my brother and me lying across two kitchen chairs with our bloated tummies suspended in space until things settled—nothing says Christmas like disgusting gluttony!
FEELING is a little trickier.
I recall feeling the red-ring-producing boot snow accumulation during the walk to church. And also keeping my promise to not open my stockings until the alarm sounded—at the same time as my toes experimentally felt their way around the knobbly stocking at the foot of my bed. All of the other feelings embraced in my verse transcend the years.
What I SEE at Christmas is much the same now as when I was a child, though I seldom deliberately distort my facial reflection in tree baubles.
Nor do I curve my hand to blow tinsel to the highest branches, as a son taught me to do in St. Andrew’s, New Brunswick.
I’ve never forgotten the brightly coloured images projected onto the snowbanks through the stained glass windows of the old spired church. That stone building burned beyond use some years after I’d moved to Ottawa, Ontario, and beyond. The building has been replaced—but not really. I can still mentally walk through the former floor plan. Those Christmas windows will light up my mind for as long as I have memory.
Patricia Anne Elford, OCT, BA, M Div, is a professional member of The Word Guild and InScribe Christian Writers’ Fellowship, educator, clergyperson, poet, enthusiastic freelance book and article editor, and award-winning writer. She has been published in literary journals, newspapers, periodicals, anthologies, worship publications, and online, and she is the compiler and editor of Grandmothers’ Necklace anthology, Stephen Lewis Foundation fundraiser.With four book manuscripts under development, Patricia—wife, mother, grandmother, and cat’s domestic servant—leads a full, God-nourished life in the Ottawa Valley.
Lovely – both this post and your poem – are as a feast for the senses! Deliciously delivered!