A few nights ago, Cheryl and I attended a reunion of friends who grew up in Fort Mill and who attended Fort Mill High School when it was on the corner of Banks and Academy Streets. They named themselves the “Ol’ School Crowd” and use every opportunity to enjoy each other’s company, to reminisce about growing up together, and to do good things for the town they love. They were not my classmates but were more my wife’s age. More than that I will not add. We were all at an age where we would rather subtract. It was an informal gathering to celebrate the retirement of one of their own, Andy Strickland. We felt welcome and were caught up in their spirit.
This is the season for Auld Lang Syne, for the remembering of things long past and people and places we see through our own “Back Window”. Before the old year is wrapped up in torn paper, placed carefully in boxes and tucked away in the attic, we have the Week of December 26th to the 31st.
It is the “Week of What Was”. Radio stations play hits from the past, newscasts list those celebrities we lost during the year, and, truth be known, we take the time to tally up our personal griefs and successes. We hold off our review of the year as long as we can during the holiday season, greeting friends and family with lots of “happy” this and “merry” that. We gather in clusters, large and small to let the syrupy joy of Christmas insulate us from the from the chill memories of the defeats and losses that every year leaves in its wake. We try our best to see the season through the eyes of a child and to believe in a world of candy canes and reindeer who really know how to fly.
But in that lost week, it all comes back. Good memories, like Mama and Irene Davis spending an entire day baking fruitcakes…not the crumbly plastic brick fruitcakes but moist and dark with dates and raisins and colorful dried cherries and pineapple wedges and soaked in a little rum, just to add flavor, you know. Sadly, it is a taste that lives in memory only.
The time brings back thoughts of Aunt Sister, (Don’t ask, it is a Southern name thing but does not involve inter-genetic marriage. She was my mother’s older sister and her given name, Lillian, just didn’t suit her.). Sister would put up the tree at my grandparents’ house and cover it in tinsel so that the revolving color disk could bathe it in red, blue, green and orange and somewhere, hidden deep among the other ornaments was a small speaker that repeated “Jingle Bells” over and over until someone would plead with her to turn it off. It is a memory I relish although most of the people around that tree, that generation of the Case family, grandparents, my parents and aunts and uncles have long since left us.
That lost week brings back memories of Christmas in our house on Gregg Street. The tree and presents filled a corner of the little knotty-pine paneled den that Dad was so proud of adding with his own hands. Connie and I would run through the living room and the kitchen to find our Christmas gifts. Mama would wrap us in robes and socks against the morning chill until the small coil-spring electric heater could warm the room.
In that room filled with the smell of fresh-cut cedar, we would tear into package after package marveling at the wonders inside. Dad would watch sleepily from his chair while Mother peeked in through the kitchen door. Coffee was already bubbling up into the glass top of the percolator and sausage was browning in preparation for Mom’s depression gravy, thick and tan with chopped boiled egg, and sausage, and sprinkled liberally with pepper.
Those days, with their joys and struggles are gone as are many of the people who surrounded us with love.
And we have fresher memories to process as well. We look back on our teen years when we thought we were too old for toys and too cool to like any clothes picked out by our parents. Like most young people caught in that transition, we were less than a delight to live with. I wish now that I could go back and let my parents know I understand how hard they tried, how much they sacrificed, and how impossible I was to please.
During those bleak late December days, we remember when we took over the role of parents and waited, not for Christmas morning to arrive but for the excitement of Christmas Eve to end and for our children to grow sleepy and finally settle in for the night. We would creep up to the attic or dig in the back of closets, trying our best to keep quiet as we helped Santa gather presents and put them under our tree in our own den. We struggled to put reluctant grips on bicycle handlebars and set up train sets and doll houses.
We finished around midnight and hoped we had chosen well…that our children would find a little magic under the tree. We then helped Santa enjoy the cookies and milk or in my family tradition, toasted his visit with one last sip of bourbon, and we slipped off to bed for the few hours sleep before the madness began.
During that week of memories, we also take stock of our losses. We think of those who were not around our Christmas table because of time or distance or death. We mourn the loss of loved ones who enriched us with laughter and who shored us up when the world threatened to topple us. As we grow older, time takes its toll on those around us. Family and friends, once so young and strong and indestructible, falter with age and leave us wishing for one more one more touch, one more laugh and one more time around our table. We think of our friends and our children in other homes building their own memories and traditions.
During that difficult week, when the dark still comes early, I linger outside despite the late December chill. The first stars are beginning to appear and Venus is still low and bright in the southwest sky. It is my time to try and make sense of it all. The time that I open myself to the sorrows and regrets that weave through my life…the time that I admit my failures and my shortcomings.
Just as the darkness threatens to envelop me, however, something mystical and soul-stirring begins to happen. Tiny bits of light begin to appear and glow into brightness. The sky, dark as it is, fills up with millions of points of wonder and hope, and I remember the times and the people who brought so much light into my darkness.
On December 31st, we celebrate old times, old friends and past adventures. But January 1st will dawn on a time when we can start afresh and begin that “First day of the rest of our lives”. It is a time we plan to mend our ways, to heal our wounds and to accomplish those back-burner dreams.
The “Ol’ School Crowd” has it right. They come together to remember the times, good and bad, that have passed, but they also work to build a better today. Like them, let’s make 2023 a good year and Andy…Have a great retirement!
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