The Many Thoughts of Wanda Kidd

My Husband, Dan continued to unpack the Christmas decorations and put them in the living room, hoping it would inspire me to embrace the Christmas Spirit. After a couple of days, I began sorting through the boxes and found the stockings that had belonged to Amy, Ricky, and myself for most of our lives. They were nothing special, I remember when Mama bought the flannel fabric with the stockings printed to cut out and sew together at Copeland’s Five and Dime. It was on Main Street in Carrboro, a block away from where we picked out our fresh-cut cedar tree, which leaned against my Uncle Bill’s grocery store.

When I unpacked the Christmas decorations this year, it was the first time since 2017 that I thought I might actually feel like celebrating. My mama loved Christmas, and all of our traditions, even after I married and had children, were centered around the things she valued for the holiday. She did not enjoy cooking, but you could count on a variety of confections laid out on the dining room table throughout the season. The tree was hauled down from the attic and decorated the day after Thanksgiving and was down by New Year’s Day. There was the obligatory miniature ceramic Christmas village with fleece snow, tiny trees, and Christmas music played on the stereo most of the day.

One year, Mama asked our babysitter, Nancy, to create a mural on the mirror over the fireplace. The mural was a skating scene with the unpainted mirror as the frozen pond. She used whipped soap for texture and tempera paint for the trees and skaters. It was magical.

Because I spent most of my adulthood working in churches or co-chairing the Jackson County, NC Christmas Store Project during the holiday season, it was easier to allow Mama’s Christmas traditions to define my own family’s traditions. While it was easier at the time, I was without personal traditions after the loss of all of my nuclear family in four short years. We moved to a new town and closed the Christmas Store Project that Elaine White and I chaired for 30 years.  Since then, I have struggled to know how to proceed.

The stockings never had our names embroidered on them, just a handwritten scrap of paper pinned to the top with our names written in my Mama’s beautiful script.  They were large enough to put an orange in the toe and a tangerine in the heel. Then they had little toys, like a paddleball and sets of jacks. There were always underwear, socks, and Thin Mints for me because they were my favorite. My brother got licorice (which he loved), but we both ate whatever Amy got because she did not like candy, but Mama was always fair in her distribution.

I was awash with memories when I touched those sixty-plus-year-old stockings this year. Some were funny, and some were touching.  For example, when Amy was three, she wanted a Shirley Temple doll. She talked about it non-stop.  She exclaimed about her ringlet hair and pinafore dress and how Santa would bring her one for Christmas, but Shirley was a hot commodity.  Mama worked and did not have time to stand in lines during the day to play “Capture the Doll.” She decided that since Amy’s birthday was in January, it would be easier to get one then and get her a random doll for Christmas. For this story, it’s important to know that Amy had a childhood speech impediment that made her say T’s for C’s and S’s. Daddy always gave the word for the children to be able to come downstairs on Christmas morning. Our Santa gifts were in piles with the most asked-for gift on top. As we raced to locate our gifts that morning, Amy discovered the switch. No Shirley Temple doll was waiting for her atop her pile. There was a small Angel doll dressed in white, with white hair and wings. Absorbed as we each were with our gifts, it was hard to ignore that without flapping her wings, that Angel doll took flight and hit the wall with startling ferocity. Standing with hands on her hips was an outraged three-year-old who stomped her foot and, with anger and tears, exclaimed, “Dodn’t Tanta Taus know a Tirley Temple Doll when he sees one?”  My mother never tried to second-guess us again because who wants their three-year-old to lose faith in Santa? As it turned out, one year, I had to tell Amy that Santa would not bring her a color TV regardless of whether our parents told her, “If she quit believing, she would quit receiving.” Enough was enough, but she milked that to the end.

Years into adulthood, Mama filled those stockings from Mr. Copeland’s Five and Dime with oranges, tangerines, Thin Mints, and random small things she bought throughout the year because they made her think of us. They were tucked into the corners of chairs as we gathered in the living room to unwrap the mountain of gifts for the children and others. Each stocking still had the aged paper with our names pinned to the top. They were the first things we went to each year, and with grateful hearts, we laughed and delighted in the small things they held.

As the middle of my siblings, I never thought I would be the last one trying to remember how to celebrate, but this year, when I found the stockings among the decorations, our names were missing, but I saw them clearly for the treasure they are. I have been like a three-year-old with my hands on my hips, angry because my Christmas reality is not what I hoped for.  But this year, the stockings did not feel empty in my hands.  They were full of memories: good ones, funny ones, and even disappointing ones. This year, our Appalachian mountains experienced inexplicable loss intermingled with love and generosity, and through it all, I have experienced profound moments of Joy, Peace, Love, and Hope this Advent season.

Sing Hallelujah.  I thought I might never experience it again.