Looking For Christmas

My mother loved to tell the story about how I slipped out of the house one day when I was five years old. When she noticed that I was missing, she came out the backdoor calling my name. She quickly discovered me peering around the corner of the apartment building in which we lived. She asked me what I was doing, and according to Mama my response was, "Looking for Christmas." This was sometime in November. Anxious for Christmas with its lights and presents to arrive, I had asked her daily, since the previous Christmas, when Christmas was coming again. As the holiday drew nearer, her response had become, "Christmas is just around the corner." That day, I went to check it out.

This year, for the first time in over 20 years, I put up a Christmas tree. I always put candles in the windows and a wreath on the door, but in the past, I've been too lazy to put up a tree. Besides, I could always go home and see Mama's beautiful tree, but this year I put up my own, with lights, and ornaments, and my father said it was beautiful.

This year was our first Christmas without Mama. This was her season. She decorated everything. We teased her that if anyone of us stood still long enough that she would wrap us with lights and tinsel. She even decorated the bathroom for Christmas.

Mama was a fabulous cook, and her talents really shined at Christmas. This year, I hosted Christmas dinner for my sister and her husband, and my father. My brother, his wife and son visited us via phone but spent the holiday in their home near Charlotte.

I wanted to make it a special dinner, reflective of all the love and care that my mother always poured into the holiday meal. Every Christmas, Mama made homemade chocolate peanut candy, a pineapple cake with cream cheese frosting, and flavored oyster crackers. I decided that I would recreate each of these dishes for our first Christmas without her.

Although I know that she is with me always, there are times that I ache for her presence so badly that I don't think that I can go on, but go on I do because there really is no other option. I had been dreading this holiday without her, but somehow, standing in my kitchen on Christmas Eve, mixing cake batter, cooking the pineapple syrup, with my father waiting to scrape the remnants of the batter out of the pan, made me feel as if she was with me more than ever. My dad also helped with the candy (he scraped the last drops of chocolate out of the pan when I was done dropping the candy by the spoonful on the foil to cool). He used to do the same for my mother. He snacked on the oyster cracker snacks that I had made the day before while waiting to make sure that the pots and pans were thoroughly cleaned.

Rhonda and Bob came over for dinner and we all had a lovely dinner of baked ham, potato salad, cabbage casserole, black-eyed peas, rolls, and lemonade, followed up with pineapple cake. Before dinner I found myself cautioning, just like my mother, not to eat too much chocolate candy or snack crackers and spoil dinner.

Mama I miss you so much. I did all right, but I'm still looking around that corner, only now it's you that I'm looking for.