Old Christmas in Holly Pond

When I was a boy in the 1960s, the majority of my extended family lived no further than twenty miles from my home in north central Alabama, so I pretty much took it for granted that I would see just about everyone fairly regularly, but not always in big groups. We kept many scheduled family reunions then, the summer ones usually corresponding to decoration Sundays at family churches, a couple of more modest meetings at Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, and the big Christmas one, with my lone surviving maternal great grandmother being its focus. Usually, on Christmas mornings (the lone exception's being the year my younger brother had the mumps), we two kids and our parents would open presents, eat breakfast, and then head out to Holly Pond for the noon meal, the house full of relatives and the weather usually accommodating the many cousins' spilling outside to play all over the farm. The old house couldn't contain everything that was in it.

My maternal great-grandmother lived in a house trailer next to the house of my mother's younger aunt, Jean, and her husband, whose given name was Charles but who was usually called "Chuck" or "Chunk." Uncle Chunk Yeager was a tall, happy man, with tanned skin and a salt-and-pepper mustache, sometimes, and I have always associated his leathery, comfortable look with cowboys. He was consistently one of the most cheerful men I have ever known, easy going and hospitable. He made every child who visited his home feel welcome, and I have always wished that he had lived long enough to meet my younger children. Jean was just as loving, and it meant a great deal to be around her. After we lost Uncle Chunk, she seemed diminished in a way she could not overcome, and our subsequent gatherings always missed someone. Their children, Richard and Melanie, were lucky to have them both.

My maternal great-grandmother, Eula Snuggs, surprised me all the time. An awfully energetic and matter-of-fact woman, she made an early impression on me when I once saw her injecting insulin in her abdomen, standing right in front of the open refrigerator door with syringe in hand. One Christmas, someone thought it would be funny to give her a pair of Tobasco-red panties, and she held them up to herself and showed them off to everyone in the house, deflecting the joke from her. Her trailer was her own choice for her own independence, and I hope that when my own mother reaches that age, she will preserve those best aspects of her grandmother's character.

My favorite times in Holly Pond were at the old farmhouse. Jean and Chunk later sold that land and built a new house about a mile from it up the dirt road and closer to the main road, but I associate big Christmas with the old house. First of all, no matter what the weather happened to be, there would be the same feeling walking in. We would enter through what was essentially a utility room, through the back door. In this narrow room of the house, basically a hallway, was a closet, the chest freezer, the washer, and the dryer. On these appliances, the guests would place the various desserts they had brought. The kids would usually eat Christmas dinner there, standing with our plates on the appliances and eying the desserts. This room passed for the "big kid" table, the transition between being tended to as an infant and later tending to infants of one's own; eating there marked a stage of maturity.

Every Christmas (and, for many years, the first Sundays of May), I had to brace myself before going into the kitchen from the utility room, because suddenly there would be so much heat (ham and turkey and dressing and rolls had been in the oven for hours; every eye on the stove had a bubbling pot on it; the percolator had been running full bore since daybreak) and so many cheerful voices and good smells that I still cannot distinguish the emotions from the sensations. This was not the good cheer so often promoted in the mass media, the elegant cocktail party, the ski lodge fireplace, the sleigh ride through snow-covered landscapes. We rarely saw more than a few flakes of snow, and it was usually jacket weather, and my cousins were rarely in gowns except for proms and weddings, where the tuxes were rented, and if there were a little wine on the premises, its consumption was furtive. It was a comfortable, family, come-as-you-are, covered-dish Christmas of affection and fellow feeling, the shared delight of one's accomplishments and the unbounded sympathy for one's problems.

Later, when I got engaged, my wife-to-be was accepted and fit in immediately; years later, our oldest child was brought in just as quickly, just as I have seen so many new family members welcomed (I still remember his giggles that first Christmas there, when he got a plush ball with a sleigh bell inside it). Jean and Chunk always remembered every child who was to attend, and each received a modest gift until he or she graduated high school and became, sort of officially, an adult.

I miss those voices, the nasal twang of Jean's welcome, Granmaw Snuggs' saying "here" as if there were a Y in it ("come hyeah"), my grandmother Portis' mispronouncing her own married name (Henderson) as "Henneson." I miss the heartiness of the Yeager men's voices, even as Richard came to sound more like his father. I can still hear the crackle of the gravel on the long dirt road as I would doze off in the backseat after a long, full, happy day.

Today, in Johnson City, our family visits' having already taken place in the past few weeks, my kids are in the main room, playing video games; my house smells of the food I am preparing for supper tonight; my wife takes some personal time to read a fantasy novel before, more than likely, falling asleep in a needed nap. I have spoken to my parents, and they are well; I have texted my brother and his family, because it is Sunday and they have church activities; I plan part of the new year and hope the best of what I cannot foresee or affect. We are making a different Christmas now, preparing for the future when our children will come to visit us and associate Christmas with this one of many homes we love. Still, every time we go to visit family in Alabama, we drive through Holly Pond, and I yearn to turn from the two-lane state highway onto the familiar country road each time we pass it. Just now, in my heart, I have made that turn again.

Oh, Rejection!

I have received two rejection notices in the past few days. One of them came from a literary magazine in west Tennessee, and all it contained was a slip of paper about the size of a business card, offering some vague comment about how my work did not suit the magazine's needs. The paper looked as if it were cut by hand from a larger sheet. My work had been with the magazine for just a couple of weeks. I felt dumped.

The other rejection notice was on stationery, and, while it contained a typed, likely canned rejection, someone on the staff wrote a note of thanks on it and signed it with initials. This journal had had these poems for a couple of months, and, to be fair, I had to contact them twice because I had simultaneously submitted the poems, and three had been taken by other journals.

Here at the end of the year, I imagine I will be receiving more rejection slips as various journals complete their selections, but I hope that they are not as discouraging as a processing slip from an anonymous inspector.