Homes...for the Holidays

I had one real meltdown during the final sweep of my parents’ house before it was sold. That was when I noticed a small, white-painted hanger embedded above the kitchen door.  This was where Dad hung the mistletoe at Christmas.

If the holidays don’t give you the homing instinct, nothing will. It’s a season to drop the defenses and be shamelessly drawn to the porches, kitchens, hallways, scents, tastes, and faces we’ve loved and left.

In our family, homes carry their own holiday traditions, each so brined with meaning that the memories refuse to move on, even when we do.

Accordingly, I can’t drive by 311 West Clay without thinking we could be met at the door by a blast of warm air and the scent of my grandmother’s cloverleaf rolls. A Thanksgiving there meant asparagus and oyster dressing alongside cranberry sauce in the improbable form of a shimmering ruby gel.  In my grainy, hand-held memory there's my mother unloading pumpkin pies she's brought, spooning coffee into the percolator, wiping sudsy hands upon her apron. 

So last week when I was looking for a jar of mincemeat at the San Francisco Safeway I was really trying to find the Thanksgiving of my childhood. Someone should tell you when it's about to be left behind: the last time you'll gather in a certain room for sweet potato casserole, or sit around the table with every chair full. This announcement could begin with the sharp chime of a spoon against the rim of a water glass and the words, "Look around you. Freeze-frame this moment because years later you'll wonder when, exactly, it came to an end."

Dad’s mistletoe was ribboned high in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room of the house where I grew up, and beneath it passed the strawberry jam,  homemade bread, the grapefruit halves with maraschino cherries, the platters of scrambled eggs and Harper’s Ham that composed our Christmas morning breakfast for family and friends.

The actors have changed now, but the setting is still intact. The homes of our holidays can be rented, leased, sold, foreclosed, or renovated beyond recognition, but as long as they stand, time is contained. They give us a place to store the past.