There's Nothing Like It

 

Christmas and Family

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love for kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder

          Trips to visit kinfolks in North Carolina are always nostalgic for me. As with anyone whose home is far from the place where they grew up, every tree and hillock conjures a memory. On Saturday, we drove to a garden nursery near Old Fort, NC to a crafts fair and plant sale. Driving through the rolling landscape brought sensory flashbacks of the sights and smells of wet earth in pastures where creeks gurgle through spring houses and cows graze on steep green slopes. Of Daddy, teasing me that those cows have short legs on one side, so they can stand level on these hillsides.

          I make the trek twice a year, though it is harder for me now as older person, to drive 400 miles and back. I’ve been asked why I do that, and the only answer I can come up with is “because they’re my people, and that is my homeland.” It feels like I have a gut-level tether, attached to a magnetic homing device. It whispers in my ear, you must go, you need to go, and so I do.

          There is no time of year that compares with these year-end holidays when it comes to setting off our yearning for home, for family, for connection to the past. Like sockeye salmon, we automatically turn and head for the original spawning grounds. Especially after three years of fear around Covid, we are feeling deprived of our touchstones, our foundational underpinnings. And so, by the millions, we will go.

          I left my cousins preparing to bake 5-dozen cookies each for a church “Cookie Exchange.” They were planning and coordinating, pulling out the old family recipes—Grandma’s snickerdoodles, Aunt Sue’s cream puffs, Mother’s special fudge and everyone’s favorite, sugar cookies decorated with sprinkles. Lucky church members, reaping the benefits of the annual cookie extravaganza. Sometimes, church people stand in for families who cannot spend the holidays together. Not only do they become bread for one another, but they provide shelter as well. Shelter from the storm, with the comfort of a warm cookie with a nice cup of hot cocoa. What could be more perfect than that!

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane