Voices in the Attic

I went searching for Doug yesterday morning, told him I needed to do a Vulcan mind meld with him. You know, the transfer of thoughts and ideas without having to speak. Words, I try to use them, but it can get so complicated.

I have learned that if I don’t immediately write down a thought or speak it, it floats off into swirling grey matter, it might surface again, it might not. For three days now, I have wanted to find a particular ornament of my mother’s, one that I had given her when in my teens. I haven’t seen it in years.  She loved Frosty the Snowman, not so much the popular cartoon version, but she would read to me The Little Golden Book, “Frosty the Snowman”, vintage 1950. I can still see the illustrations in my mind. This Frosty has started calling to me from the attic. I can’t place exactly which box he is in, but I can see him in the original package.  I told him not now, not when we have three rooms pulled apart for reorganization. Not two days before Christmas Eve.  July, you can come out in July.

But I did have an idea that caught my fancy. Nearly every ornament has a story. We have ornaments that were my grandfather’s from the WWII era. There are ornaments resting in layers of tissue paper that are well over sixty years old, the glass so thin, they hold an old Christmas smell, so evocative of Christmas’ past. Little ghosts all tucked away with dried pine needles adding another layer of fragrance. I have a favorite ornament from my childhood, it is a beautiful old world European design, pink and blue, with small doves. Unwrapping it every year was like visiting with an old friend. Who will tell their stories when I am gone, or if my memories become so tightly locked away that I no longer recognize their familiar little faces?

That is why I went looking for Doug, if I tell him my idea, between the two of us we will remember. I would like to pull all the Christmas boxes out in July, put the cats in the basement, and have a little visit with friends. I will write their stories, who loved them, how old they are, where they came from, I will take their picture to put on their own little box, and include a picture of who loved them best.  That way, where ever they end up, someone will know their connection, the memory of those who carefully tended to them every Christmas will not die. It isn’t about their monetary value, it is the value of honoring the love between generations, however wounded, however imperfect, it is a love to be remembered and treasured.

And I may indulge my fancy for vintage books and see if I can’t find a 1950’s or even a 1970’s edition of “Frosty”, I can’t quite dredge up in perfect clarity the last page of the book, but something is niggling at me that there is a gentle message there for the reader. I can remember Frosty having to leave them, heading down a snowy lane, but he promises he will see them again. And isn’t that the echo of our heart’s deepest desire, to see them again.