An Ordinary Life

An Ordinary Life and an Unexpected Brown Box

To say that my Grandmother was a hoarder is an understatement. She had 5 of everything you would ever want in life, and antiques were her favorite. When the family gathered to empty out her houses (yes, she had two houses, one in the middle of 50 acres of forest off the Appalachian Trail, and her house in historic Bethlehem, Pennsylvania), we each were allowed to take whatever caught our fancy.

I chose the cast iron cooking pot, griddles, and fry pans, plus the big box of Christmas ornaments. I felt they characterized my memories of my Grandmother the best of all. I loved my Grandmother dearly, and most of my furniture came from her and surrounds me with love whenever I use, or look at them. This is how I choose to live my life—if something reminds me of love, I keep it and remind myself of loving, and being loved.

I promised myself I would finally open the big box of ornaments this year, since I finally moved into my “forever house,” of my retirement. Throughout my career, I moved so many times I just moved this big box remembering Christmas’s past with my Grandmother, and the first memory I have of Christmas in my Great Grandmother Eva’s ancestral home in Bethlehem. 45 years of moving this big box, without opening it, seemed like an “about-time” moment.

You may be wondering why it took so long to actually open the box. In the early years of the box, I had to travel every Christmas to be with “The Family” in Bethlehem—my sister bought our grandmother’s city house in historic Bethlehem when it was emptied. Then I had a black lab, Keegan-dog, who thought anything round, was a “chase ball,” which translated: if I put round ornaments on a Christmas tree, it would only ask for an “attack on the tree to retrieve all those lovely shiny balls” that just hung there waiting to be “retrieved.” (If you get my gist.)

Then Keegan-dog chose to befriend a Jack Russle—Farley, is his name, and take my suggestion, NEVER name a dog Farley, they tend to live up to their names. Farley’s full name is Farley Barley (because it rhymes and make him wag his tail) Boulanger (because he loved being called Farley Barley Boulanger and would wag his tail and twirl at the word Boulanger—French for “bakery) and Lex, because that was the name the shelter had given him, which he never responded to. So when I’m ready to send him back to the SPCA for some infraction that he incurred, I call him Farley Barley Boulanger Lex Wenner, so I forget what I was going to kill him over. Farley, who hates cold weather was most appreciative that during Christmas I brought the “pee-tree” to him inside, so he wouldn’t have to get his little feet cold in the snow. (if you get my drift—hahaha get it? snow drift????).

But this year was the year, after 45 or so years, I opened the big box of ornaments to celebrate the year of all years Christmas in our forever home. As I laid out box after box of antique ornaments, I remembered Grandmom’s and Great Grandmon’s enormous Christmas trees, and all the gifts that were under them. I especially recalled the enormous Christmas stocking my Grandmother filled with small little gifts that took ages to unwrap. The stocking stood waist-high on an adult, so for a child it was gargantuan, at the very least. Christmas in Bethlehem was a spectacular awesome occasion.

When I got to the bottom of the box there was one plain brown paper wrapped box that didn’t look like the rest of the ornament boxes. I was taken aback at how ordinary it looked, and how plain it looked. It looked more like a package that was prepared to be mailed, because it was wrapped with brown packing paper. WOW, who would have expected that at the bottom of all those Christmas ornaments?

Grandmom was always full of surprises. That was part of the her charm for me. I remember a secret she kept until her death. Nobody suspected she held a secret so profound, it stunned the entire family when the truth came out into the open. When she died, the family had to produce her birth certificate, which was not among her papers, or belongings. The family had to track down where she had been born and apply for a new birth certificate. When it arrived, our beloved Madelyn, was not “Madelyn” at all. Even the United States Government, nor Social Security, nor her pension investments knew they were sending things to someone who didn’t exist. Her real name was Beulah. (One can see how a person might want to reinvent themselves with a name like Beulah, but it’s amazing how she was able to achieve keeping it secret for her entire lifetime.)

And now Grandmom Beulah, had one more surprise—a plain, brown paper wrapped box at the bottom of all those Christmas ornaments. I picked it up, out of the big box, and gently shook it, listening for any broken pieces rattling about because of 45 year, or more of moving about the country every year or so. It sounded and felt solid in its packaging. I checked to see if there was any writing to indicate what was in it, or if it was being, or had been, sent to someone as a gift. No sign or indication why it was wrapped in brown paper, or what I might find inside.

I will admit it was like getting one more Christmas gift from my Grandmother after all these years. The question became, do I open it now, or wait to open it on Christmas day? You, the reader, will probably appreciate the fact that all my friends and family clearly state that a gift they are giving to me is to be “opened ONLY on the day it is supposed to be opened, NOT on the day it is given or received, because I tend to think of Christmas as a “season,” such as “….on the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me…..”. Thus, opening it on this day of finding it won out, over waiting until Christmas day.

Inside the wrapping, was, again, a plain brown box, without writing or embellishment indicating what was inside the box. Size matters with such a mysterious box. It was much bigger than a ring, or necklace box, but smaller than the proverbial breadbox. The dimensions were roughly perhaps seven or eight by ten or eleven inches, like the size of a piece of copier paper. The height was around three or four inches. Again, nothing rattled, thumped, or shifted when i shook the package. I decided it was probably one of those 100-year old fruitcakes that just keep getting re-gifted and mailed to different people each year because nobody likes eating fruitcake. Which reminded me of my Grandmother’s and Great grandmother’s mincemeat pie—which I hated eating every Christmas (just needed to add that to the fruitcake discussion).

The time has come to open the plain brown box. Inside was a profusion of color and packing material. It reminded me of those party-poppers that send colorful streamers out up into the air. Whatever was in the center of the box had been cushioned by this beautiful nest of color. When I pushed the nesting material aside, inside was a card and wrapped (believe it or not) gift—a box-shaped gift. This was becoming like the those Russian nesting dolls: a box, within a box, within a box, under all those boxes of ornaments.

I opened the card, which was a hand-painted picture of a Christmas tree with presents piled high around it. Inside was a personal letter:

My dearest child,

This is my gift to you on this last year I will be with you on Christmas.

I know I am gravely ill, but I wanted to give you something that you could cherish, something that would remind you how much I love you and cherish you.

May God bless you, always.

Your loving mother

If I were to guess who was the “giver,” and who was the “receiver,” I would hazard Great-grandmother was the “giver,” and my grandmother was the “receiver,” because my grandmother had four children, none of which were ever singled out as more beloved, than the other. So I proceeded to unwrap the gift.

What was revealed was a beautiful wooden box. The lid had differently tinted, inlayed wooden pieces that created a circlet of flowers and leaves on the lid. The incredible beauty of the wooden box was indescribable. There was no latch, or lock, so I opened the box to reveal what was inside. Laying on a bed of cream velvet was the most beautiful emerald and diamond necklace I had ever seen. The necklace was crafted with gold and silver threads embracing small emeralds and diamonds, with one large emerald surrounded by a frame of diamonds. The sheer daintiness of the entire necklace was breathtaking, along with the burst of rainbow lighting that was the effect of all the perfect diamonds hitting the light.

I can only surmise that my grandmother hid this gift at the bottom of all the usual Christmas ornaments to keep it safe, and to remind herself every year at Christmas that she was the beloved child of Eva, who called her “My dearest child.”