358/365 Taking Down Christmas

I took down Christmas today--at my house. All but the wreaths and the creches (is it proper to put an 's' on that? maybe "nativity scenes" is better, or, what they really are, "Jesus' Birthday Playsets").

The tree will go out tonight to Carondelet to turn into mulch for somebody. The ornaments and other bits and pieces get put into a plastic box with cardboard dividers, and into a green metal footlocker. A metal footlocker that my grandmother gave me on some kind of spontaneous whim about 10 years ago. My parents were in town--probably at Christmas, or maybe when they first moved here?--and we were at her house. "Do you want an old trunk?" she asked. I never say no, which is a blessing and a curse. Sometimes it means dirty baby stuff that I have to dump myself. But sometimes it means a spare dining room table from Astrid or the primitive square-nail construction dresser that holds our TV. And this was one of those blessings.

I remember my parents being there because Bevin was jealous of the trunk. Old, an actual footlocker/trunk instead of a newer replica of the real thing. Forest green, the lock broken but the flip-down latch locks in perfect order. A mailing label on the top. It was Aunt Betty's.

This is the story I know of Aunt Betty. Forgive me if you've heard it already:

"You know Aunt Betty?" she starts. I know Aunt Betty. I don't know how we're related, but I know that the green footlocker I keep my Christmas ornaments in has her address on Delmar on the label. I remember her last years, at occasional family gatherings we rarely attended. She'd sit at my grandmother's butcher block kitchen table and appear to talk to her hands. Sometimes my mother would sit next to her and smile-and-nod at her.

"Well, when she died, I had to go through her things. In her desk drawer, I found this envelope. In this envelope, there was this key. And there was this address. I thought, 'that's down on South Grand in the city.' And so I drove down here one day and found it was Tower Grove Bank. It was a safe deposit box key."

"Well, I went into the bank, and talked with a man at a desk, and I said, I'm her cousin's daughter, but I'm in charge of her estate. And the man says, well, she hasn't taken a look in that box in over thirty years. He says, she just pays the rent. I said, well, I want to close it out. Whatever's there she doesn't need anymore, I said. And so he takes me to the box, and I open it."

I stand there on my porch, she's leaning on the roof of her car, waving at people passing her slowly in their cars.

"And in it is one piece of folded paper. It's dated in the thirties, 1937, and it says, 'I've gone. John.' She'd only been married to John for three years. And he never came back. And she put that letter in a safe deposit box in south city. That letter was 50 years old when I took it out of that box." She shakes her head and laughs. I stare at her in disbelief.

"You know, no man's worth 50 years of heartache."

Merry Christmas. Don't waste your time.