Putting away

Grimy plastic storage bins box me into the corner by the Christmas tree.  The pine smell is missing - as is the annoyance of thousands of dropped needles from a spent real tree not watered enough over the last two weeks.  Wood smoke wafts up instead from the just-stoked fire.  Putting away the holidays is unavoidably sad.  Like putting away outgrown baby clothes or putting away freshly-washed wine glasses after a much- anticipated party.

The children wanted to help, but my orderly nature would not allow it and I tucked them into bed in favor of tackling the task alone.  I want to walk the years between this plastic tree and those plastic tubs by myself, amazed anew to be a person who could have collected a large shoebox full of the type of ornaments that make a Christmas tree "real," even if its needles were molded at a mass production facility in China.  Poorly painted wreaths framing chubby faces.  Dough ornaments with far too much glitter.  Popsicle stick sleds. Clothespin reindeer.  These are the adornments that make a tree paradoxically regal and stunning, tucked in around the Waterford ball my mother bought me in Ireland and the elegant blue stars and the matching silver icicle pendants.

My hand lingers around a miniature sleigh made with my Grandfather's hands.  "Stacey" is etched on the front and underneath, "1982." He faded and then died of Alzheimer's before Matt had a chance to know him, but they would have loved each other.  My grandfather could fix anything.  Honey-do lists were his specialty. Woodworking was his hobby.  They would have spent hours in his workshop. Some girls marry their father.  I am my father - smart, urban, impatient, too easily frustrated by difficult tasks to be truly good at anything mechanical or crafty.  I married my grandfather - patient and hard-working and capable in the pioneer sense of the word. 

I come to it now, as I do twice every year.  The folded pile of stockings beside me, generously large and ridiculously cute with their matching red gingham check tops and patchwork holiday scenes.  I could just lay them in a neat stack in the storage tub on top of their forlorn partner already resting on the bottom, but I don't. I lift it out instead and unfold it gently, smooth down the gingham to look at the bright train on the front and the name embroidered in rich holiday red across the top.  I seem to owe it that, if one can owe a stocking anything.

And I think again, what to do.  It is too pretty to throw away.  My heart shies from that final act.  Too fraught with the difficult paths of the past to keep.  Too personal to give away.  His was not a common name.  I think of other things that I have managed to put away from me permanently, one by one.  The cup with this same name written in indelible marker on the bottom sacrificed to digging and building castles and then lost at Fish Lake.  The football that kicked around the basement for a year before the dog finally tore it and I threw it away.  The book of trucks with carefully practiced letters that Quinn loved so, gone to Goodwill in a stack of over-loved books.

I refold it carefully and place the neat tower of five pretty, matching stockings back in the tub.  Of course I do.  It is just a memory now, one of many that nests in these boxes waiting for their annual unveiling and cherishing. There is no pain outside of wistfulness and the reminder of the blurry rush of time.  Isn't that why we like memories so? The exhilaration of glimpsing streaked lights from an underground train. The momentary understanding of the dizzying speed, the hurtling into tomorrow.  

There are grades of putting away.  Some things need to be put away from you completely.  Others need only be put away until next year. Gone but not forgotten.

The room looks bare when I finish, but clean and neat. Fresh.  Like the snow-covered trees outside our dark windows.  Like my new calendar, covered in a bright pink leather. Like the beginning of a year.