In days of yore before Pretty introduced me to her antique empire vernacular, I couldn’t distinguish vintage from antique from retro to mid-century modern. Provenance was a self-discovery word from watching countless episodes of Antiques Roadshows with her on Monday nights after I gave up on the NFL when Plan B free agency ruined the game for me. TMI.
My mother loved her Christmas cantatas at the church, decorating for the holidays, wrapping gifts, baking her homemade fudge, divinity and specialty Osgood pies – baking was her therapy during the two weeks away from her second grade classrooms once she could relax from the stress of the musical performance. My mother often told me “practice makes perfect” when she sat for hours at her piano working on a particularly difficult section of a piece. She was pursued by her passion for perfection.
But her signature holiday delights were the Christmas cards our family received every year from friends and family members who were separated from us by distances in a world before Instagram, Facebook, Linked In and X. The address book Pretty and I found when we closed her house in 2007 was in tatters from decades of use – addresses scratched out, crammed with new ones on the same line. She never let go of her Christmas card list.
My dad, on the other hand, barely glanced at the cards when they came in with the exception of the Christmas card letters which he felt were far superior to cards sent and received. I can hear Daddy saying to my mother, Jimmy and Maggie Jones have the right idea – they always take the time to write a letter even though they are as busy as we are. (Remember my dad loved to write letters.)
In December, 1964 my thirty-seven year old mother must have been particularly wigged and frustrated by her inability to “get everything done” including her holiday cards mailed on time so she and my thirty-nine year old father agreed to jointly construct their first and, as far as I know, only mid-century antique family Christmas letter. Daddy had a secretary at his new position as Assistant Superintendent of Instruction at Lamar Consolidated in Rosenberg, Texas – clearly he enlisted her to set up and type the letter to save time for Mama’s mailings. I know this because my name is misspelled in every block.
Ho, ho, ho – that was just the provenance. Here’s the letter. Enjoy.
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Unbelievably it is Christmas again. Pretty and I enjoy this season greatly because it’s a special time of sharing. We know of no one we’d rather share our happy highlights with than you all year long right here in cyberspace. Our wish to you is, of course, for a Merry Christmas, but more than that, we pray that God will bless your lives richly in the coming year.
Yes, Virginia you’ve probably read this story at least five times if you’ve been with me for many moons. This Christmas story is one of my favorites from Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing that was published in 2007 by Red Letter Press. The book’s been out of print for fifteen years, but there’s something about the little girl’s struggles for authenticity in her life that make it universally appropriate in any season. Enjoy.
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“Dear Santa Claus, how are you? I am fine.
I have been pretty good this year. Please bring me a pair
of boxing gloves for Christmas. I need them.
Your friend, Sheila Rae Morris”
“That’s a good letter,” my maternal grandmother I called Dude said. She folded it and placed it neatly in the envelope. “I’ll take it to the post office tomorrow and give it to Miss Sally Hamilton to mail for you. Now, why do you need these boxing gloves?”
“Thank you so much, Dude. I hope he gets it in time. All the boys I play with have boxing gloves. They say I can’t box with them because I’m a girl and don’t have my own gloves. I have to get them from Santa Claus.”
“I see,” she said. “I believe I can understand the problem. I’ll take care of your letter for you.”
Several days later it was Christmas Eve. That was the night we opened our gifts with both families. This year our little group of Dude, Mama, Daddy, Uncle Marion, Uncle Toby and I walked to my paternal grandparents’ house across the dirt road and down the hill from ours. With us, we took the Christmas box of See’s Chocolate and Nuts Candies that Dude’s sister Aunt Orrie who lived in California sent every year, plus all the gifts for everyone. The only child in me didn’t like to share the candy, but it wouldn’t be opened until we could offer everyone a piece. Luckily, most everyone else preferred Ma’s divinity or her date loaf.
The beverage for the party was a homemade green punch. My Uncle Marion had carried Ginger Ale and lime sherbet with him. He mixed that at Ma’s in her fine glass punch bowl with the 12 cups that matched. You knew it was a special night if Ma got out her punch bowl. The drink was frothy and delicious. The perfect liquid refreshment with the desserts. I was in heaven, and very grownup.
When it was time to open the gifts, we gathered in the living room around the Christmas tree, which was ablaze with multi-colored blinking bubble lights. Ma was in total control of the opening of the gifts and instructed me to bring her each gift one at a time so she could read the names and anything else written on the tag. She insisted that we keep a slow pace so that all would have time to enjoy their surprises.
Really, there were few of those. Each year the men got a tie or shirt or socks or some combination. So the big surprise would be the color for that year. The women got a scarf or blouse or new gloves for church. Pa would bring out the Evening in Paris perfume for Ma he had raced across the street to Mr. McAfee’s Drug Store to buy when he closed the barber shop, just before the drug store closed.
The real anticipation was always the wrapping and bows for the gifts. They saved the bows year after year and made a game of passing them back and forth to each other like old friends. There would be peals of laughter and delight as a bow that had been missing for two Christmases would make a mysterious re-appearance. Ma and Dude entertained themselves royally with the outside of the presents. The contents were practical and useful for the adults every year.
My gifts, on the other hand, were more fun. Toys and clothes combined the practical with the impractical. Ma would make me a dress to wear to school and buy me a doll of some kind. Daddy and Pa would give me six-shooters or a bow and arrows or cowboy boots and hats. Dude always gave me underwear.
This year Uncle Marion had brought me a jewelry box from Colorado. He had gone out there to work on a construction job and look for gold. I loved the jewelry box. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any jewelry; equally unfortunate, he hadn’t found any gold.
“Well, somebody needs to go home and get to bed so that Santa Claus can come tonight,” Daddy said at last. “I wonder what that good little girl thinks she’s going to get.” He smiled.
“Boxing gloves,” I said immediately. “I wrote Santa a letter to bring me boxing gloves. Let’s go home right now so I can get to bed.”
Everybody got really quiet.
Daddy looked at Mama. Ma looked at Pa. Uncle Marion and Uncle Toby looked at the floor. Dude looked at me.
“Okay, then, sugar. Give Ma and Pa a kiss and a big hug for all your presents. Let’s go, everybody, and we’ll call it a night so we can see what Santa brings in the morning,” Daddy said.
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“Is it time to get up yet?” I whispered to Dude. What was wrong with her? She was always the first one up every morning. Why would she choose Christmas Day to sleep late?
“I think it’s time,” she whispered back. “I believe I heard Saint Nick himself in the living room a little while ago. Go wake up your mama and daddy so they can turn on the Christmas tree lights for you to see what he left. Shhh. Don’t wake up your uncles.”
I climbed over her and slipped quietly past my sleeping Uncle Marion and crept through the dining room to Mama and Daddy’s bedroom. I was trying to not make any noise. I could hear my Uncle Toby snoring in the middle bedroom.
“Daddy, Mama, wake up,” I said softly to the door of their room. “Did Santa Claus come yet?” Daddy opened the door, and he and Mama came out. They were smiling happily and took me to the living room where Mama turned on the tree lights. I was thrilled with the sight of the twinkling lights as they lit the dark room. Mama’s tree was so much bigger than Ma’s and was perfectly decorated with ornaments of every shape and size and color. The icicles shimmered in the glow of the lights. There were millions of them. Each one had been meticulously placed individually by Mama. Daddy and I had offered to help but had been rejected when we were seen throwing the icicles on the tree in clumps rather than draping them carefully on each branch.
I held my breath. I was afraid to look down. When I did, the first thing I saw was the Roy Rogers gun and holster set. Two six-shooters with gleaming barrels and ivory-colored handles. Twelve silver bullets on the belt.
“Wow,” I exclaimed as I took each gun out of the holster and examined them closely. “These look just like the ones Roy uses, don’t they, Daddy?”
“You bet,” he said. “I’m sure they’re the real thing. No bad guys will get past you when you have those on. Main Street will be safe again.” He and Mama laughed together at that thought.
The next thing my eyes rested on was the Mr. And Mrs. Potato Head game. I wasn’t sure what that was when I picked it up, but I could figure it out later. Some kind of game to play when the cousins came later for Christmas lunch.
I moved around the tree and found another surprise. There was a tiny crib with three identical baby dolls in it. They were carefully wrapped in two pink blankets and one blue one. I stared at them.
“Triplets,” Mama said with excitement. “Imagine having not one, not two, but three baby dolls at once. Two girls and a boy. Isn’t that fun? Look, they have a bottle you can feed them with. See, their little mouths can open. You can practice feeding them. Aren’t they wonderful?”
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. They’re great. I’ll play with them later this afternoon.” I looked around the floor and crawled to look behind the tree.
“Does Santa ever leave anything anywhere else but here?” I asked. Daddy and Mama looked at each other and then back at me.
“No, sweetheart,” Daddy said. “This is all he brought this year. Don’t you like all of your presents?”
“Oh, yes, I love them all,” I said with the air of a diplomat. “But, you know, I had asked him for boxing gloves. I was really counting on getting them. All the boys have them, and I wanted them so bad.”
“Well,” Mama said. “Santa Claus had the good common sense not to bring a little girl boxing gloves. He knew that only little boys should be fighting each other with big old hard gloves. He also realized that lines have to be drawn somewhere. He would go along with toy guns, even though that was questionable. But he had to refuse to allow boxing gloves this Christmas or any Christmas.”
I looked at Daddy. My heart sank.
“Well, baby,” he said with a rueful look. “I’m afraid I heard him say those very words.”
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In 2008, the year following publication of Deep, one of my best friends Billy Frye gave me a pair of boxing gloves for Christmas – better late than never, Santa. I was sixty-two years old. Billy Frye understood.
Last year (2022) Pretty’s sister Darlene and her partner Dawne gave me a brand new pair of boxing gloves because they also loved this story. Darlene asked me if I thought my mother would have permitted boxing gloves in our home when I originally asked Santa for them as a child if they were pink, and Pretty spoke up for me. I doubt it, she said, but she did always love for Sheila to wear pink.
Following the shady corruption of power in the Nixon administration, the American people were ready for a newcomer outside the beltway of Washington, D. C. In walked Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Plains, who was a Sunday School teacher in a Baptist church with a reputation for honesty and integrity. He was just the recipe needed in the 1976 election after the Watergate years.
I had followed and admired Jimmy Carter even before his run for governor in 1970 so I was hopeful for what his administration could accomplish from the White House. Alas, being an outsider must be much more difficult than I thought, and for Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter it was a mountain too high to climb. The many good measures he accomplished including the Camp David Accords were often lost in the rhetoric surrounding the hostages in Iran that were released on the day Ronald Reagan took office at the end of Carter’s one term.
Jimmy Carter was only 56 years old when he left the Oval Office for his home in Plains, Georgia, but he and his wife Rosalyn have continued to be advocates for the poor and disenfranchised since he returned home. In 2002 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his open resistance to the War in Iraq in addition to his countless contributions toward creating and preserving democracy around the world. The Carter Center has been a model for presidential libraries, a thriving institution whose motto is “Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope.”
During the last years President Carter not only wrote a number of books but also found a passion for painting. Pretty and I are always grateful for the Christmas cards we faithfully receive every year from Rosalyn and Jimmy Carter, and we are particularly happy whenever the cards are works of art by the former president.
Enjoy with us.
2018 message: Blessings, love, and peace to you this Christmas
(Cardinals in Winter, original painting by President Jimmy Carter)
2017 message: May the Joy and Peace of Christmas be with you now
and throughout the new year
(Mountain Laurel, original painting by President Jimmy Carter)
(White Dove, original painting by President Jimmy Carter)
d
And finally, just for fun, this one designed by Amy Carter who “created this original painting of her with her father carrying a Christmas tree home from the woods.”
Message: May your home be filled with the warmth of family and friends
this holiday season and throughout the New Year
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter have been the best of Americans who served their country on a very large stage during their time in the White House and perhaps offered us their best guidance in the years following. I originally published this piece in 2018 but thought this year we Americans needed a reminder of our own ideals. The Carters are flawed individuals somewhere in their DNA, aren’t they, because none of us are saints; however, regardless of politics, give me the character, courage, conviction, compassion and commitment of this couple from Plains in the White House any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Waging peace, fighting disease, building hope.
...and all through the yard only Spike and I were stirring,
Pretty and Charly were inside and warm.
Pretty and I like to keep the pool open in the winter,
but it has a much different look from summer fun and sun
Spike keeps me company whenever I walk around the pool
(I think he likes the cold, and I like his company)
so beautiful, but Pretty battles the leaves until they’re all gone
the bottom of the pool looks like a Rorschach test to me sometimes
even the bottle tree loses its colors in winter
Spike is ready to go inside to check on Pretty
While family members in the upstate of South Carolina have been without power this weekend after unusually large amounts of snowfall, we have been covered in grey clouds peppering us with rain, rain and more rain. Almost cold enough for snow, but not quite.
I am reminded of Granny Selma’s motto: Sheila, we have to smile more on rainy days.
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Back in the days before two new knee replacement surgeries in 2019, before the birth of two baby granddaughters ( Ella in 2019 and Molly in 2022) who already take swimming lessons in the summertime and love to play in this pool, before an elder dog named Carl whose primary mission in life has been to terrorize the equally cranky old Spike since Carl came to join the family in 2020 – Spike and I took to the backyard for early morning “walks” while I pushed my walker six times around our pool.
We moved to our house on Cardinal Drive in 2017 because our two-story Casa de Canterbury was too difficult for me to navigate fourteen stairs from one level to the next. Pretty found the house for us with her usual former realtor eyes – she had been in the business for seventeen years before the insanity of the markets in 2010 saw her return to retail at Mast General Store, a new store opening on Main Street in Columbia in 2011. She greeted customers, worked with super employees who became friends for life, and filled tons of candy into barrels every week for five years to create nostalgia mixed with modern taste buds as Mast became a cornerstone for changing the Main Street look and vibe of Columbia.
The last picture of this piece in 2018 caught me by surprise because I had forgotten about the original hot tub hidden behind the two rockers under a small portico; hot tub gone, portico torn down to be replaced by a small screen porch the following year. Rockers didn’t survive, either, gradually deteriorating in the elements like my knees worn away by time. Pride Flags flew from day one in 2017, replaced with new ones through the years but keeping watch over the changes in our lives as surely as the shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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