She told us to wait before it was torn down, the creche sitting under a decorated pine in the corner of my childhood living room every Christmas Eve. Wait until after midnight has come and gone, wait until Jan. 6 for the three wise men. Sometimes the wise men statues were my only toys. I’d play with the three kings and place them along the boulder-like formations we had created out of brown newsprint to represent distant mountains in the nativity scene. There were no queens. Many times, there were no gifts.
Wait until the star of the east needles the darkness with its brilliance, wait for a boy savior of all mankind to appear in a manger, the simple wooden box surrounded by cattle, sheep, and pastoral beasts with straw-like raffia laid at the 14-year-old girl’s feet. Wait. The men will come to join Joseph. Three wise men. So, I waited with my eyes on the flocked white pine with its blue lights and silver tinsel and prepared for midnight mass.
The aroma of Mother’s cooking filled our home. She’d bake a turkey for hours, kneading dough for a floured pie crust, soon-to-be apple pie. She parachuted sheets of filo dough downward one by one into a large square pan, where she lightly brushed each layer with melted butter. She’d layer in savory crushed walnuts, which she’d scatter from one end to the other. She’d then diamond-cut the confection and bake it until golden brown, drizzling the pan with sweet rose water syrup. There was semolina for Lebanese cookies, dusted with powdered sugar once baked. Sometimes, someone tried a new recipe of banana date nut bread.
“Wait,” she would tell us as we put our fingers in everything. “Wait until I serve you,” she’d say.
When Mother passed away decades later on Dec. 5 in hospice care, the meaning of Christmas went with her. Garments of tradition and custom had always been tethered to what she knew how to do for us, and I finally let go in order to create a different path. I chose to be with a people whose flame burned eternal and whose wisdom was not necessarily celebrated with the magi, but instead, with the living.
Nowadays, I gaze at the audacity of holiday lights strung across coastal cities, those lost stars dotting the bluffs and canyons, the gaudy, stubborn pines that greet me in markets and banks. The flash of gold and red ribbon and the grand effort of the world around me to put on its prettiest holly wreath and hang its mistletoe. I find myself wandering down Forest Avenue, taking in decorative storefronts, with a desire to be down at Christmas Cove, where the sea can be a dangerous temptation for the likes of me while thoughts surface of how Mother tried hard to make things right for us in my father’s absence.
The scent of the winter sea is seductively powerful and rip currents would certainly sweep me away into maritime madness. There is a melancholy that lingers in my soul, like early morning sea fog. I step around the tide pools of humanity, everyone a stranger, even my own family. Life does not wait, I’ve learned. How silly it is to relive the journeys others took thousands of years ago when we’ve got our own to tend to.
Cecile Sarruf is a published freelance creative writer who lives by the sea and draws inspiration from her personal life experiences.
