A Christmas Memory
Truman Capote
illustrated by Beth Peck 1956
It's late November, "fruitcake weather". Capote tells the story of a
young boy and the sweet friendship he has with an older, childlike
cousin. They both seem to be a bit out of place in their world and
their family so they form a bond together. They take an old baby
carriage to gather pecans and start the month long preparations for
Christmas.
They bring home a tree, decorating it with homemade ornaments.
But we can't afford the made-in-Japan splendors at the
five-and-dime. So we do what we've always done: sit for days at the
kitchen table with scissors and crayons and stacks of colored paper. I
make sketches and my friend cuts them out: lots of cats, fish too
(because they're easy to draw), some apples, some watermelons, a few
winged angels devised from saved-up sheets of Hershey-bar tin foil. We
use safety pins to attach these creations to the tree; as a final
touch, we sprinkle the branches with shredded cotton (picked in August
for this purpose).
And make each other kites for Christmas presents.
"My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery, and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are" -her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone- "just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."
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