Cranberries

I knew all about sweet corn and Jonathan apples and red table grapes. And tomatoes and beets and dark green, leafy spinach. And sugar peas, string beans, carrots and cucumbers. If it grew in Granddad’s post-war Victory Garden, I had helped plant and water and feed and harvest just about anything that could and would grow in the Midwest.

 

But I didn’t know a thing about cranberries.

 

It was on a Saturday afternoon in mid-December, after the Christmas tree had been brought home and fitted into a stand and the large, colored bulbs were strung through its branches, when a bowl of beautiful, shiny little cranberries in various shades of red, pink and burgundy appeared on the kitchen table. Mom’s sewing kit was next to it and the aroma of popcorn filled our tiny house. 

 

Mom measured lengths of white thread and gave each of my brothers and me a threaded needle. She mixed milk, sugar and cocoa in a pan on the stove and made the most wonderfully rich and decadent hot chocolate, which we drank from our special Christmas mugs.  The next few hours were passed by singing Christmas carols and stringing popcorn and cranberries for the tree, stopping every so often to sip the steaming hot chocolate. I loved the look of one cranberry to one kernel of corn, but I quickly learned that not only was the weight too great, but we’d surely run out of cranberries. I began alternating one cranberry to every 5 kernels, which seemed to be a perfect ratio.

 

Long after the hot chocolate was gone and our fingers were bandaged from too many needle pricks, we tied our individual strings together and carefully draped the garland around the tree.

 

The tree looked so perfect once the garland was hung. The white and red against the pine’s green was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I imagined the white kernels were snow and the cranberries were glass ornaments. It didn’t need another thing. But soon the boxes of ornaments were pulled from the attic. There were silver mercury and red satin balls and blue glass teardrops and handmade construction paper stars, pasted and glittered. It was too much, it seemed, relegating the cranberries to nothing more than filler. In the evenings, though, when the only lights burning in the house were those on the tree, I could see the smooth, red cranberries reflecting light through the branches.

 

I no longer string garlands for my tree, but every year around the holidays when I pass a market’s display of bagged cranberries, my first thought is never of relishes and breads and cookies. It’s always of popcorn and garlands and the very first time I ever saw cranberries, piled high in a bowl, gleaming and glowing, as if lit from within.

Reviews

[Shimmerbliss/CAF]

This is so touching and I love it. You did a beautiful job of sharing such a precious memory and taking me back. Such talent! Where did you go? Wish you were here now.

[Kelly Rainwater]

Where did I go? No where, really. I have been battling rectal cancer for the past two years and it's stopped my writing for awhile. Well, it's stopped my poetry and prose writing. I've been doing some as updates on Facebook for family and friends, just so they know how my treatments have been coming along. I'm hoping one day soon to get back to something more creative. Thank you for your kind words. It is an encouragement to me to write again.