December 11, 2006
Monday

Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of consequences.
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories. They’re all that’s left you.
                — Paul Simon, b. 1941
American singer-songwriter, from “Bookends”

I visited my friend Marilyn the other day. She lives around the corner, and I’ve known her for almost thirty years. She’s Jewish, so there isn’t any fa-la-la going on over there. There wouldn’t be anyway. Marilyn’s husband, Joel, died suddenly in September. He was 56 years old.

I went there to give her a copy of Moon Crossing Bridge, Tess Gallagher’s book of poems about her adjustment to the death of her husband, Raymond Carver. And to hand-deliver the invitation to my party, with the assurance that I will understand if she decides that some other tradition’s season to be jolly is not what she can participate in this year.

One of the last conversations I had with Joel was about the date of this year’s party. I’d always had it on Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent. The year that Marilyn and Joel’s son Jordan (the youngest of their four sons and a year ahead of Lynn in school) was a freshman in college he expressed disappointment to them that he would not be home from school yet on the date of the party. After that I started having it on the fourth Sunday instead, so the college kids of our circle would be home.

Last year at the party I mentioned that scheduling in 2006 would be something of a problem. The fourth Sunday of Advent is also Christmas Eve, not a suitable party night for people who observe the religious aspects of the holiday. “We can come,” Joel said, that familiar twinkle in his eye.

Marilyn’s house is full of pictures. The console table behind the sofa in her family room is covered with framed shots of the boys in various combinations, with and without their parents. The walls are hung with formal family portraits taken at each of the boys’ Bar Mitzvahs. The mantel holds their baby pictures.

I’m starting to set out some of the serving dishes for the party, and as I placed the bowls that hold candy, I thought of something that happened in 1990 that my mother, who witnessed it, told me about.

She told me that she had been sitting alone in the living room, no doubt enveloped out of sight in a wing chair, when two little boys came in and began helping themselves from a bowl full of Hershey’s Kisses.

“They were just stuffing their pockets!” she said. “You’d think they’d never seen Hershey’s Kisses before!”

I asked her to describe the boys. She said that one had curly hair and one had straight hair, the curly-haired one showed the other one how to stuff his pockets most efficiently, and that they called each other Josh and Jordan.

Ah, I said. The dentist’s children. No doubt they never had seen an open bowl of Hershey’s Kisses that they could draw from unsupervised.

I don’t have a lot of pictures of my parties over the years. I’m the family photographer, and I’m usually too busy that day. I wish I could go back and capture a picture of those two little boys stashing Hershey’s Kisses in their pockets. Josh died in 1999, when he was only sixteen. I have a picture of Jordan as he looks now. I wish I could have one of the two of them, and their father, grabbing Hershey’s Kisses today.

To be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the brackets with @ and a period)