Christmas Memories, Sock Monkies, and Gratitude

Last night, I stayed up late making a sock monkey.  I started it around 9 pm, and I stitched as my son watched “Iron Man” and I stitched as my husband replaced “Iron Man” with audio-reading podcasts of the Book of Alma (chapters 30-37) (he’s determined to finish before the year’s end, and he will).  As my husband followed along with his scriptures, the kids grabbed their blankets and snuggled up on the floor, and I stitched and stuffed.  Soon enough, my husband was done reading.  He put the kids to bed and I stitched after helping change the kids into their PJs.

My husband went to bed and I stitched.

Finally… at 11:30, the monkey -sans eyes -was finished.  I thought about stitching buttons on, but I was tired.  I knew an alert eye would better handle a needle than the tired I eye I was using.  I sat back and looked at the monkey, and then I looked up at the clock.

Sitting next to the clock in a homemade stocking was the sock monkey my great-grandmother had made for me when I was a little kid.  Looking at that monkey always takes me back, and it’s impossible to feel anything but warm inside.  Grandmothers have a special way of doing that, you know… making you feel warm.  I took a moment to think about my great-grandmother as I stared at the sock monkey.  As I’ve stitched my own sock monkeys, I’ve often referred to my monkey.  I’ve studied her stitches and tried to decipher her techniques.  I wonder what she thinks of me as a 25 year-old, still cabbaging onto a sock monkey she made out of her husband’s old red heel socks.

Then I remembered the date.  It was December 13th.  December 13th…   And again, I went back.

December 13th, 1996 was a red letter day for me.  It was my brother’s birthday, and per tradition we were going to buy and put up a tree that night.  I looked forward to that day ALL Christmas season.  We always put up a real tree, and it was my brother’s (the birthday boy) job to pick a tree out.  He was very particular and always came home with the BEST of what was left in the Christmas Tree lot.  I knew what was to come…Dad and the brothers would stand the tree up and adjust it to fit JUST RIGHT in the tree stand.  Mom would pour a mixture of 7up and water into the base of the tree stand.  Then came the lights -multiple colors -and then mom would pull out the box.

It was a beautiful red Christmas cardboard box, and it was filled with ornaments of all kinds.  There was the green construction paper one I made with my school picture on it. The homemade wooden ornaments that Sister McLaws had hand painted for all of us.  The birds mom made out of ribbon, the little bear ornaments that were given to us so long ago that I don’t have a Christmas memory without them in it.  The singing plush gingerbread man.  The singing plastic snowman.  How we loved to make them sing together -of for no other reason than to drive our sweet mother mad!  Lastly, we would top the tree with strands of glittering icicles.  The colorful lights would glint off of them as they swayed to even the SLIGHTEST change in air movement.

What a night I had to look forward to!  I stepped into my classroom and was there named Student of the Week for being so bubbly.  Could the day GET any BETTER?!  I happily made my way to the old school bell where they took my picture (Polaroid) and within a few minutes, my picture was placed on the bulletin board where it would remain for the ENTIRE week.  How I had coveted that spot for weeks, and now… NOW IT WAS MINE!  It took all the courage I could muster not to ask to use the bathroom, just so I could walk by and see my picture with my name under the words “Student of the Week.”

I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my mother about it.  I couldn’t wait to get home and anticipate tree decorating.  I couldn’t WAIT to get HOME!

But once there, my mother pulled us all together and let us know that our great-grandmother had passed away.  It didn’t come as any great shock, really.  We all knew it was coming, but it still affected me.  I was born excessively sentimental -an affliction that persecutes me to this very day.  I didn’t want to cry in front of my older brothers -what great foddery for teasing that would make.  I bit my lip.  I looked down.  I tried to take the news cooly.   I looked up to see how my brothers were taking the news.  I looked first at my oldest brother.  He had a slight grin on his face.

“Are you going to write this in your journal?” He asked, teasing. His teasing sent my tears over the edge, and I escaped to my room where I did indeed write in my journal that my great-grandmother had died.

In the months proceeding her death, she had been miserable.  She had taken such good care of her mortal body that death seemed to evade her, much to her disdain.

“Don’t take such good care of yourself,” she’d advise me.  And I’d laugh.

“I took much too good care of myself,” she’d say.  And then she’d tell me how badly she wanted to die.  Having always been a very capable woman, living with her children wasn’t an easy thing for her to do.  They all lived conveniently within a block of her home, and she would spend a little time with one and a little time with another.

Before she lived with her children, I had spent a lot of time at her home.  Once a week on her daybed, she’d given me crochet lessons.  The skill she taught me has almost singlehandedly paid for my husband’s 30th birthday gift, and I know she wouldn’t have it any other way.  I’ve tried to think of ways to thank her, and only one thing comes to mind: teach others.  I know that’s what she’d have me do.

I missed our weekly meeting together, and so I’d visit her as she moved from home to home.  I decided, one day, that she deserved something she’d given to everyone else but never saved for herself: a sock monkey.  Even as a child, when I got an idea I was pretty determined.  Nothing really stopped me, even if in the back of my mind I knew it was going to turn out much less than perfect.  I sifted through my socks and finally found a pair of worn purple socks that I thought really fit the bill.  I cut and stitched and guessed at how to make a monkey.  I wish I had a picture of that monkey, I really do.  My very first sock monkey, and how awful it was!  It didn’t look a thing like a monkey, and I knew that… but it was all I had.  I also knew that my Nunna had something of a blind eye when it came to gifts from her grandchildren, so I took it to Uncle Doyle’s house (where she was staying) along with a note I’d written in EXTRA EXTRA LARGE lettering on account of her sight which I had reckoned was pretty near gone.

When I proudly presented my monkey to her, she cried.  She hugged me and she cried.  I didn’t know how to respond because I had envisioned that she would praise my crafting expertise… not cry.  Looking back, I can see why a gift of a haphazardly sewn sock monkey could make a woman cry.  Aside from inheriting my grandmother’s knack for writing and nearly-daily journaling (yes, even as a elementary school student), I had inherited her sentimentality.

I didn’t realize, as I journaled away the days of my life back then, that my great-grandmother also journaled away the days of her life.  As I read through her journals this summer, I found an excerpt she’d written about a visit she’d taken to a doctor’s office.  As she sat in the waiting room, she engaged conversation with other patients waiting.  They related to her the story of their ills.  She recorded her sympathy and went on to say that she could never be a doctor -she was always to concerned with the people themselves.  I smiled when I read that because I’m exactly the same way.

And as I sat there last night, staring in turn at the monkey from my childhood and the monkey in my hands, I was grateful for my great-grandmother.

What better way to show it than to write it in my journal?

Nunna, you would have made for a champion blogger.  I love you, and I’m grateful for you.  Your ability to inspire has reached far beyond the grave. 
If this monkey doesn’t get eyes soon, my daughter is going to have a conniption.