When I was a little girl, I spent hours poring over the Sears Roebuck & Co. catalog, especially the Christmas edition.
The catalog was for me back then what the Internet is now – a world of everything I could imagine and then some right at my fingertips.
There was no store in our small town that carried the bountiful array contained in those glossy ads. My little hands grew tired thumbing through page after page of Cabbage Patch Kids, Stretch Octopus, Easy Bake Ovens, personalized baseball shirts, floral bell bottoms and leg warmers. (Hey, it was the late 1970s/early 1980s and those were hip, mind you!)
I often fell asleep with the huge book in bed with me as visions of Shrinky Dinks danced in my head.
Of course, I knew those items would likely never grace the space beneath our tree. It was just me and my mother and we didn’t have three dimes to spare between us.
Mom worked at the steel factory 30 miles away and we were barely able to afford necessities. Instead, the catalog quickly became part of my booster seat, being added to last year’s catalog and the telephone book so that I could reach the kitchen table to eat dinner with my mother.
This system worked quite well until I’d get fidgety and the stack of books would lose their integrity and slide, causing me to go down with the avalanche.
Ah, but in those weeks before Christmas, the book held possibility. It was magical. Anything could happen!
Fast forward 30-some-odd years. I’m now an adult, or so folks keep telling me, and knee-deep in cardboard as I unpack the never-ending pile of boxes from my recent move. With each box, I wonder where all this stuff came from.
I had a moving sale, yet I do believe my belongings bred in storage like a dozen rabbits kept in the same cage.
And as I open each box, it’s a lot like Christmas morning. I’m not sure what’s in there. Apparently, I’m not the best labeler.
If you’re about to move and want someone to write on your boxes what the box contains, I should not be your first choice. I write stuff like … well, “Stuff.” Or just the room it goes in. I didn’t realize this until the Doc pointed it out to me.
I asked him to carry up only boxes I’d labeled “Kitchen.” After about 10 trips, he informed me that every box is labeled “Kitchen.”
“And you don’t cook,” he added, somewhat dismayed, “so what on earth is in there?”
Well, what I lack in talent, I make up for in enthusiasm.
After eight months in storage, each box holds items that I now clearly realize I either don’t need or am very much happy to see. I eagerly throw open each box and divide the contents into two piles of Keep and What Was I Thinking, the latter of which is further divided into piles of Sell and Donate.
The other evening, I opened a box labeled “Games.” Inside laid a faded Milton Bradley box emblazoned with the faces of happy children. Shrinky Dinks. And Simon. And a doll that resembled a Cabbage Patch kid, handmade by a lady my mother worked with at the factory.
I smiled.
Mom scrimped and saved many a week to see her child’s face light up brighter than our Christmas tree. Those special gifts have been toted in many a poorly-labeled box to each place I’ve called home.
Definitely “Keep.”
A lot has happened in the year since I last unpacked my ornaments, plump snowmen and holiday décor. There’s been loss and gain, change and more change, adversity and privilege, all of which I’m learning can be blessings in the long run.
The Sears catalog is no longer published, and it seems to me that most folks buy whatever they want throughout the year rather than waiting and hoping for that special gift on Christmas day.
I suppose that’s fine. I no longer want for a thing that could be found among its pages.
All I need I find I already have. A dog, a plant, my faith, a little house and a piece of land and someone to share it with, when I stop being stubborn enough to let him.
And who knows what the coming year could bring? There’s a host of possibility. Anything could happen. Simon says.
From my home to yours, have yourself a merry little Christmas.
LISA KELLEY IS A WRITER, MASTER GARDENER, ANIMAL LOVER AND ALL-AROUND GOOD OL’ SOUTHERN GAL WHO ALSO HAPPENS TO PRACTICE LAW AND MEDIATE CASES IN DOWNTOWN BENTONVILLE.