By Sean Dietrich, Sean of the South
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“When I was a kid, we didn’t have a Christmas tree,” said the waitress, placing a hamburger on the table in front of me.
I was in northern Georgia, in a restaurant attached to a gas station. My waitress’s name was Sharon. I know this because it said “SHARON” on her name tag.
Sean Dietrich (Photo courtesy of seandietrich.com)
“No tree?” I said, lifting the top bun to make sure everything was fine under the hood.
“No sir. Didn’t get any presents either. My mom worked too hard to spend any money on this. Mom paid bills and bought food.”
She handed me the Heinz for my fries. I used the heel of my hand to hit the bottle until it repented.
My waitress was middle-aged with straw-colored hair and wore a sweatshirt with a local high school name on it.
“So,” I said, “no trees and no presents, how did your family celebrate?”
She smiled. Her teeth were blindingly white, perfectly straight – thanks to her genetics, her dentist, or her prosthodontist. She had a great smile.
“Celebrate? Shoot. We don’t.”
“At all?”
She shook her head and started jingling the change in her apron. “Not until I was nineteen.”
“Why nineteen?”
“That was the year mom died. Mom died in an accident when she came home from work. It was awful. Worst day of my life. She was caught by a drunk driver. Had to raise all eight of my brothers and sisters afterwards. My father was a manslaughter. “
She looked away like posing for a Renoir.
“Do you know what I did the first Christmas?”
“Pray tell it.”
“Well, we couldn’t afford a tree. But outside in our shed we had cans of old green paint because our trailer was green on the outside. So I cleared a space in the living room and painted a tree on the wall.
“Then we made all the flowery ornaments and stuff out of tinfoil pieces and glued them to our painted wall tree. We made popcorn strings, decorated pine cones and stuff like that. “
I negotiated a french fry by six inch ketchup. “You’re pretty creative.”
“That’s not the best part. Me and my brother Sweets spent twenty dollars on our entire family this year. Twenty dollars. That was our spending limit.
“For eight children?”
“Nine including me.”
A bell rang over the door. She told customers to sit down somewhere, then looked back at me to find the clincher.
“You’d be surprised what you can buy for twenty dollars if you’re smart. We made our gifts cheap.
“Sweets got some wood and repaired a few swords and shields for the boys, painted them silver. For the girls, I went to the thrift store and bought old babydolls, repainted their faces, sewed brand new clothes for them to look like new. “
“Twenty dollars?”
“No more nickel.”
It took her a moment to laugh. It was the kind of absent laugh you get when you remember too much.
“Then you know what we did?”
I shook my head.
“A few days before Christmas, me and Sweets went behind Kmart to get some free cardboard boxes – you know where we put our presents? We wanted to wrap them in newspaper. Do you know what we found behind Kmart? “
“What.”
“Found cans of expired pumpkin puree and boxes of pudding, a bunch of absolutely good food, just thrown away. I took everything home and made cakes out of them. Pumpkin pie, pudding pie, whatever. Graham cracker crust. “
Another proud laugh.
“The next morning,” she continued, “everyone woke up and saw their toys and we just cried.”
“Cry? You mean happy tears?”
“No. Without mom we were all so sad that we could only cry. It was a tough year.”
“I am sorry.”
“A long time ago, darling.”
I applied mayonnaise to my burger with a mason’s trowel. Then I broke my onions into individual pieces of mulch and positioned them just right.
“How is your Christmas now?” I asked.
“My children are getting the best Christmas party. We’re going all the way to North Carolina just to pick a tree. We go through the woods near my brother-in-law’s house and we chop it up, cut it and so on. “
“For real?”
“And we all make our own gifts. Carve or sew them, or make pottery. That’s the rule. You have to do them with your own hands. More fun when you do it. “
She took a smartphone out of her apron. The woman put on reading glasses and began leafing through photos. Finally she showed me the phone. “Look here. I’ll make that my oldest, she is twenty. “
There was a great-sized quilt on the screen. There were so many colors that the ceiling looked like a true dolly parton song. Your creation was – frankly – worthy of a museum.
“You know,” I said, “that was a pretty good story you just told about your childhood.”
“Oh,” she said, “I keep telling my kids that one day I’ll write everything down to remind them to be grateful for all the stuff they have.”
“I think you should.”
“God no, I hate to write. I have to find someone to write it for me. “
Please consider this my contribution to your family’s happy Christmas, Sharon.
