Beech Tree News Network

When my girls were little, I bought an advent calendar from Avon in order to help my youngest daughter, Nikki, keep up with how many days were ahead until Christmas.  It’s a cloth calendar with 24 small pockets and a little cloth mouse who moves a space each day.  I’ve put it out every year since I first bought it.  It is a favorite of my granddaughter’s.  She started begging me to hang it up around September.  I held her off until the middle of November.  It will be hers one day, and I’ve stressed to her the importance of not wearing the little mouse out by playing with it. 
    Sabria asked me how long ago I got the calendar, and I told her I couldn’t remember but I would look on line to find the date.  I entered the information on Google and, low and behold, there was my little calendar on ebay…the 1987 inaugural version, just like mine…for 150 dollars.  I went down the list of entries, and it seems most of the sellers wanted close to the same price.  I told myself, maybe I’d better not let Sabria keep wallowing that little mouse around, especially if I want to sell it for 150 dollars one day.
    But you know what?  I’m never going to sell that little advent calendar.  It’s part of my history.  I’m going to put it back in my Christmas storage tote, along with the stockings and mantel scarf I’ve had for years.  Good memories are hard to come by.  I’ve found they are much more valuable than money.
    Recently, I read an article about a dad who boxed up his forty-something son’s memorabilia that had been stored at his house for years and shipped it across the country to his son’s house.  I understand that, but I also understand the son’s need to leave his stuff at his dad’s house.  It’s a need to save your spot, to mark your place, to prove you were there, like the astronauts leaving the American flag on the moon.   
    When Nikki brought her then-boyfriend, Thomas, home for the first time, she took him into the room that was hers when she was growing up and showed him all her stuff, like the collection of marine animal figurines and music boxes, and her high school annuals and comic books.  They were the artifacts that proved she had spent time here.
    I’ve told you before that Garey and I are notorious pack rats.  There won’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind after we’re gone from this earth that this was our place.  There will be plenty of evidence.  I’ve always thought I keep so much because I lost so much of my childhood.  The home where I lived from the time I was eleven till I graduated from high school was removed to make way for Taylorsville Lake.  The dam stands over the site that was our farm and my dad’s sawmill.  The last time I laid eyes on the place, all that remained were the steps leading up to the front porch.
    We left Mt. Washington when I finished fifth grade.  We lived in a small frame house on Markwell Lane.  The day we left, I found a metal piece that had fallen off a toy tractor lying in the front yard.  I remember taking the piece over to the fence that surrounded our yard and tossing it across into an old tire lying in the field beyond.  I’ll come back someday, I told myself, and when I do, I’ll find that piece of metal and remember when I was here.  I’ve never been back.  I’m afraid of what won’t be there.
    This year for Christmas, Garey and I made key holders for our friends, Landon, Josh and Jacob from the wood and nails and hinges that were part of their great grandfather’s barn that stood on our land until 2011.  I attached a small picture of the barn along with a brief history of when it had been built.  It is their history, after all, a token to mark the place of a man who was here before them.