Why couldn’t it have happened to this aunt, Sister Marilyn Thomas? She had worldly and other-worldly protection. Besides, this cowboy had just returned from protecting Davey Crockett, alias Fess Parker, at the Alamo. He would have lassoed or caught it in his coon skin cap.
But it didn’t. More on Sister Marilyn and my unlucky Maryalice shortly.
The year is 1957, and a lot is happening outside the Gardner household: Sputnik, the Little Rock 9, Elvis on Ed Sullivan, and the Cuban Revolution.
Inside, on a typical day, my father, Paul, worked as an engineer at Bendix Corporation. My mother, Dody, managed three children: myself, eight; my brother Peter, six; and my other brother Pat, three. There’s also a one-year-old beagle, Sam, who Santa placed in a squirmy turkey box the previous Christmas.
As you can see in the photo, Dody had been busy taping Christmas cards on the living room wall. Did she stand on a step ladder? Did my Dad help her? Did I? I have no memory of the process.
She would live in this house for 65 years, hosting Christmas’ for roughly half a century. Fortunately, she gave up the card wall after this incident. Violence and change were afoot, not only in Cuba.
Mom died in 2017 at the age of 96. I never asked her where the idea for the Christmas card wall came from. Or why the out-of-your-sight Aladdin lamp-shaped purple glass planter that lay to the right of the cone-shaped thing on the mantel under the cards sat too close to the edge?
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Uncle Al, Aunt Maryalice, and cousins Jim, Dan, and Terri arrived from Des Moines late one morning, a few days before Christmas. Sister Marilyn, whom we called Fawny, had come from Dubuque the day before. She got the name Fawny because little brother Al couldn’t pronounce Florence, her given name.
Fawny was staying with her mother, also Florence. My maternal grandfather, Al Sr., had died of a heart attack in 1944.
Before I return to the foreshadowed event, I must say something about my mother. Normally high-strung, the string tightened when high-maintenance Al visited. They were cut from the same mold. Each married a calming presence. Maryalice was a red-haired, sweet woman who died of diabetes at 42 in 1970. My father, who exuded equanimity, died of sinus cancer at 71 in 1993. Interesting. Edgy Al lived to 88, my mother — no sense repeating myself.
Sister Marilyn, who refereed the Dody and Al matches, died in 2019 at 103. She had been a BVM (Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin) for 75 years. A traditionalist, she wore the square coif headdress long after other BVMs had changed to a rounded one.
My family only used the living room during Christmas when Dad lit a fire from logs piled in the garage. In the photo, you can see a corner of a fire screen to my left. You can’t see a handle or damper that opens and closes the chimney flue. Dad needed both hands to turn the damper, which he would do before dropping the first match.
On this day, Aunt Maryalice sat on the floor with her back to the fire guard. When Dad cranked the damper, the vibration moved up the brick wall to the mantel, nudging the triangular front of the heavy glass purple planter off the ledge where it glanced off the top of the fire screen onto my aunt’s head.
*
My WW II Coast Guard medic Dad retrieved his usual assortment of bandaids, cotton, and turpentine and treated her wound while my mom picked up the unharmed planter and took it to another room. I don’t think she ever put it back on the mantle. Uncle Al helped Aunt Maryalice to a chair across from the fireplace. I noticed a little blood, but otherwise, she seemed OK, if a little stunned.
The cousins waited patiently for the signal to attack the gifts under the tree.
Whenever I recall this incident, I wonder why Mom didn’t see the danger. The mantle was her territory, and everything was in its place. But the planter must have nudged out just enough that all that was needed was a little jolt. My mom was a worrier who always erred on the side of caution. Under normal circumstances, she would have put it somewhere else or suggested that Maryalice not sit under it.
It must have been because she was so distracted: three young boys, a challenging brother, a cloistered sister, an aging mother who lived alone, and organizing those cards. But there was one additional thing.
Our family always celebrated two Christmases, one Protestant and one Catholic. On Christmas Day, we traveled forty miles to my dad’s Protestant parents’ farm in Tipton. Paul Sr. and Edith hosted their five grown children and families. Christmas Eve was with my mom’s Catholic side.
Mom always felt underappreciated by her mother-in-law because of the religious difference. And she always resented that her mother had never been invited to spend Christmas Day at the farm.
She must have been stewing over all this, so she never noticed the purple planter was waiting to fall on Aunt Maryalice.
By the evening of that day, this incident would begin its journey in Gardner family lore.
Without it, would anyone remember the Christmas of 1957?
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