Five Short Stories for the Winter Holidays

With one exception, none of these is specific to the holiday season, but they explore themes associated with this time of year.

Title: A Christmas Memory
Author: Truman Capote
Where I Read It: It appeared at the end of an edition of Breakfast at Tiffany's
This story aches with love and separation. A young boy and an elderly female relative who's a bit childlike and eccentric are pals in a house where they're both overlooked. Their friendship won't last for long before they go separate ways in life, but Capote infuses the story with rich details that makes their relationship timeless in memory. Mostly, it's the two of them preparing for Christmas. Here's a walk through the woods:

A mile more: of chastising thorns, burs and briers that catch at our clothes; of rusty pine needles brilliant with gaudy fungus and molten feathers... Always, the path unwinds through lemony sun pools and pitch vine tunnels.

And making fruitcakes:

Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke.

Week in Seven Words #216 & 217

216

helpless
No one knows who he is, only that he's fallen to the pavement and is sobbing so hard he can't speak.

needed
Garbage bags bulging with skirts, blouses and sweaters.

oasitic
Footsteps echo in the atrium, and faint voices, but all the sounds arrive as from a distance. Birds skim the vaulting glass. There's no breeze, but the trees rustle.

rigidity
He considers the model of masculinity people tried to make him live up to: No feelings, except for anger and physical appetites. No tenderness. An internal world made up of steel girders with huge blank spaces in between.

sapor
Knowledge is a treasure to them and a pleasure to all the senses. They taste new facts. They savor what they learn.

stricken
She looks perpetually stunned by the indifference and cruelty around her. The magnitude of it empties her eyes. She's left with a smile that creases her face but never reaches her eyes.

uninhibited
Actors try to banish their self-conscious impulses. They howl and prance in public. They pretend to be jaguars and squirrels.

217

body
I'm uncomfortable among people who are being cued to do the same thing at the same time: chant, scream, clap or stomp their feet. If they're a large crowd and look like they're really into it, this puts me on edge even more.

exhort
At her age, she's both exploring new opportunities and also warning younger people not to make the same mistakes she made. But they don't all agree with her on what is or isn't a mistake.

gall
She usually likes it when other people are worse off than she is. At the same time, she doesn't want to be uncaring. So she offers comfort and advice. Only there's a bitter satisfaction in her tone that make people turn away from her anyway.

nerves
Branches spasm in the wind.

persevere
Her first impulse is to say it's too difficult and to back off. But then she weighs the disappointment that might come from a failed attempt against the greater regret of never trying.

rumble
The ground is trembling with the trains passing beneath it.

sopping
The vestibule is soaked in the heavy smell of wet coats.

Tu B'Shevat is here

The Jewish "New Year for Trees".

The climate's not conducive to tree-planting where I live, but planting trees is very much a part of this holiday (though as it falls on the Sabbath this year, Jews who keep the Sabbath will plant the trees another time).

Soon I'll light the Sabbath candles, then go to synagogue, and then to the first Tu B'Shevat Seder I've ever attended (hosted at a local Chabad). In some respects it will resemble a Passover Seder - with people gathered at the table eating special foods and discussing the meaning (or rather meanings) of the day, and telling stories from Jewish texts and from their personal lives. There will be an array of wines, a large sampling of fruits, including the Seven Species - figs, dates, pomegranates, olives, grapes, wheat and barley (the last two as bread and cake).

Tu B'Shevat marks the day according to which the ages of different trees are determined (this is for purposes of tithing, and because a part of each tithe is donated to the poor, charity is also an important part of the day).



After a hectic week I'm looking forward to a day of contemplation, savoring, appreciation, and warmth. There's Tu B'Shevat, and also that wonderful constant in my life - the Sabbath.