Mnemonic Retrievals

By: susan peterson stamis

Dec 22 2011

Tags: bric a brac, chinese goddess of mercy, foreign service, kingston jamaica, maurice utrillo, porcelain hand, state department

Category: Uncategorized

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The Christmas Tree. It was always fresh and green, but with no particular symmetry, and since my mother never wavered in her tree-decorating style, every Christmas tree in every photo looks like a clone of its predecessor.

This tree stands grandly in our beautiful colonial house in Kingston, Jamaica, in front of a big fireplace that served absolutely no other purpose in the tropics than to hold the mantel’s bric-a-brac; in this case a small electric clock and a shiny shell holding a pile of napkins that may have been placed there in preparation for a holiday party in the works.

Peeking out at the left is the statue of Kuan Yin, Chinese “Goddess of Mercy and Friend of Mankind.” Evidently friendless in our household, Kuan Yin was mercilessly deemed unsuitable for display after losing a slender porcelain hand, casually dismembered during one of the numerous packings and unpackings that she endured in her lifetime. My mother promises me that the one-handed statue is now carefully wrapped in linen, nestled in a box inside the old ornately inlaid Chinese cedar chest, but I haven’t seen Kuan Yin in so long that I’m pretty sure Mom has forgotten where she parked her.

Over the fireplace is a print by the artist, Maurice Utrillo, who suffered from mental illness throughout his lifetime and whose body of work was composed of hundreds of cityscapes, a repetitive theme from the neighborhood of Montmartre where he lived. A little mental myself, I often gazed at that picture over the mantel, imagining my little self strolling down its quiet street, stopping to knock on its closed doors to visit with the nice people living behind them. The print followed us around the world, hanging wherever my mother determined it most complimented the furniture, until one day, it was gone. It’s possible that the Utrillo print and the Kuan Yin statue fetched a whopping 50 cents or so after making their way to one of the biennial garage sales that my parents held to avoid “carting stuff all over kingdom come.”

The tree is decorated with hand-blown glass ornaments and heavy drooping metal tinsel acquired in Germany. The same bright silver tinsel was re-hung year after year, gradually tarnishing to a dull dark pewter with each use, and on January 7, the dreaded UNDECORATING day, we tediously removed it strand by endless strand from the brittle tree, wrapped it in tissue paper and packed it away in a shoebox.

The following year, my mother, who liked to keep things interesting by frequently re-arranging the furniture, confusing us into believing that we had walked into the wrong house, positioned the tree in front of a large open window off the porch that wrapped around the second story. One night, the entire household was roused from sleep by a horrendous shattering crash. From every direction, mother, father, sister and Susie and a gaggle of terrified wide-eyed maids raced towards the noise to discover our beautiful tree lying among smithereens of glittering glass, blown down by a capricious tropical “breeze.”

As we cried bitter tears over the loss of the beautiful decorations, the graceful tree-top angel and the tarnished tinsel, my sister and I immediately began lobbying for a replacement tree. But, Mom and Dad were having none of it, and on Christmas Day we opened our gifts sitting on the floor under a potted palm.