A Popcorn String Christmas Story

The spaces between the yellowed kernels get bigger every year where the knots of popcorn have crumbled away. The cotton sewing thread grows more and more fragile. But then we weren’t making anything to last the Christmas of 1973. Just popcorn strings, decorations to hang on the tree that year and then throw away. The strings were temporary, like the lives of those who made them.

* * * * *

Both the little boy and the old woman had daisies in their eyes. I remember noticing that for the first time as the 3-year-old looked up adoringly into his grandmother’s face. The little boy had inherited her deep hazel eyes, with gold highlights that sparkled like the pedals of a flower around a black center.

And I remember noticing how at home in her hands the needle and thread looked. Whenever I tried to sew, I was so clumsy I’d poke myself in the finger, drawing blood so the child would offer to kiss it to make it well. But she never poked herself, not once the whole time she sat in the wide oak platform rocker, balancing a squirming child in her lap as she strung lengths of popcorn to put on the Christmas tree.

There was no snow on the ground outside the windows as she worked. Clouds the color of pewter hung just above the treetops, dripping dreary winter drizzle into the red Mississippi mud. The magnolia tree in the front yard still had a few yellowed blossoms scattered among the seed pods. The grass was still green.  It was a strange, disorienting first-Christmas-away-from-home for a young couple and their 3-year-old child. The only  sense of family and tradition in the season was the grandmother’s presence, the sight of her arthritic hands stringing popcorn on long pieces of cotton sewing thread, her off-key voice singing Christmas carols in the comforting Texas twang that was already beginning to fade into Deep South mush in the speech of the towheaded youngster in her lap.

When each popcorn string was complete, it was placed just-so on the tree, with much backing-up-and-eyeballing to make sure the drape and swag were perfect enough to satisfy and imperfect enough to imply a lack of planning and a carefree spirit. The little boy got to eat all the candy canes whose position on the tree interfered with the popcorn strings, and he crawled around on the carpet beneath the tree, munching happily on stray pieces of popcorn gleaned from among the fallen pine needles.

That Christmas is etched in my memory with rich, joyful laughter, the smell of hot cider and home-baked cookies and Texas chili bubbling on the stove. The grandmother’s eyes never strayed far from the little boy. She slipped him extra cookies when she thought I wasn’t looking. She pretended not to notice when his squirming on her lap pained her arthritic legs. She hugged him tight and dried his tears when she left to go back home to Muleshoe after Christmas, telling him that she’d be back, that they’d make new popcorn strings for the tree next year.

But they didn’t. Her heart failed in May. She died in a Texas nursing home without ever seeing the little boy with flowers in his eyes again.

* * * * *

The popcorn strings are always the first decoration to go on the tree. Right after the lights. My three sons know that. They’ve always known. It’s been that way every Christmas any of them except the oldest can remember. They also know the strings are precious beyond measure to their mother and their oldest brother. And that the strings are fragile and growing more fragile with every passing year.

And they know the story. But it usually gets told every year anyway. The story of how the first Christmas after the death of their grandmother—the grandmother two of them never knew—was a very sad Christmas. And how their mother discovered the popcorn strings the grandmother had made the year before, tucked away in one of the Christmas decoration boxes.

I never did find out, I’ve told them for almost 40 Christmases now, how it was that the popcorn strings wound up in the Christmas decoration box. I know I intended to throw them away. In fact, I thought I did throw them away. But apparently their oldest brother wanted to keep them and sneaked them into the box. He does not remember.

All I know is that when I spotted them in the box, I began to cry. I cried a long time, great gulping, heaving sobs. Then I took my 4-year-old son by the hand and together we put the strings on the tree with the other decorations—in my mother’s memory.

It has been the same every year since. When the oldest went away to college, the popcorn string tradition passed to my middle son. When he joined the Army, the job fell to the youngest. Even after they were all gone, one or the other of them always has been home at Christmas to put the strings on the tree.

The little boy with daisies in his eyes is 42 years old now and has five children of his own. After Christmas last year, his wife repaired the strings, interspersed the old, crumbling yellow kernels with fresh popcorn—on new sewing thread. And this year, the popcorn string tradition will pass down to the next generation. My youngest grandson is 5 years old—a year older than his father was the year after my mother died. It will be his job to put the strings on the tree.

Oh, his little hands aren’t as big as his father’s and uncles’ hands. His little fingers won’t be as gentle—he’ll probably twist the sewing thread as he works and crumble some of the popcorn under foot.

I figure his great-grandmother understands.