Soapbox

HollyBerry

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away… there was a Fuller Brush man.

   When I was a kid we had, in our closet, a small pink spray jar of room scent. It was called "HollyBerry" and it was made by the Fuller Brush company. We were not a family big on spraying scents in our house, but for some reason we all loved the smell of this spray, and, more than Grandma's raisin bread, it came to be the one scent associated with Christmas. Or maybe we loved it because we only sprayed it at Christmas- I don't know. But if you had cleaned downstairs, and it was nearly Christmas, you could get the can out and give one tiny squirt. Then you could sit back and watch people come through the living room and lift their heads and snif… and sigh. Hollyberry!
    And as such things happen, after a while we couldn't get it any more, and so the remaining supply was jealously guarded and doled out in miserly doses. So miserly, in fact, that when we sold the old family house, there was still a half-bottle on a shelf somewhere, and it came into my posession.
    So, for the last 22 years there has been, on the closet shelf by the front door, a small, unassuming pink bottle of HollyBerry spray. It gets hats and gloves tossed atop it or packages of batteries shoved in front of it. Many years I don't even remember it is there.

   This morning Tucker waited all the way until 6:20 AM before he came striding through the bedroom hoping to rouse someone. As I followed him downstairs he danced with excitement and I imagined he was saying Mom! Mom!! There's a can of wet dog food on the kitchen counter! I think Santa was here!!! It was nice to imagine someone excited about Christmas.
    After I fed the dogs and put them out I stood in the living room and looked at the tree. It's a beautiful tree again this year, with far too many brightly wrapped packages beneath it. I thought of how Christmas has become a somewhat empty ritual, and even at times a chore, with I have to finish my Christmas shopping ranking right up there with I have to clean out the refrigerator on the "Wonder and Joy" scale. This season has been much less stressful for me since I didn't have to work retail, hawking Christmas to other people, and I even had the time to make a few things, which used to be my favorite part of the holiday. Not bah-humbug, still… not enough fun. Not enough music (of the none shopping mall muzak variety!). Not enough childhood.
    Then I remembered the Hollyberry. I sprayed a small puff next to the Christmas tree, waited a minute, and then inhaled deeply.

    I closed my eyes and there it all was: the house on Shannon Ave with it's hardwood floors and braided rugs, large windows and warm yellow kitchen. I could see the Christmas tree, (which we cut ourselves from a local tree farm) sitting atop the wooden box my father made to raise the tree off the floor and make it easier to get gifts beneath it. I saw the old glass ornaments, including the frosted white ones that only older kids were ever allowed to hang because they were so fragile. I saw the bright plastic  bells that the little kids were allowed to hang on the lower branches, and the sturdy wooden ornament set that my grandparents made for each of their childrens' families. The tree was lit with large colored bulbs, each framed by a sparkling petal-shaped reflector that my dad made by hand in the basement. There would, of course, be raisin bread and heirloom rolled oats cookies in the kitchen, and mom was probably in the family room at her sewing machine, trying to finish up a gift in time to get it under the tree.
    Upstairs in my bedroom I was at the window, looking out on the cold night, sure I had just heard bells.

    I let myself drift on forward to the first Christmas Ted and I had together in our tiny apartment on Barclay Square. We bought tiny candle-holder clamps at a shop in German village and actually had candles on our tree, though we were so afraid to light them. We strung popcorn and cranberries and Ted carefully made a star from a piece of cardboard and aluminum foil. It was beautiful.
   Another (pre-parenting) Christmas we spent many evenings decorating fabric-colored styrofoam balls with ribbon, lace and beads. Each one is different and each year I change my mind about which one I like best. If I ever find those plain ornaments again I want to buy more: I still have all the little film canisters of tiny beads tucked inside the old box of lace scraps.
    And then of course there were the years when the kids were little: when Stephen (age 5?) decided the house needed more decoration so he drew some ornaments, a gift box, and elf, etc on a piece of notebook paper, cut them out and then taped them up all over the house to surprise us. (Surprise! There's tape all over your walls!)  Oh- and the year Katie made me the tiny angel out of paper with the sweetest face. (Of course I still have the angel and several of the 'decorations'). There was the year when the cat died right before Christmas, and I got each othem a little stuffed cat, and they loved them so. And the year the kids put out cookies for Santa and Mischa ate them while we were upstairs getting them in bed, and when we came down and saw the empty plate, for just the smallest fraction of a second…
   
    After 40+ years, the scent of Hollyberry does not last so long as it used to. After 10 minutes or so it dissipated, but by then the coffee was done and cinnamon rolls were in the oven, and one mustn't stay in the past too long anyway. I haven't opened my gifts yet, but I hope no one minds if I say that that little poof of Christmas past is probably going to be my favorite gift this year.