Relics Box

The day after my Grandma Sandra died in December 1985, I saw INXS at the Agora Ballroom with a few friends. (I don’t remember their names.) Mom told me to go & enjoy myself. Thank God I already put the Christmas tree up—this is the last one I will ever trim. I ignored this declaration because this was always her favorite holiday. Mom had a box of baubles—a few from the late 1800s—family treasures wrapped in yellowed tissue. Asked who owned the ornaments before us: A lot belonged to your Grandma—but Mom didn’t know which side the old ones came from, had lost track of the names of the great-greats, wished someone had marked the dates somewhere. She marveled how they survived, how she’s never shattered one, how year after year she filled the tree with these little orbs that belonged to women with voices no one could remember how to miss. She tried telling me how broken she was over her mom’s death & I should have at least hugged her & I wish this memory disintegrated right here but I asked her if I could go to the concert instead. She passed the ornaments down to me when I moved into my apartment in 1990. I am looking at them now on an artificial tree I bought at The Home Depot a few weeks back. Don’t know how I feel about my daughter’s offer to host next year. Wonder when I will stop. I never put the fragile ones up when the kids were little, when the dog was alive. Over the decades I’ve added a few to the collection: New home 1993; Nick’s first Christmas 1995; Our precious girl 1997; Millennium baby 2000; Our new puppy 2006; Toilet paper rolls that spell 2020—I can’t believe I’ve been in charge of these things for 40 years & Mom’s been gone since 2017 & I am 57 & my house feels a little empty & even my memories are fragmenting. Broke the Waterford octopus topper & the 2015 blue gnome this year. I can’t believe what a selfish daughter I was when I was 17, before I understood what losing a mother meant. Last week, I adopted three blue pristine bulbs from a dusty thrift shop in Vermont for $2.75. Probably created in the 1950s. Wish I knew their story. I imagine someone loved them very much.

Victoria Nordlund is the Poet Laureate of Glastonbury, CT, and lead master teaching artist of the The Nook Farm Writers Collaborative at The Mark Twain House & Museum. Her poetry collections Wine-Dark Sea and Binge Watching Winter on Mute are published by Main Street Rag. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee, whose work has appeared in Rust+Moth, Chestnut Review, trampset, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. Visit her at VictoriaNordlund.com