Is There Any More Left in the Pot? - Betty Sleep (i am malala young readers edition txt) 📗

Each December when I open up the boxes of ornaments, the memories come flooding back. A log basket of cinnamon sticks made by my son almost 20 years ago. The now wingless hand blown glass birds that belonged to my great-grandmother. But even as I search for new hooks or untangle cords, one image takes shape in my mind.

Out of a dusty box, I draw the tea set with candles in the cups and pot. It’s a burnished gold, nothing like the original, and made only for holding wax. But it stands for a time of innocence and joy, and a love that I was too young to appreciate.

The year was 1955. I was three and a half, and this year, I was going to get my pony. Even at such a tender age, I somehow understood the chances of getting a real horse were pretty slim, but I’d seen a rocking horse in the catalogue and the image of it burned in my mind and heart. I galloped around the house on my invisible steed, demanding to know if it was time yet. “Not yet,” my mother would reply endlessly.

It’s funny how our memory becomes selective as we get older. I only remember the anticipation. If I knew anything at all about the visit to a children’s hospital where my parents were told to take me home because there was nothing they could do, it did not sink in. I don’t even remember being sick. Nor did I know what was in store for me.

Christmas Eve was impossibly long, so I decided to have a tea party for my dolls. But instead of a doll, my father sat down at the table with me. The image of him on that tiny red chair, knees too high for under the table, is one that is as vivid today as it was more than 50 years ago.

I had already set the table with a blue plastic teapot and cups. With a fine pot of chocolate milk steeped just right, I carefully poured his cup and then my own. We sat and chatted with great civility. Or, that’s how I remember it. Dad in front of the tree, backlit by the soft glow of red, green, yellow and blue. Holding out his cup and asking, “Is there any more in the pot?”

I close my eyes, and even now I can see his face. If there is a way to invest love in a smile, then his heart was in front of me.

The next morning, there it was. A gleaming, black rocking horse with beautiful brown glass eyes and red plastic reins. I was in heaven. Until my father wrapped me in blanket and carried me out to the car. Without my horse.

The images of that time are sporadic, like flipping through a photo album where many of the pictures are missing. I see my father climbing the steps to the hospital, with me screaming in his arms. I am in a hospital bed for a long, long time. At Easter, he brings me a pot of yellow mums, the first flowers I ever received.
I felt betrayed. I got my horse and now I was where I couldn’t ride him. All I knew was that my father, who I adored, had left me here. I was very, very angry. And hurt. And unaware of how he was hurting as well. He had pleaded with the doctors to let me have Christmas morning, and they gave in.

There are vague memories of surgery, and the family story of how I came out of the operating room in the arms of the doctor, singing Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear. But no memories of any tears shed except my own. What I do remember clearly from more than five months away from home, is the face of my father at my bedside.

I fish a battered and dented star out of its disintegrating box. It’s identical to the one that sat atop our tree so long ago. Repaired over and over, I can’t let it go, anymore than I can let go of the memories. As I grew older and became a mother myself, I came to understand that my father was not an openly emotional man. But his love was in every thing he did for me, from the rocking horse I wanted so badly, to making sure his own fears didn’t spoil what was a magical time, and in later years, teaching me that to laugh is a wonderful thing. I look back on it now as I sit and admire my own tree, sipping my tea alone. If not the actually beginning, it marked the first time I realized what love is, and could be, and was until he passed away.

It is Christmas Eve again, but I am long past the age for a rocking horse. In fact, I don’t even remember what happened to it. The tree is decorated and the room’s lights are off, wrapping me in a warm glow of red, green, blue and yellow. I sit in front of the tree, my tea mug clasped in both hands, and smile. Once more I see the face of my father, and as I glance down into my now empty mug, I can hear him say, “Is there any more left in the pot?”

Publication Date: 02-12-2010

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