Magic and grandparents and tea

It always startles me how swiftly the days between Christmas and New Year’s pass.  Even when I find myself attempting somewhat of a normal routine by going to work… it really is seldom normal… and the days just melt into the other.  Maybe that’s my excuse for taking a lengthier holiday from this blog… or maybe it’s because I knew this post had to be about something that makes me tear up even at the first paragraph.  Saying goodbye.

Now, I realize the finality of our Christmas tradition is not actually final.  The house that has housed every Christmas feast I have attended since infancy is not going any place.  I am grateful… and excited to see the new life that it will start to have as my aunt and uncle make improvements and warm it with their love and smells from the kitchen.  It’s just… well… change.

I am glad I see it coming, so I could relish the minutes of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my family.  It was sad without my grandmother pointing her finger and cackling at the noise of her children.  But… it was every way an affirmation of her being… seeing all our love, our volume, and our recipes spread over tables carrying on her spirit.

 (that is the Kugel on the right)

I spent Christmas Eve once again preparing the meat dressing with my mother and cousin.  The house was full of light and the shadows seemed to give way to the little things that reminded me of what makes Christmas and grandmother’s houses so magical.  

It’s funny.  When I think about Christmas as a kid, I think less about the stuff that I opened up under the tree.  I think more about the gap between opening presents and eating dinner when I would go up into the attic and play with my cousins.  Indeed, sometimes it was a huge letdown to have to break away from our scenario of some Parisian apartment where we were hiding out from an evil stepmother, setting up tea with the colored cups and Snoopy teapot, and go downstairs to eat the real food on the real dishes.

I went up into the attic last Monday to retrieve the little table and chairs for the little people eating the Christmas feast.  Standing at the bottom of the stairs and looking up those stairs is such a vivid step through time.  The worn carpet, the drawings on the wall, the trunk on one side and the old school bench on the other… and the smell.. put me back to 1982.  There is nothing like the smell of that attic.  Well, maybe there is.  There was a room in Beauport that came close.  Old wood that is heated by the sun, cooled by the winter, and locked up for more than half the year.  A little bit musty.  A little bit dusty.  But ever.so.completely.magical. 

The toys are all still there.  The tea cups and saucers.  The desk with the alphabet chalkboard.  The green jewelry box full of clip on earrings and broaches.  The shiny black plastic cabinet with glass doors and silver knobs.  The stove made from crates and a set of drawers.  The straw monkey thing that hangs on the wall.  A thermometer.  Names etched into the ceiling.  Plastic magnetic letters.  A blue, yellow, and red wooden canister.  So many memories.  So much of what is glorious about being a kid, about being a Brennan is locked into the essence of every one of those objects.  That attic – even for the two minutes I spent retrieving the table  and chairs – was like stepping into a room of Christmas.  

My grandfather made that attic as a playspace.  First, for his children.  And then for his grandchildren.  My great-grandfather who helped to build the house, supplied it with the school furniture.  Indeed, I believe he also supplied the chairs and table that I retrieved for the dining room.  He was a custodian in the Worcester school system and recycled some of the furniture for his grandchildren.

My grandfather recycled materials from his three decker to build the attic.   I recognize the carpet from pictures of the living room in their first floor apartment.  The walls that made storage eaves were from the cellar where he had those crazy parties.  One of the party guests drew some very… interesting chalk pictures… on the wall.  My grandfather took the pressed cardboard wall coverings and flipped them so they were hidden inside the eaves… except for one random foot.  It’s funny.  I spent years in the attic and I never saw that foot until this year after going through all those party pictures.

It was an afternoon full of nostalgia and trying to figure out what was missing from our traditional Mt. Pleasant Ave. Christmas.  I kept looking in the refrigerator as if that was supposed to inspire me as to what needed to be there… aside from the most obvious absence.  And probably on my third or fourth peer into the fridge, I realized what we needed was some Bubby tea.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet – for my non-family readers.  I called my grandfather – my Irish Catholic French Canadian grandfather – Bubby.  I don’t know if it was because my mother was friends with a woman at the time who was in fact a Jewish grandmother – or because I just had fun sounding out the ‘b’ syllable with him, but my grandfather became Bubby.  And he liked it so much he had it made into a vanity plate for his car.

That’s why his iced tea recipe is called  

Bubby Tea

Ingredients:
18 c. water
1 tea cup of sugar
2 shot glasses of lemon juice
Caravan Teabags – non clouding – 1 oz.
Directions:
1. Bring water to a boil.
2. Add teabag and remove from heat.
3. After tea cools (2-3 hours), remove bag.
4. Add sugar and lemon juice.  Stir.

As you can see, this is definitely a recipe of nuance.  That said, in spite of some empty cupboards, all the ingredients for Bubby Tea were waiting for us in the kitchen.  All, except, the special pot.  It was believed that the secret ingredient to this tea was a white pot.  But… this pot was used for decades and had a number of chips and dings… and who knows what chemical was in that chipped paint.  The pot was banished from cooking in the last year… and disappeared in recent months, but not before I took a picture of it.  

We still manage to make the tea delicious without the special pot.  Maybe the delicious is slightly different (as I’m sure it would be without the right tea cup or shot glass, too).  But it is still a constant in winter, spring, summer, and fall.  A Brennan gathering is not complete without it.  

Likewise, I know we have the ingredients of a magic Christmas, no matter what changes.   Maybe it’s the influence of hours spent in that magic attic… or maybe, it’s the influence and love from a pair of grandparents who made that magic real.