Born on Christmas Night

My mother's brother Charles, who was two years younger than her, was born on Christmas night. I reminisce about him in this stanza from a poem I wrote about my maternal grandmother.

Children circled you, flower-like,
Rowena, wild brown-eyed daisy, born in July;
Charles, on Christmas night,
a winter violet opening in north light.

When writing the poem, I had intuitively chosen flowers that would later describe both my mother and uncle. She became the president of the Alumni of Farmington State Teacher's College in Maine, and learned belly dancing in her forties. He became an Anah Shriner, a participant in many philanthropic activities, and enjoyed riding on a small motorbike in the Arab Patrol.

In a memoir written by my mother in her sixties, she described the roles that she and Charles had had as children at Christmas time when getting the tree.              

Rowena's Writings

"About fifty years ago, when I lived in the middle of Maine, choosing
the Christmas tree meant more than going to a vacant lot where the

trees are bound, wired together, and brought to the markets. We had

a pony named Beauty and a little sleigh so my father and brother,
armed with an axe and a lot of anticipation, [would leave] to find

the very best one [that] year. [They] started up across the snow-covered

back field to our woods – sleigh bells jingling. If there had been a fresh

snowfall it meant shaking the snow from the branches while Beauty's

impatience showed as she pawed the frozen ground. My brother would

always see the best tree ahead. My mother and I would watch from the

back bedroom window and finally see them coming down across the field."*

                                                                        Rowena Cramer – Xmas 1983

When I learned that after my aunt had passed my Uncle Charles had moved into an apartment in a city near where they had lived together in Maine, I secured his new address from my sister, who kept in touch with our cousins. In the years that I lived in spiritual training at Meherabad,* in mid-central India,  during the month of Christmas, I made Christmas cards at my home there and sent one of them to my uncle who, living in Maine, the most northern state on the east coast of the United States, experienced weather that was freezing and snowy. By contrast, the temperatures in Meherabad were in the low 70s, the days sunny, and the sky a big, blue bowl.

I wrote the five lines of my address on the front of the envelope. That, plus the Indian stamp would surprise him—as was my intent. He surprised me, too, however, when his Christmas card arrived at Meherabad! We continued exchanging wishes for a Merry Christmas until he passed. It was then that I learned he sent out over three hundred individually signed Christmas cards each year.

"Gladys Buswell Titcomb"*

Grandmother, you were steel once
under milk-white skin. In waves
of sun your hair hung
to your waist.

Your hands seeded beans
in straight, long rows and freed
crisp, embroidered pillowslips
from the wind’s fist.

Children circled you, flower-like,
Rowena, wild brown-eyed daisy, born in July;
Charles, on Christmas night,
a winter violet opening in north light.

You wished your hair weren’t thin;
it was fine as talcum.
You marked Bible verses with ribbon,
grosgrain ironed by your thumb.

Geraniums, red-hot cinnamons,
bloomed inside the farm kitchen window.
“What would the neighbors say?” you worried
as you swept dust out the back shed door. *

                                                             PJC 1984

My realization is, "When within our own larger family there is a distance that does not allow for getting to know one another, fortune may unexpectedly bring the right circumstance that creates a new and lasting bond of love.       

* Meherabad. The site of Avatar Meher Baba's Tomb-Shrine (Samadhi) and site of world pilgrimage as well as His early primary residence, ashram, and headquarters of His activities until 1944; now overseen by the Meherabad Trust.

* A Flower for God: A Memoir, Prema Jasmine Camp (Seattle WA: Wilson Duke Press, 2021) 37.