MY MOTHER'S CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS

“Over the course of about 35 years, she made hundreds of these beautiful things…”

My mother’s life was bookended by two great losses: at age 15, the death of her mother, after which she took over the entire care of the house and her father and sister; and at age 72, the death of her younger daughter, my sister. But to meet her, you never would have known. 

She was the kind of person who always had a smile. She cared about how you were. She and my father loved to entertain, and her door was always open. She was a giver, always doing little things to make things nice for the other person. When it was her turn to host card club, she’d fill her two Lenox china swans with cigarettes so her friends wouldn’t have to reach for their own. When I got married and my husband and I visited, she always had a homemade pie waiting for him.

She started making ornaments in 1963, after my dad was transferred and they had to move to upstate New York, 300 miles from all their family in Pennsylvania. This was less than a year after my older daughter—their first grandchild—was born; she was heartbroken. So maybe the ornaments started as just something to do, but it turned out she loved making them, and soon she was teaching her new friends to make them too. That would continue wherever she lived: at their summer cottage in Ontario, when they retired to Florida. She taught “the girls”—my sister and her friends. She tried to teach me, but I didn’t have the patience.

Of course she had other interests. She was a big reader, a fantastic ice skater, a fantastic and strong swimmer. She played a great game of canasta and was a whiz at bridge. She was very smart; she’d skipped a grade and finished high school at 16. My younger daughter once asked me if she hadn’t wanted a career. I think she was smart enough to have done anything she cared to, but I truly believe her happiness came from doing for people she loved. Maybe it’s because her mom died when she was so young, but for her, family and friends were the priority. That’s what made the ornaments special—she was making them for people she loved.

When my sister got cancer and died, it was the end of my mother’s world. She had believed and kept on believing it wasn’t going to turn out that way. What made it even harder was looking at my sister’s two children and knowing their mother wasn’t going to be there. She knew what that was like. I think having something to do with her hands, something she loved, helped her get through. Taking those beads and pins and sequins and pearls and velvet and satin ribbons and turning them into something beautiful gave her purpose and even joy, as much as she was able to take joy in. 

She died in October 2004, 15 years after my sister. When she was at our house for what would turn out to be her last Christmas, I walked her over to our tree and said, “Mom, do you know you made just about every one of these ornaments?” and she turned to me and said, “I did?” She went around touching them and smiling and saying “I made this?” I think by then she really didn’t remember, and she was in awe. 

Over the course of about 35 years, she made hundreds of these beautiful things—maybe in the very high hundreds—and every Christmas my sister’s friends still tell me how much they love putting theirs on their tree. I love that these things my mother created with her own hands have become part of other families' traditions, and that they've traveled all over this country and beyond. But mostly I love seeing them on my tree. They are the treasure of my kind, caring, generous, loving mom.

—Joanne Way