The Fruitcake Memory
The year was 1994 and each evening in fall just as he had for thirty-six years of my life, my father, Randolph, began to crack walnuts, pecans, and Brazil nuts as he watched in sequence evening news and re-run westerns on the television. Throughout my childhood, a round wooden nut bowl centered with metal picks was placed near his recliner, and each year in autumn I listened for the familiar sounds of breaking shells.
At night, between the intermittent disruptions from my mother as she worked about the home (wherein he might stop and pull her into his lap as she walked by), his inaudible commentary rankled toward the news, and his laughter at the antics of a TV cowboy, my father after a long day's work forming concrete, patiently sat night after night cracking nuts, prying meats from inside shells, and periodically discarding the remains. At day's end and sometime before his sleep, my father bagged these pieces and packed them into the household freezer.
When November came, large tin tubs, pounds of brown sugar, sacks of flour, refrigerated sticks of butter, bottles of Karo, and plastic cartons of green and red cherries began to claim the spaces and shelves of our small kitchen. Before the purchasing of a food processor, I was often assigned the jobs of organizing spaces, and chopping candied fruits. On mixing nights, my father’s large construction-firmed arms folded thick and lumpy batter into the rich, dark fruitcake mix that would soon be baked, soaked in brandy, and swaddled in cheesecloth. I have learned since that fruitcake is one of those desserts that is either "loathed or loved." For our family, fruitcake was pure love. Each December, after a night of robust sampling, we wrapped our loaves for distribution to a variety of friends and relatives across the Carolinas and beyond.
The recipe of making fruitcakes, at the direction of my mother, Fern, was an honored and symbolic part of the season for my parents, as were many of the other traditions they held so dear. My parents loved stringing the big, bold, brightly-colored red, blue, and green lights and refused to exchange them out when smaller, whiter, trendier lights became the preference of many. My mother asked for and chuckled each year as we found and cut the “Charlie Brown” tree and hauled it homeward from the pasture below our barn. She made popcorn and cranberry stringing a “job” for us all. She played endless Christmas albums on a large 1960’s stereo console that my father once brought home after a rousing, buddy-night game of cards in Santa Maria, California, and she wore a variety of red and green embroidered Christmas sweaters that I am sure have surfaced again in someone’s holiday tacky-sweater party. She saved and treasured the ornaments children made, and these were the ornaments that adorned our tree, save a few blown glass bobs that today would be a collector’s joy. In terms of charitable giving, both parents insisted that we all make and purchase gifts to share with those less fortunate. Providing good food, new clothing, and simple gifts to those in need was an expected rite of passage in our home.
When I asked my mother once about her devotion to these traditions, she shared that as children of the depression, both she and my father had experienced similar Christmas pasts. They shared a joy of fruitcakes, peppermint sugar-stick candies, oranges, and brown treat bags that the church distributed to attending guests. Along with Christmas carols and attending the annual church program, these traditions were the holiday delights of their childhoods. Fondly, in my home, we experienced a passing down of sorts, and as a family all took part in the preparation of the cakes.
The year was 1994, and my father passed away in August after an eight-year battle with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. That November, the house was dark and silent in the night, and the nut bowl sat empty by his chair. Come December, no music played, no tree was up.
Today, I don’t recall much about that Christmas, except that we somehow all mangled through. I told someone once that when my father passed, I felt as if the sandbags holding my life in place had drifted out to sea. What I do recall about that season is that my Aunt Hazel Guffey, one of my mother’s elder sisters, arrived one chilly November night with a bag of pecans she had shelled from her Florida trees with a chiming message for my mom and for us all, “It’s time to make your cakes, Fern, it’s time to make your cakes.” And so, together, we did.
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Teresa Price
2015
