We had a storage closet in our old windy farmhouse. It had a big heavy white door and it was at the bottom of the stairs. Most of the time you could completely ignore the big heavy white door and the mess behind it. That was why there was a mess behind it. Because it could be ignored.

Now that I think of it, there was a hot water tank in there. And that’s what the space was meant for. But there was also a giant clunky desk that you couldn’t see. Because the room was packed with old clothes in garbage bags, boxes of books, discarded blankets, old board games nobody ever played, forgotten stuffed animals, boxes of waylaid school projects. Periodically, during the year, someone might open the heavy white door and toss in a box or a bag of old clothes. But otherwise, not surprisingly, the room was ignored.

The beginning of December, though, I would go in to recover the box. It was a white box. Perhaps from Sears or Eatons, perhaps formerly for a coat or something. It was rather large. And inside that particular white box – we used the same white box for my entire childhood – were our Christmas decorations. It was always I who was sent after the decorations. Or perhaps I volunteered. I loved dressing Christmas. The room smelled of course. It smelled of hot steam. It smelled yellow. The old clothes, even stuffed inside their poly-urethane casings, gave off a heady musty stink. The box, the decorations inside, also developed its own smell. A mustiness, yes. And another smell. I think the other smell, a sharp spicy smell, was the smell of mouse droppings. The big white box, the dressing of Christmas rushes at me whenever I encounter that smell, the smell of mouse droppings.

I would return from the storage room with the big white box proud and jubilant. Christmas was inside the box. Inside the box:

1. A string of lights – each light was the head of Snow White’s elves. One was missing. Dopey, perhaps obviously, was my favorite.
2. White fuzzy rocking horses with red and white plaid patterns.
3. A champagne colored ball with an old fashioned looking horse and carriage. And some words I don’t remember.
4. A long string of lights of no particular importance or design. Except I remember the tiny little plastic bulbs exactly and I’m quite sure, if it still existed, I could pick out which ones are from my childhood, from the big white smelly box.
5. Cheap white Styrofoam balls that were covered in white with just a little gold and blue glitter. Every year there was less glitter but we kept them and I kept using them stubbornly.
6. Long garlands of tinsel. One in particular that perhaps once was gold but was now – or rather then – more of a rusty yellow. It was a fat garland and chunky and by the time I was 5 or 6, it had ripped once or twice or three times but I would put it around the tree and attempt to stitch it together seamlessly.
7. A tree skirt of some white cottony material. I had when I was 5 or 6 painted it with a Tri-Chem kit using bright colors. It was busy with happy Disney cartoon characters. On one side of the skirt, I had splattered a few spots of paint that had been wiped nearly but not quite away. Each year I put that part of the skirt to the wall. The skirt, for the first few days, kept the smell of the box.
8. A few clip on pine cones. They were painted white and attached to something that amounted to wooden clothes pins.
9. A small gold frame that had a hook. Inside that frame a tiny picture of me and my older brother sitting on Santa’s lap. I must have been 2 or 3. My face was pink and I looked petulant. The word petulant still raises that face in my head.
10. And a Bristol board yellow star that appeared only passably symmetrical if you turned it just the right way. The star was described by 5 lines of red glitter. I had made it in grade 2. And whether my family was cheap or sentimental, it was that paper star that topped the Christmas tree for my childhood.

SS