Alice Taylor Quotes

Mrs. Casey, do you love Christmas?
Well you know, she answered reflectively, Christmas can be a sad time for people too. It's a remembering time for us older ones. We remember the people who are gone.
Oh, I never thought of that, I told her in surprise.
Well that's youth for you, she said; you don't start to look back over your shoulder until there is something to look back at, and around Christmas I tend to think of the Christmases past and the people gone with them.

She always spoke about "the people away" and how important it was to remember them and to keep in contact. She knew from listening to some of them when they came on summer holidays that at Christmas their thoughts turned to home and they loved to be remembered at that time. For others the cards was even more important; it provided the only link they had because they never made it home. I visualized my mother's Christmas cards as so many messengers winging their way to scattered family members all over the world from the nest from which they or their parents had all flown. She was the warm glow at the heart of our Christmas, but that warmth stretched much further than our house.

I loved sitting on the pile of freshly cut logs, running my hands over the different shapes and smelling their woody fragrance. To this day I think that there is nothing as interesting to look at as a heap of newly cut logs, the delicate colouring of their veined insides telling their life story, while they wait to bring warmth and comfort.

I always remember your own grandmother, she continued, nodding her head, old Mrs. Taylor. She died on a Christmas Night.
Oh, I said shivering. I wouldn't like to die on a Christmas Night.
A good night to die, she smiled; they say that the gates of heaven are open on Christmas Night.

Later that day I went back to the old turf-house door and drew back the ivy. There between the stones was the dried-out bird's nest that was no longer in use because its owner was on her foreign holidays. I eased my letter to Santa out of my pocket and tucked it into the nest. I considered this the ideal resting place because the owner and Santa both belonged to foreign places and came here across the sky. There was the mystery of the unknown about the worlds they both came from; they belonged in the sky and my letter was destined to join them there when the time was right.

Cleaning and painting finished, the next target was the big ware press in the parlour. Out came delicate china which had been in the family for years. My mother's respect for the Stations weighed against her fear of breakage, but the Stations won every time. Once when a precious jug was broken she mourned it for days, telling us all how long it had been in the family. Finally, Dan, our part-time travelling farm worker, said, "Missus, if it was here that long it was time to break it." And that was the end of that.