Crib

On a perfect dull dark damp day, I retrieved two christmas boxes from the dungeon of storage in the shed, and so unpacked the memory of last year and some of the years before, captured in the air that they were put away in. Whosh.

Along with it inevitably, regret, of what not done, in the year in the life. Along with it, also, a certain, sweet easy contentment in the now familiar; a resting in this is how it is: along with the joys and limitations of bungalow, dogs, woodland, field.

Among the contents, was a Smiths Crisp cardboard box (1980?) of carefully wrapped crib figures. They’d been made by my mothers class from Swanton Morely school. Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus of course, some young shepherds with their 6 sheep, three wise men, with suitably dark faces, some camels and donkey’s. All made by children’s hands in rough clay, coloured and fired. Those hands must be in their 40’s if not 50’s now, and have no idea their creations decorate my table at christmas.

It brings a warm memory of my mother who must have overseen these creations, and I am curious to find this manifestation of her is far stronger than anything else physical I have from her – an embodiment of her gift as a teacher, her mirth which was did not come easily or often, her kindness and her creation, also rare amid the practicalities of her life. As I often observe around December 10th, she accomplished something I didn’t, she gave birth, which this little story represents.

Once I would have believed in this story, and this would have been one of the characteristic icons which informed me of this christian account, a softer, kinder one to the central dominant cross. Today war, battle, death uncertainty ravages the land that conceived this story. Land, identity, and outside interest are contested. It is tragic for those involved, especially those oppressed and innocent, often women and children.

Along with the figures is a swath of cotton wool, representing snow, relocating I suppose the nativity to our land of snow rather than the Mediterranean climate of Bethlehem. It is old cotton wool, my mothers probably.