A Christmas Memory for finding a feeling of home

In November, I wrote about Truman Capote’s “A Thanksgiving Visitor” regarding the importance of empathy. This column is about another one of his wonderful short stories—“A Christmas Memory”—and yearning for home.

Capote was a young boy of divorced parents and for several years lived with other family members in the small town of Monroeville, Alabama. Among the adults, his favorite was an elderly cousin whom he called Aunt Sook.

In the story, he describes her so well with this passage: “In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry. Here are few things she has done, does do: killed with a hoe the biggest rattlesnake ever seen in this county (sixteen rattles), dip snuff (secretly), tame hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger, tell ghost stories (we both believe in ghosts) so tingling they chill you in July, talk to herself, take walks in the rain, grow the pretties japonicas in town, know the recipe for every sort of old-time Indian cure, including a magical wart-remover.”

The story revolves around their annual Christmas quest to raise enough money to bake fruitcakes for gifts for many people, including sending one to the President of the United States. They save money all year for this endeavor, including purchasing an essential ingredient: illegal whiskey from a tall giant of a man: Mr. Haha Jones. The spinster and the young boy confront Haha who glowers at them through “Satan-tilted eyes.” When they attempt to pay the $2 price with nickels and dimes, HaHa softens and asks for a fruitcake instead. As they walk away, whiskey bottle in hand, Sook says, “Well, there’s a lovely man. We’ll put an extra cup of raisins in his cake.”

Christmas morning arrives and the little boy receives socks, a shirt, handkerchiefs, a hand-me-down sweater, and a subscription to a religious magazine from the other adults of the household. But Aunt Sook and “Buddy” (as she calls Truman) give each other what they always do: kites built with their own hands. “Buddy, the wind is blowing,” says Sook. They go outside to fly them with their beloved dog Queenie.

Yet this was their last Christmas together. Capote writes, “Life separates us. Those who Know Best decide I belong in a military school. And so follows a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons, grim reveille-ridden summer camps.”

Occasionally, he received a letter from Sook, mostly about local happenings. I will share the final paragraph, but I urge you to read it in context. This was written by a man who achieved great fame; who was among high society in New York and then spurned for revealing their secrets; who invented a new form of literature; who starred in movies; who continued to struggle with addiction all of his life. Capote writes:

“A message confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kits hurrying toward heaven.”

We all yearn for home. Let’s be mindful of that this Christmas, and let our heart fly high above in the sky.