I remember Iowa Christmas in photographs. I was too young to articulate the beauty, the sounds, the vastness so different from where I lived in San Diego. The pictures in albums are stories of what I grew to learn of my parents’ life in Jefferson: a smalltown square with welcoming folk; was there really a parade for every occasion?
I arrived at 6 years old with the idea that I would learn to ice skate at a pond across the street from Gramma Joan’s house. Coming from Southern California and witnessing Nadia Comaneci, I wished with all my heart that under the tree I would see ice skates on Christmas morning.
Not only were there ice skates, there was that frozen pond across the street. I would soon be the next Olympic ice skater.
I witnessed Iowa at Christmas that year – how I wish Christmas could be like that now: snow on the ground, carolers at the door, hot chocolate and fudge everywhere you went.
It wasn’t just because of the naiveté of my youth that I believed in the charm and reality of what the holiday is about. I still refuse to think it’s diminished or gone. I refuse to think the small town idea of Jefferson, Iowa is anything different than what I witnessed at six years old.
Judi Gose’s house. That farm house way out in the country. Lit up like the Fourth of July. Cookies on platters, punch in bowls, parents laughing, children giggling – Christmas in Iowa.
Barb Baugh and her horses. Their beauty in height and stamina against the cold of the Iowa plains. The idea that I would get to ride one of those beauties was just like my dream of being the next ice skating Olympian.
Sledding at Seven Hills with Aunt Ellen. A place, in my mind, all my own to ride freely down a hill with no one to guide me, to help me, to teach me. And then a pulley to take me right back to do it again.
A Christmas morning at 706 South Maple Street with my brother, all of my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, my grandmother, my mom and dad.
I thought it was all in pictures, but . . . I remember.
Merry Christmas, Jefferson. Thank you for the memories.
~Aubry Sayre Clopton Biesbrook, Cincinnati, Ohio
