When my oldest son was very young I bought a Captain
Kangaroo Christmas video for him. Little did I know what I was starting. In the
movie, Captain Kangaroo reads some children’s Christmas stories complete with
illustrations and one of those stories was “The Nutcracker.” For some reason I
can’t identify, Ty became immediately and undeniably enthralled with
nutcrackers. When asked what he wanted Santa to bring him, his list consisted
of a nutcracker. That was it.
Unlike nowadays when Christmas nutcrackers adorn department
store shelves in abundance, nutcrackers were not a common commodity back then. As a last resort we went to a specialty
(that means high-priced) kitchen store and bought him a nutcracker for $25. A
fortune back then, especially for a little boy who I ‘m thinking must have been
about four. I worried that he thought the nutcracker would come to life like in
the story, but I needn’t have. The nutcracker was a huge hit as a Christmas
gift and my little sweetie learned how to crack a peanut shell in his mouth.
Thus began the ritual.
After that, the nutcrackers became a tradition. Every year I
looked for new and different varieties to add to the nutcracker brigade. Of
course nutcrackers became very popular about that time and we had them all.
Candleholders, Wizard of Oz, Kansas State, you name it. Whatever Ty was
interested in at the time had a nutcracker to go with it and Mom couldn’t
resist the sparkle in his eyes when he opened the new one. Ones. Yes, they began to come in
multiples. Sets. Collections. We had miniatures and giants, tree ornaments and
door guards. Finally we had to set
up an oblong table in our living room to accommodate the nutcracker collection.
In subsequent years nutcrackers not only filled every square
inch of the table, but overflowed to other surfaces such as coffee table, cedar
chest, end tables and any card table we could find. Even the space underneath
the tables became inundated with nutcrackers. And here I must confess. It began
to grow a little tiresome. It took me hours every Christmas season to unpack
them all and I won’t even go into the eons it required to wrap them each in
tissue paper and box them away when Christmas was over. But for my darling
child, I did it faithfully.
Right up until he graduated from high school. And then he
dropped the big bomb. “Mom, I don’t really want any more nutcrackers.” Oh. Well
how long had he been feeling this way and not said anything? Awhile I guess,
though I never got him to admit it. And what of the army of nutcrackers I had
bought on an after-Christmas sale last year, now put away as a special gift for
Christmas morning?
As it turns out, those nutcrackers never came back out of
the box. To this day I have stacks of cardboard boxes in the garage and in
storage sheds filled with the infamous nutcracker gallery. No one has opened
them in years. What to do with them?
Someone thought I should sell them as a set. Surely all of
them together would fetch a hefty price. If you could find someone that wanted
a rather hefty collection. Someone else thought I should insure them. Really?
How does one go about insuring a nutcracker collection? I know. I can give them
to Ty since they are his and he has his own place now. Nope. He’s not touching
them. And his wife has tactfully expressed her lack of desire to inherit them
as well. They are now mine forever.
Truth is, I kind of like knowing I have them – as long as I
don’t have to find them and get them all out every year. Anyway how could I rid
myself of such memorabilia? The
image of my little Ty holding his first nutcracker is seared into my memory. It
made his Christmas all those years ago and to this mama’s heart, worth every
bit of money, pain and agony that went into the nutcracker-collecting era.
And perhaps one day I’ll have a grandchild. Maybe that grandchild will like Captain
Kangaroo and I can dig out the old video. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll say
something like, ”Grandma, I wish I had a nutcracker.” Problem solved and I will
be the coolest Grandma ever. (As long as you don’t ask the parents of that very
fortunate grandchild.)
