Mary’s Birthday

No, not that Mary, who was busy having a baby, but my mother, Mary Caperton Bingham. My sister Eleanor set me a good example by calling her Mary now years after her death but I haven’t yet made the change. Mother was never Mommy or Mom, or—God forbid—Mary. She required a certain formality of address.

No one wants to be born on Christmas Eve. The festivals of the next day swallow it up. And I doubt if Mother set much stock in the manger story; she knew too well how inappropriate that lowly spot was for the birth of our Savior. As a child, the fanfare of Christmas meant that there was not much celebration of her birthday and few presents, especially in the Richmond of her early years when there was never enough money. “How are we going to pay for all those petticoats?” her grandmother, my great-grandmother and namesake, Sallie Montague Caperton, would lament as each of her five granddaughters was born.

My father tried in many ways to make up for that early deprivation. One was the preparation and production of a Christmas Eve play, performed regularly during the years when I was growing up in Louisville. I don’t know how he dragooned my older brothers into memorizing lines—sort of—appearing on time, putting on make-up and costumes, usually some kind of timeless bright-colored tunic, and playing their parts: prince, courtier or peasant. The stage itself was improvised in one of the big downstairs rooms in the Big House, called the Music Room—there was a player piano on which only my oldest brother played, racketing down the keys when he came home late and drunk. An arched doorway into the next room, festooned with velvet curtains that could be closed, served as our stage.

I was drawn into re-writing several well-worn Christmas stories and nagging my siblings about rehearsing.

The point of the whole thing was Mother. She was the only member of the audience, sitting on a special chair and wearing one of her “tea gowns,” usually velvet in blue or green. She was kind about our amateur efforts and clapped loudly. Afterwards there were birthday presents she’d open with admiring exclamations. I never had any idea what she felt about the whole performance.

Performance it definitely was. So much couldn’t be said, or even thought. Perfection, never real, requires a level of discretion that might be called lying.

Never mind. We did it, and I’m glad.

Next morning, in an even more unusual performance, my father waited in the front hall, exquisitely combed and dressed, for my two hung-over brothers to lumber downstairs, also dressed in something dark and formal, spewing liquor fumes. They were going to Christmas Day service at church. All three would be ushering.

Sometimes I enjoy imagining that the past has a shine and glitter we can’t manage today. And I love my remembered image of Mother in her tea gown, clapping for her often-disappointing children.

Happy birthday, Mary. There is something to be said for illusion.

In My Family Christmas Mary Caperton Bingham 21 Favorites of 2021