Grief is a tedious endeavor, even in the best of times. But, this time of year, as the days shorten and the holidays loom, grief reacts accordingly. Its movements take on that of the honey bees outside, slowing down almost to a stop. Or, stopping completely with no way forward, just waiting for longer, warmer, better days.
My grief snuck up on me this year. I was not expecting it, although I should have. It makes sense when we decorate the house for Christmas that old memories and feelings would resurface, yet I was unprepared, the same as I have been the last 3 years.
The decorations aren’t complete without a few items from my childhood, specifically the three things my sister and I kept after our parents died: a serving tray my mom always displayed, painted with the image of a goose and the words above it ‘Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat;’ a ceramic music-box with an ice-skating snowman on top; and an 8 inch tall animatronic gopher in lederhosen with beer stein in hand singing ‘ein prosit!’ Admittedly, the last one is not Christmas related, but it was given to my father by a business partner for Christmas one year and became one of our annual decorations. It screams Christmas to me now.
My sister and I ship these decorations back and forth to each other each year, so we both get to relive the nostalgia. One year one sibling gets the goose tray and music-box together while the other sibling gets the drunk gopher. Then after Christmas, we ship each other what we have, and the cycle continues. This year is my year for the goose tray and music-box. I’m excited for my decorations this year, but I’ll miss that little gopher.
Somewhere in transit the music-box broke. Music-boxes, it turns out, can be fragile. There are tiny pieces and little, thin, metal fans. There are the smallest of screws and barrels to protect the spring that should not get broken and probably cannot be repaired. Once I opened the music-box, it was apparent the tediousness of the work needed to be done.
I have not had the good fortune to work on other music-boxes, so I guessed the music-box in front of me was mostly standard with its series of gears and brackets and barrels. The biggest gear is attached to the side of the music cylinder. Beneath it are other gears that, in series, cause the little, thin, metal fan to spin. I’m not certain what the point of it is, but I’m sure it is necessary for the proper function of the music-box.
On top of the big gear in this particular music-box is another, smaller gear, placed perpendicularly in line with the teeth of the big gear. Above it is an arm with a magnet on the end that rotates as the spring unwinds and the music-box plays ‘silent night.’ All it took was one glance at the entire mechanism to know exactly what was wrong: somewhere in the shipping and receiving process, the gears no longer lined up. Some of them had swung on their little arms or baskets out of the way and one had come completely unscrewed from the base.
Although it was not difficult to understand what needed to be done, the tedium of the work to fix this small apparatus set in quickly. At first glance it did seem confusing, but after deliberately spending some time observing the inner workings of the music-box, the solution became clear. But, understanding and clarity are almost useless until you try to act on them.
The problem was I didn’t know where to start. Which screw needed to be loosened first? Was there one piece that needed to be fixed first to make everything else fall into place easily? Was there one piece that would make everything worse if removed or moved? Did it matter? Or, was it simply more important to get started on the work?
When I was a child, this was my favorite Christmas decoration. Mom would never let me put it on the shelf. It was too fragile for my clumsy hands and probably is still. As frustrated as I may have been about that at the time I see her wisdom. I hardly want to display it now lest something happen to it and yet another piece of my past, my nostalgia, my parents is gone from my life.
Most often the music-box would sit on a built-in bookcase next to our TV. Periodically I would crank the winding key on the bottom and sit in the chair near it to watch the snowman spin around the pond. It was our only decoration that was interactive (until the drunk gopher came along), but as an eight year old, you can only watch a ceramic snowman iceskating for so long without getting bored.
Inevitably, I would lose interest before the song ended. I would leave, but the music was still there, playing even if no one was paying attention to it, until it slowed to a complete stop somewhere in the middle of the song.
As mechanics go, music-boxes are very simple machines, so I decided to dive in and start dismantling it as much as needed before the rebuild. My hands are not mechanics hands or surgeons hands. My hands are not as dexterous when dealing with screws and gears half the size of my pinky fingernail (or smaller), so what should have taken five minutes took closer to thirty.
Eventually my patience was rewarded with a functioning music-box. The spring wound properly, all the gears were in line, and that little fan thing spun to its heart’s content, for whatever reason.
As I worked and dropped screws (and bit my tongue in concentration), it was impossible not to reflect on why I had it in the first place and why it had to be shipped to me which caused it to break. Dad had died almost three years earlier, and mom had been gone for 18 months. Without those two deaths there wouldn’t be a need for these repairs, only, perhaps, a bit of annual maintenance.
Grief is a tedious thing to work through. At first glance grief looks incredibly complex. But, after spending some time observing, things start to come into focus and make more sense – at least a little bit. Slowly, music comes back into life, and the gears start working together again after the repair. Life starts to hum along.
After the repair I put the music-box back into its home – a ceramic frozen pond scene. The entire thing is circular with a footprint not much larger than a drink coaster. Around the outside of the frozen pond are snow-covered evergreen trees and Rudolph pulling Santa’s sleigh. Unattached from the base is a snowman with a magnet on the bottom. The snowman, also ceramic, is starting to chip and crack some from years of use.
When the music-box mechanism is in place, it sits directly under the frozen pond. As the song plays and the gears spin the magnet on top of the music-box, the snowman goes with it, ice skating and spinning around the pond.
Figuring out how to get everything to sit inside the ceramic housing at the right height so the two magnets were close enough to one another to work, and in the right spot so the rotating magnet on the underside didn’t hit the side walls, was far more difficult than I anticipated. After some trial and error it finally came together. On my desk laid a fully functioning Christmas decoration from my past.
The music-box didn’t, and still doesn’t, work as smoothly as I remember it working when I was a kid, and I’m sure each year it will need some maintenance – a few adjustments here and there. It is not perfect, but the song it plays is still beautiful. It works enough to enjoy this holiday season. I just hope I can keep it together long enough to pass on its joy to my sons.
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