THE LAST CHRISTMAS PARTY

Miami Herald, The (FL)
December 22, 1985
Author: MEG LAUGHLIN Special to the Herald

Usually, when I get my grandmother's sapphire and diamond set from the bank -- the bracelets and ring which she gave me -- I wear the set to a party and take it back to the safety deposit box immediately. But this holiday season, I have not wanted to take it off.

When I knew Nana, my grandmother, who died almost 20 years ago, her money had all but run out. She told me, when I was a child, that she had made unwise investments. But my dad told me later that she had simply spent it. Ran through her money, he said, living extravagantly, not thinking about the future.

She had a couple of pensions and lived in an apartment when I was growing up -- an apartment packed with antiques and oils, where my sister and I would spend the night when our parents went out. Nana would always entertain us lavishly, then before we went to bed, she'd get her special jewelry box out, and my sister and I would divide diamonds, pearls, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds between us, making two piles of pins, rings, bracelets and necklaces on her chenille bedspread. Then, we'd try the stuff on, telling her which stuff we wanted some day. I always got the sapphire and diamond bracelets and ring in my pile.

A few times, a piece of jewelry slipped through a tear in the bedspread, and my sister or I would have to tell my grandmother that we couldn't find it. But she never got upset with either of us; it's only jewelry, she would say. Besides, we'd always find it when we pulled back the covers.

She would rub our backs until we fell asleep, and the next morning she would serve us breakfast in bed. She had grown up in a house full of servants and she told us she wanted us to see what it was like.

She always wore a black dress and a corset under it, which made her very erect. Your grandmother is quite a lady, people around town would tell my sister and me. Nana was famous for her Christmas parties. She would wear a black dress to her parties, and she'd also wear her jewels. Before Christmas was the only time I saw the sapphire and diamond set on her.

In December, my parents would go to a lot of parties, and my sister and I would stay with Nana, helping her prepare for her big party. We'd cut holiday scenes out of magazines and glue them on matchbooks. We'd make jars of blender mayonnaise, green tomato chutney, and homemade mustard with her. She'd make Lebkuchen and pfeffernusse, and we'd brush the tops with egg whites to make them shine. We'd curl butter into roses and turn orange and lemon peels and ginger into candied fruit.

The night of the party, the chandeliers, the silver, and the crystal would sparkle. So would Nana. She would hire people to take coats and serve, and she would preside over the event as she had when her husband was alive -- when they were rich, and young. After the party, she would do all of the dishes herself, unable to pay the staff beyond the time the last guest had left. She would carry the silver trays of hacked turkeys, country hams, and tenderloin slabs back to the kitchen and wrap the remains of salmon mousse, caviar and crabmeat. My sister and I would leave with our parents before she started on the dishes. It would be a year before we saw her in her jewels again.

Nana had her last big party when I was a freshman in college. When I flew home right before Christmas, she had already gotten everything ready for the party. A couple of the dishes were mushy, not up to her usual standard, and she had charred the tenderloin and forgotten to get ice. At the party, she repeated herself three or four times. By summer, my father had arranged for her to go into a nursing home.

She was allowed to take one piece of furniture to her room at the home. She chose a Ming dynasty urn, which she had made into a lamp. It looked funny on the Formica table between the hospital bed and the large orange vinyl chair.

She wanted to take her jewels but my dad said no, that they would get stolen. He would keep them for her, he said. She gave him everything but the large diamond pin and the sapphire and diamond ring and bracelets. My sister, who, by then, was married, got the pin, and I got the ring and bracelets. After all, as children, we had always chosen them for our respective piles. When she gave us the jewelry, she told us to hide it. I stuffed mine up in the boxsprings under my bed.

When I came home from college for the Christmas holidays, I took my parents' car and drove out to Rosewood to see her. She was sitting erect, without a corset, in the orange vinyl chair, looking out the window. She wore a black dress clouded with pasty dirt, and her hair was plaited with rags all over her head. The attendants at the nursing home, feeling sorry for her because hardly anyone ever came to visit her, had fixed her hair like their children's. When I saw her, my insides turned to charred steak. But when she saw me, she lit up. She came alive. She wanted to know if we could have a Christmas party.

Over the next few days, I collected things, swiping supplies from home. Nana and I glued magazine pictures on match books, and we curled butter and put it on crackers. With toothpicks, we formed packaged ham slices into flowers, and we made silly designs on a paper plate with squirt cheese.

When it was time for the party to begin, we took the hors d'oeuvres out to the car in the nursing home parking lot, and Nana held them on her lap while I drove about a mile to Chickasaw Gardens, an exclusive neighborhood. I had gotten the diamonds and sapphire set out of my boxsprings, and I put the sapphire bracelets and ring on Nana. The jewels in the ring, because she had lost so much weight, slipped around to the inside of her hand.

We stopped in front of a large house and spread the hors d'oeuvres out on paper plates and put them on the console with the matchbooks. I had poured some bourbon from my parents' liquor cabinet into a jar, which I pulled out of my purse. I opened the jar and we took turns proposing toasts and taking swigs. We sang carols and ate a little, and by the time we had finished the jar of bourbon, the house we had parked in front of looked better than any of our matchbook scenes.

She died in the spring, while I was away at college, and when I came home for the funeral, I pulled the set out of the boxsprings and gave it to my parents. My dad took all of Nana's jewelry and had it appraised. That was how we found out that she had sold most of the stones and had them replaced with fakes. She had found a way over the years to pay for her lavish Christmas parties.

The set that she had given me, though, was completely pure. Tiffany's early 1930s, the jeweler had said. Very valuable.

So, last Friday, at the start of the holiday season, I wore Nana's jewels to a party. Looking at my coarse hands in the jewelry, it hit me how much they are beginning to look like my grandmother's. Maybe I will wear the set a few more days before returning it to the bank.

Edition: FINAL
Section: TROPIC
Page: 16
Copyright (c) 1985 The Miami Herald