Each Christmas season, the old classics run on a continuous loop on our TV sets, and I’m not talking about all those Hallmark Christmas movies that typically begin before the kiddos are halfway through their sugary snacking of their Halloween hauls. Among all the versions of the metamorphoses of Scrooge, the Griswalds and that Santa boot to the face that’s the impetus for Ralphie’s descent down that department store slide, there is one movie I never fail to watch at least once a year.
It feeds my love of old movies, ones I watch so very often on TCM, and the movie is director Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey, a man who never fulfills his wish to see his hometown of Bedford Falls the way he really wishes, which is in the rearview mirror.
There are so many memorable scenes in the 1946 movie, and there’s such an uplifting message at movie’s end. However, it’s actually a rather forgettable recurring scene upon which I’ll focus today, one that comprises just a handful of seconds in the two-hour, 10-minute movie. To me, the thrice-used scene reminds us all that despite all of its wonderful moments, life is surely not perfect.
In those three scenes, George begins his ascent of the stairs in his two-story old home and the stair railing ornamental knob on the first-floor landing comes off in his hand. Once George, with the help of Clarence, the angel, sees the light by the end of the film and realizes that it’s more about the friends and family you have in life and less about yearning for what you don’t have, the last time the knob comes off in his hand, he kisses it and gently puts it back in its place.
I thought about that scene yet again recently when, in picking up a mini-cooler from the kitchen table, I didn’t pick it straight up and put a two-inch scratch in the wood. Of course, there was the obligatory swear word after I saw what I’d done, so apologies to my Clarence.
Like all such moments that have occurred over the almost 40 years I’ve lived in my house, moments where those who have lived here contributed some blemishes to the property, I chose the easy and incorrect way to address the scratch.
Now, before I get e-mails, yes, I’m aware there’s probably a product out there that will fill in scratches in wooden furniture. But, at the end of a long day just in the back door from a two-day work out-of-towner, I wasn’t about to head out to look for such a product. Instead, I dabbed a little brown shoe polish on a napkin and colored the scratch a bit, no doubt, a lazy man’s solution.
I also moved the placemat over a bit to conceal it and said to myself, “Good enough for me!” Surely the host of a long-time WIMA staple, “At Home with Gary Sullivan,” wouldn’t have handled it that way, but, if we don’t tell him, he’ll not be disappointed!
Actually, that scratch joins several other equivalents of George Bailey’s loose knob in my house. There’s that dented threshold at the base of the door leading in from the garage, one caused by my using a two-wheel cart to move a fridge in once upon a 1979 time when a family of four excitedly moved into a house now occupied by one.
In the finished basement, there’s that blob of hardened nail polish remover on the laminate bar, an accident that occurred during one of my daughter Shannon’s slumber parties sometime between the giggles and the boy talk.
Oh, and let’s not forget that scratch on the paneled wall on the steps up from the basement where the Christmas tree once stood. It’s a scratch put there by daughter Katie, who was taking her new dollhouse up the stairs on a warm and wonderful Christmas morn so very long ago.
So it goes over time for our domiciles. The imperfections incurred each represent a moment in our lives, often, for me, a touching moment, especially as I take on more and more sentimentality as I grow older. Just as people gather imperfections over time as a result of the natural aging process, often, the places where we’ve hung our hats do likewise.
I suppose if there’s a moral to this week’s offering, it would be this: Just as with George Bailey’s loose knob at the bottom of that staircase, the scratches and dents that accumulate over a lifetime are all a part of our wonderful imperfections. The hope is that on the other side of our mortal rainbows, there’ll be a place far more perfect than anything we’ve left behind.
Now, you may not think this was much of a Christmas column, but, hey, considering the arguments that have been made by cinema buffs that Die Hard is a Christmas movie, then, by jingle, today’s effort is a Christmas column!
Merry Christmas, all, and to all a good day and an even better night!
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