| December 1979. The little girl is four or five. She's sitting on a braided rug in the middle of the living room floor. It's 8:00 and she knows she has to go to bed in an hour. Her hair, swinging free and long, is damp. She's just had her Saturday night bath. She still uses "Johnson's No More Tears", even though she's a Big Girl. To contradict this, her footie pajamas feature "Animal" from the Muppets. They're her favorite jammies. The knees are wearing thin (and so is the butt), but she just doesn't feel quite right, especially on a Saturday night after her Bath (with a capital "B"), without them. It smells like pine needles. Not the yellowing, crunchy kind she helps her mom rake up in the front yard (and jumps in afterward, strewing them around again), but the greeny, musky kind like how the woods smell. There's a tree in the living room. With lights on it. Big, round, colorful blinking lights. There's lights, like candles, in the living room window, too. The little girl likes to go outside at night and see the lights shining against the snow under the window. Mumma is in the kitchen, ironing. She's humming, too. The little girl has been left in the living room, TV playing "Frosty the Snowman" and "A Charlie Brown Christmas". More importantly, the little girl has been left in the living room with The Box. The Box is taller than the little girl. If she stands on her tiptoes (which she does) she can see in. There's boxes of bulbs in there. Packages of tinsel. Garlands. Bows from last year, which her mother always admonishes her to save as she's opening her presents. And, at the very bottom, beyond the little girl's view, nestled in a shoebox and stuffed with newspaper, are The Ornaments. A pipecleaner reindeer. A house with snow on the eves, clumsily crafted of a doughy substance, baked, and painted. An egg ornament with a bitty chipped hole in the bottom (to let the yolk out). A snowman constructed of styrofoam balls and more pipecleaners. It is the little girl's job to place these ornaments, The Ornaments, in the places of high honor on the tree. Or as high as she can reach, anyway. The only help she ever accepts is at the very end, when her mother lifts her up high to put the angel on top. Other than that, the bottom half of the tree is thick with ornaments. The top half is left to the little girl's older sister. The little girl sits patiently next to The Box, on the braided rug, toying with a handful of tinsel. In a moment Mumma will put her ironing away, come into the living room, and begin unpacking The Box. She'll sit on the couch as the little girl and her sister decorate the tree. "Put the small bulbs on the top, and the big ones toward the bottom," she'll instruct. Just like she did last year. Just like she'll do next year. "Don't bunch up the tinsel, put it on just a few strands at a time." The little girl will be so intent on this, she'll spend the next several days putting tinsel on one strand at a time. It's her job. Just like it's her older sister's job to turn off the living room lights and plug in the tree, the first evening and every evening until Christmas. The little girl wiggles in anticipation, eager to begin the tradition. Yet, even at this young age, she savors the knowledge that it hasn't begun quite yet. All the fun and joy is still ahead of her, just about to begin. Decorating, and baking huge batches of cookies with her aunt and grandmother. Going to her uncle's for Christmas dinner and playing with (and fighting with) her cousin. Comparing presents received with the neighborhood kids, and building snow forts in the front yard. Going snowplowing with Mumma's boyfriend and thrilling to the smash and overflowing wave of banked snow. Laying out cookies and milk on the fireplace, and listening for Santa's sleighbells as she lay in bed on Christmas Eve. Waking up at 5:00 in the morning and getting her sister out of bed to open their stockings before Mumma gets up. Being instructed by her sister to wait in the kitchen while she turns on the Christmas lights, then being led in with eyes tightly shut. Opening her eyes to find... Not yet, but very soon. ******************** I wonder whatever happened to those ornaments. I stopped celebrating Christmas when I was ten. My mother had passed away and my grandmother, whom I went to live with, became a Jehovah's Witness. But for the nine years before that she, and the rest of my family, were all about Christmas come the day after Thanksgiving. I'm grateful for those first nine Christmases. When my mother was alive she did a wonderful job providing the atmosphere that we mourn the lack of as adults. The security. The anticipation. The lack of having to plan/buy/cook/wrap *anything*. I'm glad I have the memories that I do. Calvin and I had a peaceful, pleasant evening last night. After having a Big Talk with the kids (money issues, behavior issues, respect issues) Marie worked on her homework and Michael went to his girlfriend's house. Calvin constructed a mobile out of coat hangers for Marie's book report project, and I CD-surfed through our Christmas CD's and a CD I picked up from CostCo - "The Phoenix Suns Greatest Hits". It's pretty cool - high tempo music intermixed with audio of Suns basketball highlights. I intended it to be a stocking stuffer for Calvin, but as I mentioned to Viv recently, I can't keep a surprise from him to save my life. He's just lucky I haven't spilled what his "big" present is this year. Yet. Besides, I was curious about the contents of the CD. It has the Run DMC/Aerosmith version of "Walk This Way", which I *love*. We listened to Nat King Cole's renditions of Christmas carols, and the soundtrack to "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" ala Berl Ives. Terri of "Footnotes" has an interesting take on the show, by the way, in her latest entry. We also have a compilation CD ("Ultimate Christmas" or "A Very Special Christmas" or some such thing) with Sting, and Stevie Nicks, and Boys to Men, and Whitney Houston, etc. etc. ad nauseum. But the best, the *very best* song of the bunch, is Luciano Pavarotti's rendition of "O Holy Night". Dear God, the man's voice is amazing. It gave Calvin and I both goosebumps, and Calvin isn't a goosebumpy type guy. Unless he's cold. Or I nibble on the nape of his neck. Or something. Heh. Perhaps you will understand when I tell you that hearing this song, closing my eyes as he hits all the pure notes with his strong, vibrant tenor voice, makes me want to cry. It inspires this ache in my chest, a deep and profound joy in the knowledge that this, this is the way Christmas is supposed to feel. Reverence. Awe. Respect. Joy. I'm not a highly religious person, but I've got to think that God is up there applauding ol' Lou, "You go, brutha." So it was off to Amazon I went this morning, to acquire "Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti - Christmas Favorites" and "Pavarotti - O Holy Night - Popular Christmas Songs". We with be Christmas music savvy for our dinner on the 23rd. Oh yes. As adults we don't have the same childlike feeling about the holidays. We have to be responsible for providing that to our *own* children, or at the very least have to deal with adult issues surrounding Christmas. Where's the money going to come from? Will the relatives fight with each other this year? But maybe for me, having regained Christmas again as an adult, I have a bit more of that childhood feeling still existing within me. Changed a bit, true, to the anticipation of what others will think of the gifts I got them, not what I get myself. I grin at Christmas carols (or cry), and I find I remember more of the words than I thought. I watch all the TV specials. I bake and I wrap and I shop and I decorate. It will all sum up this year to a big bash at our house when we're finally sitting down to a lobster dinner, in our newly remodeled home, and we look around at our loved ones laughing and chatting, enjoying gifts and food and music and love... Not yet, but very soon. |
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Your Mission, should you choose to accept it...
Volunteer this holiday season! The Salvation Army is always in desperate need of people to help serve meals to the homeless, or donate food, money, and clothing. At the very least, drop your spare change or a couple of dollars into the bell ringers' pots. Every little bit counts.
Results From Yesterday's Mission There are no darned tree-climbing trees around our house. Unless you count the mesquite tree in our front yard. And I don't. We're in the middle of a frickin' desert. The next time we go up north I'll have to remember to find a tree-climbing tree. Can you see it? "Gee, Maude, why are those people pulled off to the side of the road?" "I dunno, Frank, it looks like a lady's hanging upside down from that tree over there." "Damned tourists." I grabbed the design idea for the box thingy from Anna.
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