December 25, 2010
Ghosts of Christmas Past
1. Over ate cracked nuts and home-made fudge, divinity, all day. To wake up, in the eve, nudged in the tummy. Barfed at 2-something in the morning. Santa’d already come.
2. My brother wanted a roadrace set so bad that when he saw it on Christmas morning, he busted out bawling tears of gratitude so wracking he was nearly delirious. Daddy offered to take it back to the store if my brother was that unhappy with it. Wink.
3. Getting my wished-for-popcorn-stand from the Sears catalog (I had neighborhoodish entrepreneurial visions). Within hours of opening, I realized what a stupid wasted wish it was. Required adult supervision. Burned a cup of corn at a time.
4. That same year my brother’s wish. A plastic dashboard with working windshield wipers, turn signals and speedometer. My brother and I took it for long car trips from the desk in our room. He drove. He was the dad. Me, the mom, holding, in lap, the teddy bears. Our kids.
5. Eating not so incredibly edible gummy insects cooked on the desktop.
6. Four-color-ballpoint spirographic images pinned to the wall above the desk. Another wasted wish.
7. Christmas eve, ellpees on the changer playing as I drifted off. Baby in the manger. Organ with chime.
8. Once after my brother and I opened presents for what seemed like hours, I noticed that Mom had not had one present to open. Daddy’d opened one from Mom. I said something like, “Mom, you didn’t get a present?” She said, “It’s okay.” I offered her my Flintstones Colorforms set. She said, “No, honey, you play with it.” It was years later I figured out Mom and Daddy’d promised not to spend money on each other and Mom had cheated her deal with Daddy.
Y’all write one.
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One year, I got a hammer. I didn’t want a hammer. Another, Derek, my brother, had the smallest gift under the tree. He cried and cried. Turns out, it was a cassette tape, wrapped, for his new cassette recorder, hidden somewhere else.
My stage debut was in a kindergarten Nativity pageant. I played the role of a sheep. An angel tickled my nose with tinsel in an effort to make me break character.
The next year I recited all of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.
Rick, dear Rick, I love all of these. Thank you for this Christmas gift, my friend.
When I was about seven I got a bow and arrow set for Christmas. My first thought when I saw it was of how I might modify the suction-cup tip of an arrow to accept the flint arrowhead I had been given the year before. I thought this would come in handy when I ran away to the Canadian wilderness.
No. 4 I can see so clearly, Rick. And your mom! Sitting there watching everyone opening presents and having nothing herself.
I don’t know why, but I insisted sister and I give presents to Mother and Daddy, tiny things, sometimes just handmade cards. Sister would go to my parents soliciting money for this, even, when she was quite small. She didn’t know any better. Daddy tells how he gave her at least a couple of dollars. And her gift to him was a carefully wrapped box of penny matches. Which he adored. Because he got to tell it for the rest of his life.
I love these stories.
I wish everyone would write one. Don’t you others have a tale to tell?
I bet people do and that as soon as they are done being bloated, they will pipe up and tell.