Our Christmas Stories
Christmas in July
We were sitting on the porch swing at our old home place. The weather was hot and muggy and the smell of freshly cut hay left no mistake that this was just an ordinary July day. Baby Girl liked for the swing to go high, and so I put my feet up and that's when she said, "Nana, tell me about the dragonfly tattoo on your ankle."
Once upon a time, I began.... "No, Nana, tell me the story like it was yesterday. This isn't a once up on a time story."
Well, I got the dragonfly tattoo on my ankle because of my mama and our last Christmas together. July was just as hot back in 1964 as it is today, and back then, people didn't have air conditioning in their homes or cars. Mama had been sleeping on her bed under a big box fan that sat in the window blowing hot air across her small body. She called for me to bring her big black purse and to find the car keys.
"Get me my brush and my shoes," she said. She sat on the side of the bed, and I stood on the bed behind her, gently brushing her hair. My younger sister found Mama's shoes and put them on her. My little sister and I were never too far from Mama, and neither of us had to be told more than once to do things for our precious mama. We kept her dry skin from flaking by gently rubbing her legs, arms, back, and feet with Jergens lotion; to this day, the smell of Jergens reminds me of Mama. Even though it had been months since her cobalt treatment, she still had the scars from the burns on her back and stomach. "Hand me the jergens," she said. "Those burns are itching me to death." I rubbed lotion on her back while she rubbed lotion on her cobalt burns.
Holding onto the bedpost, Mama stood up and after a few seconds, she said, "Come on. Let's go to town."
Our old blue and white Chevrolet started right up, and while Mama gently let off the clutch, we rolled out of the driveway. She looked so small sitting behind the seemingly overpowering steering wheel. When she turned the wheel, it took all her weight, and I worried we might get to town and like once before, she would lose her strength and someone, a kind stranger, might have to drive us home and that would mean word would get out that Kathryn had those kids in town again and she was too weak to get the car home. I kept my fingers crossed that Mama would be strong, and even more importantly, I didn't want anyone to hurt my mama's feelings.
When we got to town, Mama pulled right up in front of the Ben Franklin store. I thought for sure she would drive the car into the store through the plate glass windows, but she stopped in just enough time. We hadn't been in town for a while so it was understandable to see the shock of people in the store after seeing Mama come up off of her deathbed to shop, but Mama kept her head held high. "Here," she said, "get you two some house shoes, some pajamas, some panties, and a house coat."
I got my size and Kathy's size. "What about Ricky?" I asked.
"I ordered him a ring. One of those tiger eye rings. Let's look at those overnight bags."
We picked out two blue overnight bags and then she had us each pick out a stuffed animal. All that was left in the store were some white puppies with heart shaped eyes with big red ribbons around their necks. The stuffed puppies were left over from Valentine's Day, but we were proud to get anything from our precious mama.
After Mama paid for our things, we got in the car. "Let's go to the creek," she said.
We parked at the edge of the creek under the mulberry tree that had the rope hanging that we all used to swing out over the water before dropping into the cold creek. It was midday, so there weren't any kids there swimming. We opened the car doors and watched the dragonflies skirt the water. Before Mama got sick, when we came to the creek, we waded in the shallow part looking for tadpoles and crawdads, or we would swim back and forth from one side of the creek to the other. Mama had been sick for two years and the last year had been hard on her and hard on us kids. We had watched her suffer through sleepless nights when she hurt so much that we called the doctor and he came to the house giving her shots of strong medication. Her weight dropped and she lost her rosy cheeks but she tried so hard to remain optimistic and for the first few months, we drove over the Ozarks toward Missouri where an old man lived who sold miracle cures for cancer. Mama gave him her dollars, and he gave her a quart jar filled with a green elixir that smelled worse than pond scum. Mama also took us kids to tent revivals and preachers prayed over her, even giving her handkerchiefs anointed with oil. Once she even sent money to Billy Graham, and he sent back a letter thanking her for her donations.
After a little while of silence, Mama said, "I won't you girls to finish school. Don't be in too much of hurry to chase boys. Don't let boys kiss you and you girls stay off of country roads with your boyfriends." Her eyes glistened and her voice cracked and I knew she was one breath away from crying, so I said, "Mama, look at all those dragonflies. Wonder why the fish aren't trying to eat them."
That afternoon, Mama tried to give us as much advice as she could and it finally dawned on my young heart what she was doing.
"Let's go home," I said, watching the dragonflies skirt the water.
"We got plenty of time to sit at home, but I may not ever make it back to the creek. It's so peaceful here. You were baptized her and over there, that's where they killed that big snake," she looked over at me. " I want you girls to hang on to your Christmas gifts. Wrap them up when we get home, and put them under the tree."
"Mama, it's July. We won't put up a tree for months."
"Now you listen here. I won't be here Christmas. The doctors said the cancer spread and he said I'd be lucky to live another three or four months. Jeannie, you gonna live with Barbara. It'll be easier for you to move off than Kathy. Kathy, you stay here and live with Joan."
"Mama, you won't die. I know you won't. You stop saying that."
I remember biting my bottom lip so hard that I tasted blood and I remember watching those dragonflies, trying not to listen to Mama telling us about living with our sisters, finishing school, making her proud. Kathy never spoke, but her tears dripped off her little round cheeks and fell onto her shirt without as much as a brush from either Kathy or Mama. I wanted to comfort her and tell her that Mama was wrong; I wanted to wipe her tears, but if I didn't concentrate, I would start crying and I knew, in spite of my youth, that this was hard for Mama and I shouldn't make it any harder.
"When we get home, wrap everything but the overnight bags. You might as well have those to help move your things for when the time comes."
We sat on the edge of the creek for a good hour and a light breeze made sitting on the creek bank in Mama's old, hot car tolerable. That afternoon, while Mama slept on the bed, I found some old Christmas wrapping paper, and I wrapped our new things and put our names on the packages. I wrapped the stuffed dogs and then I put everything in the top of my closet.
Mama was right about not being with us for Christmas. She fell one night at the beginning of November and the ambulance came and took her away. That morning, our sisters came and packed up our belongings and we moved--Kathy with Joan and me with Barbara. December the 3ird, Mama passed away. And after watching her fight for so long and watching her suffer through all that pain, it was a relief to know her pain and suffering had ended. We buried her on December the 5th and that day, a light snow fell. After the funeral and the burial, the church brought food to our old house and even though Mama was dead and my brother, sister, and I didn't live there any more, we all sat at the kitchen table eating and dreading the last meal together as Kathryn's kids in our home. It wasn't long after she died that a family of four bought our old house, and I worried that we had all but disappeared.
On Christmas Eve, my older sister took me to visit my little sister, and I carried the gifts Mama had me wrap and inside one of each of our gifts, I included a Christmas card that I had found and that Mama had signed with much love, Mama. The pictures were of Baby Jesus in the manger with animals around him...the story we knew by heart.
All those years back and I still remember that Christmas in July as if it were yesterday; I still have the overnight bag albeit stained with bright red fingernail polish and the white stuffed doggy with heart shaped eyes. So my dear Kathryn Elisabeth, that is why I have a dragon fly tattoo skirting my ankle...it reminds me, should I ever forget, that my mama loved me so much that her heart was broken that she was going to miss Christmas with us, so she gave us a Christmas in July.
"Nana, that is the saddest story in the world."
"It is sad that Mama died, but the beauty of the story is she knew she was dying but instead of thinking about herself and worrying about her pending death, she though of her two little girls and her little boy still living at home. It broke her heart to leave us but she knew she had to have one last Christmas and through that last Christmas, she showed us how much she loved us and how much she hated leaving us."
"Yeah but just think if she had lived, Mama would have been able to have a Nana. Nanas are the best."
"I love you Baby Girl."
"I love you more my Nana Banana."
[My story is part of a blog I have been writing about growing up as a child in the 1960s in Houston, Texas. There are several installments about Christmas. This is the first one.]
Christmas Trees and Christmas Lights
Thanksgiving weekend always heralded the official arrival of the Christmas season. There was always an unofficial contest among the neighbors to see who could get their outdoor Christmas lights up the fastest. If my dad hadn't gone hunting, we would string up our outside lights that weekend, and they would stay up until after New Year's. I remember having the very strong belief that if we didn't have our Christmas lights up, then Santa Claus wouldn't be able to find our house on Christmas Eve!
The outdoor Christmas lights in the early 1960s were not the sophisticated, sparkly twinkle lights that we have now. They were huge old bulbs of green and red, and they got HOT to the touch! They also burned out quite frequently. Daddy would always string ours around the eaves of the house. I can remember him climbing up and down and up and down the ladder, moving it along as he strung the twisted black wires with the big empty sockets, stapling the strands in place with his big blue staple gun. Then would come the fun part!
We had a huge box full of bulbs from the previous year. I got to be his helper and hand them up to him, so therefore I got to establish the "pattern" for the lights each year. It might be green--red--blue--orange--white--yellow, or some variation thereof, but our lights were always multi-colored. Some of the neighbors used all red or all blue or all green lights, but we always used all the colors at our house.
I remember every evening the thrill of plugging in the lights and watching them glow brighter and brighter as darkness fell. You could see the red ones come on right away, even before it got dark. The blue ones were harder to see in the twilight. Thus the nightly ritual of walking around the house every evening after supper, looking for the bulbs that had burned out the night before and replacing them. Sometimes we would run out of a certain color and the pattern would have to be altered a bit, but it was great fun and something I loved to share with my dad.
Another fun tradition was to drive around different neighborhoods in the evenings and look at all the decorated houses with their pretty lights and the decorated trees in the windows. Oh, how I remember those beautiful old Christmas trees! In some ways, they were always the best part of Christmas because they were a tradition that children could fully participate in.
At our house we always had a real tree, a Douglass fir. We would go to the tree lot at Fed Mart's to buy it. We always bought the biggest one we could find. It would be bound up in netting and the men at the tree lot would have to tie it on top of our old Pontiac, running the ropes through the open side windows to secure it to the roof. We would drive slowly home with the tree dangling precariously off the rear and the front of the car roof.
When we got home, Daddy would tie it up in the garage. He would hang it by a rope from the rafters, cut the confining net away, and slowly its bound limbs would begin to stretch and fall out gracefully from the trunk. Daddy would trim away however much was necessary from the bottom to make it fit in our house. But then the best part happened! My mom would FLOCK the tree!
You don't see many flocked Christmas trees anymore, but it was very popular in the 1960s. We always flocked our tree white, to look like snow, but I do remember you could buy flocking in pink or blue or other wild and psychedelic colors. What is flocking, you ask?
Well, as best I recall, it was some sort of white powder that my mom mixed with water in a tub and then it was attached to our vacuum cleaner hose (you had to have a vacuum that would blow OUT) and the whole soggy mess was sprayed onto the tree. I can remember my mom going round and round that tree, fighting with the extension cord and spraying that white goop everywhere. I'll bet there's still flocking on the ceiling of that garage to this day!
Anyway, after she had coated the whole tree to her satisfaction, it had to hang there and dry a bit, and then my dad would carry it into the house. Once we had all the lights and ornaments on it, it really was quite beautiful. Just imagine: snow covered boughs in muggy ol' Houston, Texas. Oh, those real trees always smelled so good! Mama would let me help decorate it. We always put the tree lights on first (again, HOT!), and then the ornaments. Our living room had no carpeting, so there were always a few shattered ornaments, but Mama never fussed at me about it. It was such fun to help her decorate the tree.
At the bottom of our tree, after carefully filling the reservoir of the tree stand with plenty of water so the tree wouldn't dry out, she would wind yards of fluffy cotton batting around the tree stand and the trunk. Then came the sparkly white felt that looked like drifts of snow. And finally came the best part: our lighted Christmas village! Mama had a set of little cardboard houses that all had holes in the backs to allow you to insert a small light bulb through the opening. The little windows were made of yellow cellophane and glowed at night. But you had to be very careful that the hot bulb wasn't touching the window or it would melt! She would always allow me to help arrange our "village" around the base of the tree. There were even miniature pine trees and villagers to complete the set. At one point, she had cut a hole in in the white felt, and she would insert a little mirror underneath it, so that it looked like a frozen pond in the center of the village for skating.
We always sat our tree in front of the living room windows where it could be seen from the street. I always thought we had the prettiest (if a tad unrealistic) tree in the neighborhood.
Our next door neighbors always had a real tree, too, but they always bought a Scotch pine. It was short and squat and thick with sticky, *****ly needles. But they ALWAYS completely covered their tree in icicles. Icicles were thin strips of aluminum foil. You could just toss them all over the tree willy-nilly, or you could carefully hang them strand by stand. However you did it, the effect was always the same: Garish. My mom didn't believe in icicles and would never let us have any on our tree. I guess I can see her point. After she did all that work to flock the darn thing, she didn't want to cover it up with aluminum foil!
And speaking of aluminum foil, there was another type of unrealistic Christmas tree in the 1960s. My cousins had one because one of them had allergies. It was a silver aluminum tree with a motorized base that turned it 'round and 'round. That tinsel tree would turn in its motorized base, and as it rotated, colored lights shown up from the bottom of the base and changed it from red to green to yellow to blue. Only in the 1960s! My cousins always hung little Styrofoam balls covered in colored thread as their Christmas ornaments, which did have the advantage of being non-breakable.
Once the outside lights and Christmas trees were finished, our humble little neighborhoods glowed like magical fairy lands. Even though I never experienced a white Christmas in Houston, Texas in all my years there, the Christmas spirit was definitely in the air--whether that air was cold and crisp or warm and muggy made no difference to a child. And after the thrill of our home decorating was done, the next big Christmas adventure loomed upon our horizons: a visit to Santa Claus!
Vickie
Vic,
Your memory brought back so many memories of our own tree, but we, living in the woods, always cut our tree. We were the icicles kind of tree folks. I do remember those huge lights that we were so careful to turn off before we went to bed. We didn't have carpet either so we had a few broken bulbs every year as well. We generally had a white Christmas and often had snow ice-cream as a treat either during the cutting down of the tree or sometime during decorating....I love it.
It was Christmas Eve, 1961. Our tree was up and decorations were placed in their traditional spots. We were a middle class family with a tract home in Antioch, California,with two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a converted garage to hold the family with four children, and it had a window that faced Mt. Diablo. There was snow on the mountain peak. The stockings were hung on the wall. There was no fireplace for Santa Claus and I worried about that, but Mom assured me that Santa had keys for every house. In reality, Santa could walk right in- none of the houses in our neighborhood was ever locked.
That morning when I woke up I was not well. I was running a fever and had a strong pain in my belly. In those days Dr. Dozier made house calls and he came that morning to see his little dark-haired sweetheart. A quick exam confirmed that I had acute appendicitis and needed surgery as soon as possible. I was whisked to our little town hospital and surgery was done within a few hours.
Hospitals and doctors were frightening to most children, but I had a larger than life reaction to them. At 18 months I was hospitalized for several weeks because of a critical infection in my kidneys and I was traumatized by being tied to the bed and having m parents only during visiting hours. This surgery on Christmas Eve was a huge ordeal for a small seven year old girl. I was so scared - there were needles, blood tests, anesthesia, nurses in white dresses, everything that I remembered deep in my gut from a piece of my brain and heart that had no language to piece it together. It was white hot fear, the kind that takes your breath away, where you feel your survival is at stake. And then it was over. I was in a hospital bed, high and starched and white. White nurses, white sheets, white fear. Mom and Dad were there as I cried, the cry of a frightened, hurting child. Then it came to me- it was Christmas Eve. I had to go home...Santa Claus was coming. I begged for them to let me go home. "Santa will NEVER find me here, he will forget me Mom, I can't be here...." My Mom said over and over, "Oh yes he will- he knows where you are, he knows everything about you, what a sweet and loving daughter you are and how you love your dog and stuffed animals and dolls. He knows that you are afraid and sick. He will come here, you will see."
That night I slept in white bed with a needle in my arm and the smell of alcohol in my nose. I fell asleep with tears on my cheeks. Then morning had come. My first thought was Santa Claus! I looked around and began to sob. I was right, he had forgotten me. The room was bare, no presents, no candy, no Christmas for me! I don't know how long I cried but at some point Mom and Dad came in. They were so upset to se me bereft again. "Oh Julia, look, look, Santa DID come... The presents are everywhere. They were all below my eye level, but there were lots and lots of gifts down there. Santa Claus did not forget me after all. He left me with more presents than he usually did PLUS I had a new bikini scar on my belly to show everyone when I got home!
My Christmas memories...Dad taking us to get the tree...seems it was ALWAYS when it was snowing good and hard...lol. Mom said that's when your dad liked to go in a blizzard! Yeah that is when I always went to pick out my tree in later years too...lol.
Memories of mom taking us kids downtown to see the window displays...some had mechanical ones!! Oh so lifelike!! Beautiful!!! Only place now I believe to see that is McDonalds Nursery back home.
Going to Grandma's house Christmas eve for dinner and the WHOLE family was there too. WOW. Grandma's house sure filled up with lots of family. Kids everywhere and adults sat around and talked. Had dinner and then grandma handed out envelopes. Adults got $5 and the kids each got $1. Then dad would take us for a ride to see the LIGHTS!!! Oh the LIGHTS!!!
Later years on my own my mom, sister, a couple of my aunts and cousin would get together and have a party...then later at night we would drive around and see the LIGHTS!! We would Ooooh and Ahhhhhhh at them...then mom and I would say those that had only clear lights were the rich ones...lol. The fun we used to have...memories...miss them ALOT!!!
OK...tears are here...need to stop now.
Judy,
I loved the Christmas lights and if we stood on our toilet and looked out the bathroom window, we could see the water tower that was all lit up for Christmas. I know how hard it is to remember those precious memories. Going to our grandmother's house was also a special treat for us. I'm sure the food at your grandmother's house was just as delicious as my grandmother's food...lots of candy and pies and cakes and cookies. I think driving around looking at the lights is the delight of so many families...glad you shared.
