Christmas as A Child: YES, Norman Rockwell for Real

I am busy actually STARTING my Christmas Eve preparations and I am also painting. I'm hoping to get back into my blog world before Christmas--I have several pieces started--but I am not really sure I will.  But it is NOT for any bad reasons. I miss writing and I miss reading! Still, sometimes I have to oh, go ahead and LIVE my life so I fill the well, so to speak.

I first published this one in 2009, and it explains why I really am an all out, absolute, completely wacko Christmas nut. Not in the sense of buying new decorations or oodles of presents; I love the peace, the music, the silliness, the love that has always been mine for the giving and receiving. My family did it right. Sorry to bore those who read this, but I enjoyed reading it again because all of it flooded back and put me into the mood again.

I also know I referred to this in October--I think I published this again now for my own sake! A relative who was less than kind to me sometimes, but very kind at others,  has died... and it has brought up some, well, disturbing memories. They may find their way into another entry, but I think I wanted to focus on something joyous... on a time when I got to be nothing more or less than an excited, happy child.

It is not meant to replace my entries--I realized tonight, as I revisited this post, that it was "birthing" a new one. The hour is late now, as I add these last two paragraphs, but reviewing and editing this piece did the trick.  Joy is the woman who died, and I like visualizing her here, at Christmas, with my mom.

Lately I have been returning to this blog myself, just to bring that feeling back--how lucky I am to have such memories! So, have a wonderful holiday season! I'll READ some blogs, but somehow, even though I mean to write, I get side-tracked.

Here goes... no pictures, no more apologies... just my family at its very best!

Norman Rockwell Ain't Got Nuthin' On Our Christmases
 It's hard for me to choose a Christmas from childhood.  Two or three may be mixed together here, but I don't care. To me, it was idyllic. Jim did not torment us. Jacky and I were small children together, even up until he was about eleven.  Jean Ellen was a keeper of magic and secrets to rival our mother. And Dad and Mom? Well, they had to be experienced.

So the Roots of my Love for the Season Grew Deep and Immortal Here...

My  mother not only looked like Mrs. Claus, she acted like her. And it always began the day after Thanksgiving.

Jacky and I, and sometimes even Jimmy, Would race downstairs on Friday morning to see five presents perched on the top shelf of the extra tall white bookcase in the dining room. The Five Foot Shelf fit on one shelf, that bookcase was so wide...  And the books on the top shelf reached the top of Daddy's head, so it was six feet tall.  I grew up in a home with a bookcase in every room.  It was just not a room without books, even in the bathrooms. And we had a BATH AND A HALF!

At this point, the books were still on that shelf, too, so the presents were annoyingly out of reach.  We would climb on chairs, wondering how it was that Mommy had managed to pile the presents so that just enough of each tag was visible, so we could read the name, but we could not move a single package without the whole pile's tumbling to  the floor. Inevitably we'd blow it and the pile would fall.

Mom would come from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her first of seven Christmas aprons, and say, simply, "Good thing nothing was breakable. Go ahead and open them and ruin your surprise.  I don't much care..."

Then, as she was heading for the kitchen, she would toss back, "Not quite sure how Santa would feel, but that's your problem." We would feign our disappointment and put each one back, rattling them, squishing, doing our best to know what was inside, but Mom was too smart.  We never could figure it out.  It took until I was about twelve to be bothered that there never was something for Mommy there. Jean Ellen and I took to wrapping something for HER the morning after Thanksgiving, because it just felt all wrong. She was in college and it was a ritual we enjoyed together.  I think it was the first of many she and I developed around the holiday together.


Let me reinforce this; until I was about 20, my mother never drank between Thanksgiving and Christmas. NOTHING. She would empty the huge "Silver Satin" port jug and there were never stray rum and cokes around. In fact, she didn't buy Coca Cola® at all until just before the holiday.

From then on, every day held a surprise.  She didn't do a lot that Thanksgiving weekend, but wrap a new present or five each day, and the pile would grow more precarious until, by Sunday, Daddy took the books from that shelf and put them in a box tucked in the footwell of his desk.  "GAWD knows none of you will let me have any peace between now and that day.   MY life is over now. Nothing but shelling out money, having to run around to get GAWD knows what. Bah."

Tiny Tim in Scrooge Clothing
He never said humbug until the day.  He also was the least convincing Scrooge alive, since he read us the Christmas Carol and checked with Mother every single night, asking her whether maybe ONCE she might come up with something on her own list that didn't involve her doing more work around the house.  The truth was, my dad spent more on Christmas presents than anyone else, and would get scolded at by  my mother constantly, often punctuated by a wet dishtowel on his head, which sat there for at least fifteen minutes, at whatever angle it had landed.

My parents were in love.  That was the miracle of them.  For all his womanizing, for all  her drinking, for the myriad fights in between?  They loved one another with a passion that would have been embarrassing if it had not been so wonderful to see.  They liked to talk late into the evening, just about books, about politics, about philosophy. About their days.  My father said that Mom was the most highly educated person he'd ever known and she never went to college.  He would walk up behind her in the kitchen and simply put his arms around her sometimes, and they would stand there, singing softly, saying nothing.

(That's what I wanted in my life, and knew I could never settle for less than that, that alone would be better than less.  I do not regret that choice at all.)  I will not spoil this by moving into the present, though.  I will return safely to that time, as a child, through my early teens, when I saw that my parents were clearly lovers at every age.  I felt, though would never have said so, that I was lucky to witness those private moments, and that my parents did not find it wrong to let us see them.

Their love was palpable at Christmas.  And the house was full of the good kinds of secrets.  This Christmas brought us the birth of the "Christmas Spider," As Mom and Jean Ellen dubbed it. A hanging thingy made of glitter gold paper, on a large hook. When you draped it from a chandelier, pointy tentacle/leg things draped in many layers from the center and it seemed alive in a particularly grotesque way.

It moved around the house, from dining room, to kitchen, to a curtain rod, to the lamp next to Mom' chair--wherever Jean Ellen or Mom chose. the damned thing lasted for 25 years!  And there was the wrapping of the "spoon rest" if it was Mom's turn. She and Grandma LeSure, Dad's mom, had an ongoing exchange with that. Granny'd gotten it for her donation to the Navaho Indian Tribe (back then). It was pale pea green, with three spoon rest depressions. Made of plastic, it was a "French" artiste in the center with his paintbrush, surrounded by his palette spoon rests. Half his moustached was missing from the get-go. The ugliest thing I ever saw. Granny gave it to Mom, then Mom gave it back for Mother's Day, then Granny gave it back on Mom's birthday, and here it was being re-wrapped in the same box, same interior tissue, same tag with all the cross-outs, for her.

We had traditions coming out our ears in our family.  Most of them had to do with laughing.

But some had to do with the season.  In late September, for instance, when I was little,  Mom took me for a walk and we brought a pillow case.  We'd go into the wildflower field and fill it with drying grass.  Then Mommy would hang it in the attic and, along around December 20th, there was hay for the manger.  She and Jean Ellen would put the crèche (nativity--we are French) together on the little table by the front door.  We did not do the British custom of leaving the baby Jesus for Christmas morning, but that's okay.  Mommy wanted us to have one thing that would remind us of the day's origin. When I was big enough, she let me sound out the words of the story--we were born reading, so that was fine. We knew it by heart anyway. So Jack or I would tell the story while they put the crèche together.  Jean Ellen always made a star that covered the normal painting there. Sometimes silver, abstract on black paper. You never knew. Sometimes a big star in a cluster of smaller ones in a field of blue.

And the baking.  I would sit cross-legged on the counter and "help" with the doughs, hand mixing in the chocolate chips. Or I would sprinkle the sugar cookie stars. Mostly I licked the bowl because it made it easier for Mom to clean. I think that Jean Ellen and I learned to bake through osmosis. I don't measure much, to this day. Mommy baked by feel, she said.  We had six kinds of cookies, and the butter cookies without leavening were made two weeks in advance, and other doughs were frozen. She never froze cookies.

"They never taste quite the same," she said. I think she was right. And we NEVER used margarine. Margarine was a sin in our house.

We went shopping for presents for Mommy on their double bed, Jack and I.  Daddy would have a miraculous display of things my mother wanted all around the perimeter, with price tags on every item--price tags he had made himself, to suit our budget. He as fair, though, because he had certain items out of our range--they were his presents. And he trusted US NOT TO TELL, and we never did.  Through the year Mom thought of ways we could earn money for Christmas. We'd get paid and she had little jars with our names on them, NOT TO BE TOUCHED.  Some things were practical, and some pretty, but there was always enough so that Jack and I could truly choose up until we were around nine. There were often twenty items there--all bought by Daddy, all re-marked.  And then he helped us wrap them in tissue papers, and he had a stash of glitter and star stickers and ribbon so that we could make them "special." My Scroogey Dad.

****
I am the youngest. The miracle for me?  Christmas Eve. By then, there was a ham coming out of the oven by 1:00 and a turkey going IN, for a late buffet at night.  The trimming party was that night!  While Jack and Jim were rooting around for a missed present or whether or not Santa REALLY was out there, I sat cross-legged on the living room floor with my dad. I wish I had a picture. I was not more than five or six. I was tiny. He six one. And we tested the bulbs, consulting over how he might plan which should have reflectors. Counting sockets and bulbs. Sometimes the count was wrong and he'd say, "Road trip, Jetty, get your coat." We'd run to Wallach's grocer and get some bulbs of the color we needed adn somehow or other, Daddy's find something that someone just HAD to have, just to even things out you know.

But I would hand Daddy the bulbs or reflectors and he would string the tree, from the bottom up. He didn't even bothe with the spire until the end. We knew it would get tipped. We worked quietly and fast, for guests arrived by 4:00 and we had to also unpack the ornaments, so people could decorate when they came.  I loved unwrapping the blown glass ornaments. Mommy never hid breakable things from us. If we broke and item, she's say, "Did you mean to? Will you be more careful next time?" And that was that. We didn't mean to, and we WERE more careful and very little got broken.

That Christmas, when I think I was six, Grandma and Grandpa LeSure were there for BOTH days and were staying in a hotel!  And Aunt Joy was coming. She wasn't married then, and was ten years younger than Mommy and was GLAMOROUS.  The tree-trimming party mostly had friends of my parents when I was little.  I loved sitting in a corner and hearing the adult conversation. Grandma LeSure told me I could go INTO her purse and try her lipstick.  When I did though, Grandpa SLAPPED me and I yelled at him for it.

When Grandma explained, he had the oddest smirk on his face and said, "Well, Missy, I guess no one will push you around in this life. Excuse me." I found it a wholly unsatsifactory apology and avoided him all night.

Slowly the beauty of the tree emerged, amidst the singing and the laughing and the stories, the ham, the turkey, the spilled drinks--not Mom's, other people's ... she had me TASTE hers even--the boys nearly tipping the tree over from an over-rambunctious game of throw the dish towel around...

As the night lengthened, it all blurred for me.   It seemed to me that our tree glittered more than anyone's.  Then Mom and Joy had the obligatory fight over not having garland tinsel. We had the long, leaded icicles then.  And Mom and Jean Ellen would not let ANYONE help with that. Every piece had to drape free. Grandma LeSure got that, too, and so did I, but when I started to help, suddenly, Daddy said, "Santa comes soon, Jetty! You have to run to bed!"

Run I did, and so did Jack. Jim and Jean Ellen stayed up later, but I didn't mind.  I never saw the thing done. For me? For me, the last glimpse of Christmas Eve was a room full of people laughing, JE draping tinsel over Daddy's head, the boys NOT fighting, but playing cards, Mommy talking with Grandma, Grandpa standing back, holding his stomach, smoking his pipe, but looking happy. Joy working on the tree and clucking at the lack of garland, and two to six other adults laughing, singing, or talking. We always sang "Lullay thou Little Tiny Child" when I went to bed.

***
That early Christmas I leaped out of my bed though, pretty late and looked at the roof below our window. It was the roof to the den and there were HOOFPRINTS. "JEAN ELLEN!"

Now, my sister HATED to be wakened. We were not allowed to rouse her OR Jim until 7 for stockings, but I JUMPED ON HER. She opened one eye and grunted, but she got up and came to the window and said, "Oh, Jetty. Honey. Santa must be HERE right now. Quick. Back to bed." She went to bed, I flew into the hall, STRAIGHT into my dad.

"WhAT ARE YOU DOING?"

"Santashereisawtheprintsontehroofandiwanttosayhiand go---"

He had a huge turkey platter in his hand. It was NOT one of the presents we'd seen."DADDY?"

He simply squatted down and said, "Jetty. Santa is so frazzled this year, he's asked ME to wrap this for your mom. See? He already had me put the stockings at the top of the stair. Now, don't you think he might be a little upset to have to carry on polite conversation with a little snigglefritz who is supposed to be in bed NOW?"

"YOU are helping SANTA?"

He looked so solemn with the weight of this honor.  "Yes. And I need to do a good job, so off to bed."

No problem.

***
The morning between 7 and about 8:30 was a cacophony of stocking openings and playing games until Daddy allowed us to get him up. On this ONE day,  he insisted on showering first, just to torture us. Jim would dig out his slippers--again worn once a year--and his robe and we'd wait. UGH.

Then HE woulds schlump downstairs, grumbling and turn on the lights and this was MY FIRST look. Presents from one wall all the way to the front window, presents as high as my chest, and the most beautiful Christmas tree EVER. And we were allowed ONE PRESENT before breakfast. Only one. It was okay. We learned very early that our Christmases lasted longer than anyone's because we took turns and we took breaks. We had to PLAY with our toys. WE read our books.  We watched the grown ups. We all shared the jokes.

If it sounds like Heaven, it's because it was. Sheer Heaven. This Christmas was all about trains, though. JACK GOT his Lionel trains from Grandpa, and five billion miles of track and little houses and trees and, well EVERYTHING.  I had good stuff too, but it was the trains.

When Daddy's last present was opened, along around TWO--he HOARDED them under his chair and we had to watch him open his all at the end. Rotten man. And he won at the can you unwrap tissue without ripping it game. Excruciating. Mommy was festooned in bows and she and Grandma and Jean Ellen were busy with dinner plans. Jim wanted to listen to his record albums and call his friends.

Jack, Grandpa and I went into the basement and built a city.  We had hills and had to measure the angles--Grandpa was a vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. And engineer... WITH A REAL ENGINEER'S CAP! He put it on and he we built our railroad route, complete with a mountain, a skyscraper we could drive it THROUGH and a cave and tunnel. We only had four crashes before it was complete at Five.

And Grandpa looked like a little boy, when we threw the switch and the train began to run. He ran around the tables with us as every obstacle was successfully managed. I threw the switch correctly--we had TWO trains--and they avoided one another neat as can be.

When it was done, He threw his cap in the air and DANCED. It was the only time I remember seeing  him smile, let alone dance.  My grandpa, my brother, and me, we danced a jig and sang a railroad song on Christmas.

***
There were no pictures taken or home movies. Grandpa died the following summer.  But I see him in his cap, I hear him and I remember forgiving him the slap for the call, of "GREAT JOB THERE, LITTLE ONE" when I threw the switch for engine number two.

Grandpa was a railroad man. And for one Christmas morning, so was Jack and so was I. Three guys on the tracks, just doing our job.

On one magic Christmas when I was only six, and the world was new, and Santa landed on my roof.

***
The tree held presents and gave them up at night, after we were all in our nightclothes again. Mommy doled them out and all were labeled from the tree. They were always special--jewelry, a matchbox car, something special to the particular child. That year, mine was Santa in a Snow globe, only it was about three inches tall, with a tiny note affixed that said, "Thank you for not bothering me. It was a busy night. You are such a good girl. Love, Santa"

***
There is no one left from that time but me. Even Grandpa's hat is gone. But I hear him still. the magic of that Christmas, of many others, remains with me still. But that one  Christmas, Grandpa let us see his back yard, the boy, the man who loved trains, the man who loved us. And I see the tree shimmering as I glanced at it over my daddy's shoulder as he carried me to bed, humming so that his chest rumbled and tickled me.  I see the tinsel on his head, and Jean Ellen slapping Jimmy's hand as he looped the stuff in a clump. I feel my heart speeding up at the memory of almost seeing Santa.

I see it as clearly as any movie could bring it. It shines there for me to run whenever I need it; there, just by my heart, with Mommy close by, laughing.

So forgive me if I indulge myself in festooning and laughing and singing my way around my new home, making cookie dough to freeze, ordering some gifts, putting up my tree, repeating the story of every ornament. And planning my own Christmas Eve celebration with nine of my family, here. In my home. And there will be stockings from TWO Santas under my tree Christmas morning. And there will be toys. There will be singing deliberately off key.

And there will be more love than any one woman could possibly hope for. Here. In my home. You all are invited. Just let me know by the end of next week, so I know how big a turkey to order!