There are so many things that only Mother and I remember. Now, I guess I am really the only one.
Nobody loved Christmas like Mother. Especially Christmas presents. When the Montgomery Ward catalogue arrived we went through it and marked everything we would want if we could have everything we wanted. Since we lived very modestly, this was just a fun game. Remember, when I was five, Mother was only twenty-five. I don’t remember that she ever received anything very special for Christmas back then, but she made sure all my Christmases was very special.
There were always lots and lots of presents under our tree. Nothing expensive. Nearly every day when I came home from school, there would be another one. I would lie underneath the tree in the magic of the lights and glass balls and shake the boxes and try to guess what was inside. Nearer to Christmas Eve, when we opened our presents, I organized my gifts in the order I would open them, starting with the minor ones and working my way up.
I remember the smell of the spruce trees we bought every year in front of the grocery store down town. I actually remember doing this the year I was four. To this day, when I smell spruce, it renews that feeling of anticipation and excitement.
When I was little and wore shoes with laces, Mother always put jingle bells on them.
One year, Mother and I decided we wanted an all blue and silver tree. We changed out all the multicolored light bulbs to blue and just used the blue and silver balls that year. Silver icicles. In those days, if one bulb burned out, the whole string went out and you had to go around and try every single bulb to find the culprit.
Our rituals were very specific. Family gifts under the tree were opened on Christmas Eve. Then, during the night, Santa Claus came and left unwrapped gifts and filled my stocking with fruit and nuts and hard candy. I remember the year I got my bicycle and THREE Nancy Drew books! I still remember which ones they were.
She had a custom of starting collections for people and adding to them each year, whether they wanted them or not. We gave Daddy a Kaywoodie pipe every year and, one year, a rack to display them on his desk. I only remember seeing him smoke a pipe on Christmas day right after he opened his presents.
Mother and I sat at the piano a lot and sang carols. And she made lots of different kinds of candy. This was a tradition leftover from when she was a girl during The Depression. Sugar was cheap and nuts could be picked up along country roads. She always commented that her daddy made the best divinity with walnuts. This custom followed into my adult life when she mailed us an assortment of her candies every year. Today, candy making days over, her favorite gift to send (and receive!) is See’s candy.
She could sew anything and I usually had a new Christmas dress to wear. Later, for many years she sewed Christmas nightgowns for my girls. Today, I am the proud heir of her wonderful Singer Featherweight sewing machine. It has outlasted all the ones I bought for myself over the years. I did follow her custom of sewing lots of clothes for my girls –as long as they would wear homemade.
Typically, after we had Santa Claus, we got in to the car and drove maybe 75 miles to Durant where my grandparents and aunts and uncles lived. And lots of cousins to play with.
I had a random, silly memory today when I saw an ad online for Smuckers products. One year when Daddy worked in the oilfields in Oklahoma, the company gave the workers a case of assorted Smuckers products. All kinds of jams and jellies and preserves. Our tastes were very limited. We usually had homemade apricot or strawberry preserves or apple jelly from the store. We thought some of the Smuckers assortment was really exotic. Maybe from “up north.” Orange marmalade, cherry preserves, apple butter. I think some of those ones just got tossed out eventually, but we kept the pretty jars for our own home made preserves the next summer.
Not long ago in the nursing home Mother had a near-death experience and was revived. Later, she told Joannie that she was going to a wonderful Christmas party and could see lots of beautiful Christmas lights out ahead of her. She said “the Mexicans” kept calling her back but she didn’t want to come back. I guess she thought of the nursing home staff that way, mostly Latinas. I know that is what she would like to do at the end of her life. Go to Christmas. Maybe it will be Christmas. That is my wish for her. I hope there will be lots of presents.