NoJoMo Day 8 in The Long and Winding Road

Day Eight: What’s the best memory you have before age 15?

Hmmm. How to choose “the best” memory? I’m fortunate to have at least several in the competition here. I also have some pretty bad memories. But that’s not what this is about. Best memory. I guess I’ll say Christmas mornings. For all the dysfunction and bad stuff in my family, we did have glorious Christmas mornings. My parents had a rule – we were not allowed out of our rooms on Christmas morning until they got up and the coffee was ready. Then they would go in the living room, turn on the tree lights, and tell us it was ok to come in and see what Santa left for us. My dad would always be ready with the camera. Mom would be in a pretty nightgown and matching robe that she wore especially for Christmas morning. But, back tracking to earlier in the morning – my sisters and I would be awake really early. Usually we were given a time – like 7:00 a.m. – when we were allowed to wake our parents. But we had to stay in our rooms until then. As we got a little older, my older sister (a few years younger than me) and I would prepare for these mornings. We would have a good book ready to read (or, when I got older it was “17” magazine) and one year we even had peanut butter cups! We would try to keep ourselves entertained, the three of us holed up in one bedroom, watching the clock and waiting until it was the appointed time. Then the excitement would really mount as we waited impatiently for mom and dad to go to the bathroom and get their coffee ready. And then at last we would walk slowly into the living room and behold the splendor of the gifts that Santa had left overnight. Then, eventually, we would start opening gifts. We always had lots of gifts. My mother would use different tricks to keep us from trying to peek at the gifts before Christmas. A couple of years, instead of putting gift tags on the packages that said who the gift was for, the gift just had a number. And she had a list. Gift #3 was for my sister, for example. That way we didn’t know which gifts for us and that was a deterrent to trying to pull the paper carefully open to peek at the gift.

I guess the reason I feel compelled in an entry like this, to mention that we also had a lot of bad times, is because I don’t want anyone to think I had a glorious, fantasy-like childhood. I didn’t. But I also appreciate that we had some very good times that many children never experienced. I’m grateful for my Christmas memories. To this day Christmas fills me with joy and anticipation. The year that my mother died (of alcoholism) - 1987 - she died on Dec. 13th. Right in the midst of the Christmas season. We already had gifts under our tree for her. It was awful. I would go in the grocery store and hear Christmas music and I couldn’t imagine that Christmas was still happening in a world my mom was no longer part of. I thought I would never again be able to enjoy Christmas. But I was wrong. Because the spirit of love and excitement my mom shared with us every Christmas all our lives, was stronger than the pain of that one sad, grief-stricken Christmas.