My memories of years past
At 61 I have a lot of Christmas memories, all good ones. Good for a myriad of reasons but nonetheless good. Good because of the excitement, the anticipation, the love that provided the memories; like the memory that Grandpa Thiele always gave the same gift for us girls every year for 20 years. The gift was two pairs of white anklets and a bag of wintergreen candies. My sisters grew bored and disdainful of that gift but to this day I love getting socks for Christmas and can still smell that sweet aroma of wintergreen that came from those large pink tablets. Even as a young girl I somehow knew how much effort went into that small gift. It meant he had to go to town some twenty miles and pick the gifts and then take them home and wrap them and get them to the mailbox before the mailman came. For an old widower this was a labor of love.
Memories like the year that we moved to the big saltbox house early in December and Dad told us there would be no money for a Christmas tree. We had a family tradition of always putting our tree up and decorating it on December 10th my mother’s birthday. We had done this all our lives and now he was telling my two sisters and I that there would be no Christmas tree, all the money had gone for the move.
The morning of December 10th that Christmas of my 13th year dawned bright, clear and cold in southeast Kansas. My mother called me to her. With an air of determination she ordered me to pick up a kitchen chair and follow her. She also had a chair and we went first to the tool shed and got the hand saw and then out to the front yard of this big old farmhouse where there stood four huge incense cedars. Mama put her chair down and instructed me to stack my chair on top to make a ladder. Holding on to my shoulder she climbed up and with all of her 5’2” might began sawing off limbs. With twine from the barn she bound them together to make a homemade Christmas tree. When my younger sisters saw Mama and I lugging that thing into the living room in a bucket they began to shout and clap their hands in utter joy. I don’t remember whether there were any presents under the tree that year, but the memory of that Christmas is priceless to me.
Memories like the year my first husband, children and I got our first video camera and decided to make a Christmas movie for the family back in the Midwest. The game plan was for my husband and son to carry the huge Christmas tree into the house while I ran the new camera to capture the moment. For the first two attempts I forgot to turn the camera on and on the third my husband glared straight into the camera through the branches of the tree and said, “do you have the d@#n thing on” and instantly realized that I did! I was sure he would edit that part out but he left it on and everyone laughed for years to come.
I could go on and on but these are a few of my sweet Christmas memories. To this day I still trim my tree in celebration of my mother’s birthday.