Christmas2

It was good cold weather, rainy, with the raindrops shining on the branches of the pine trees that overlooked our driveway. I remember the Dodge car driving up on Christmas Eve afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa Martin in it. I remember my Aunt Dora coming up. Whether we picked her up at the airport or not, or whether she was really there, is unimportant. In this memory she was there, as well as various other cousins, aunts and uncles. We were a young family then, unfettered and free.

And then....the Long Wait continued while the parents and the grand parents and the aunties and uncles snored away, not even aware of the hungering young souls around them. After awhile Dad got up, yawning and mumbling, wearing his red flannel robe, and made coffee, and began to make pancakes with walnuts in them, and sausages. (Christmas was never Christmas was it, without those pancakes with walnuts in them...).

Us kids who were up went out and stood watch around the car where Grandma and Grandpa slept, their windows pasted over with newspaper to ward off the cold, as well as possibly prying eyes. When the car moved, we were on it like wolves, beating on the windows and howling for them to come out!

Mom got up, staggering into the living room like a scene from Night Of The Living Dead, her nose as red as Rudolph, wearing a snugly warm robe to hug and warm our hands in.

First we ate breakfast. Everybody ate breakfast, slowly and deliberately. Then the dishes had to be washed. And dried. And put away. If Christmas fell on a Sunday (horrers!) we went to church as well. If it did not, the leisurely morning was milked completely by the adults, who must have totally enjoyed watching us sweat in anticipation. The presents would not get opened until everybody had eaten breakfast, brushed their teeth, taken morning showers (which took forever with only one bathroom remember?) the dishes were washed and put away, and the turkey (prepared by Mom and Grandma with much hilarity) put in the oven.

THEN...we could gather round the tree at last!

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And late in the afternoon, Mom and Grandma went into the bedroom and shut the door, settling in for a night of mother-daughter talk, and the Wrapping Of The Gifts. There were whispers and laughter, and the rustling of Christmas paper. We kids sometimes went in and were quickly shooed out, or stalled outside the door with hilarity and jokes. Sometime during that magical evening Dad built a fire. My tiny dog Pepe snuggled up on the bed with Grandma and stared jealously at the rest of us as Grandma folded the unused wrapping paper. (She was always Grandma's dog first and mine second.)

Was that the year we had an obscene phone caller and Grandma answered the phone. "You don't want to come here", she cackled, "We have a HUGE dog, we call him Sir Galahad." Pepe looking up at her adoringly...

Dad, Grandpa, and the other men dozed by the fire, tuning out the women. Dad always had Christmas music playing on whatever radio we owned at tht time, or on a turntable from his extensive record collection. Mom made popcorn at some point which we threw into the fire to see the salt colored flames. The fire was redolent of pine resin and robust oak wood.

Did we sing carols that year? Did we go out caroling with the church group, huddling blanketed in the back of Pastor's pickup truck to ride up the mesa in the sweet sage smelling and windy night and carol and old lady in a house nobody knew was there, an old lady who came out of the house and thanked us, and said she had been waiting for us to come for forty years...or is that the year the wind blew the walls of the church down and we had to start building it all over again? All these things happened in those winters.

Then the Long Waiting began. Grandma told me once that at midnight on Christmas Eve all my toys could come alive and celebrate the birth of the Christ CHild. I tried to wait. I tried very hard because I wanted to see my model hunting horse truly jump his fence. Surely I laid awake until midnight because I once thought I heard Santa Claus boots scraping on the rooftop. Later I decided it was tree branches blowing in the wind. Now, in my younger middle age, I wonder...

I once confided in Grandma my dissapointment that the toys did not move at midnight. I know, I told her confidently, because I have waited until midnight many Christmas Eve's and they don't move. I wonder why you ever told me that story.

But, she replied, eyes twinkling, you were awake. They knew you were awake, and so they did not move.

Perhaps I slept before midnight but I always woke before dawn, ravenous and exhilerated. I crept out into the dark living room while my two sisters were sleeping. I would meet my brother there, coming from the opposite way. Carefully, on toptoes, we took our stockings down, gently loosening the ropes of tape binding them to the mantle, even though we knew full well that nothing short of a stampeding elephant herd would have caused the adults in the house to wake up. We took for our sisters too and put the stockings on their beds. When they woke up they could play, and spread the contents all over their bed spreads.

And what was in these stockings? Chewing gum and candy canes. Boxes of raisins to ward off some of the early morning starvation. Scotch tape for sticking things on things, and pens for writing, and crayons for coloring. Hard candy and chocolates and nuts in their hard shells. And sometimes...surprises! Keychains with colored rabbit's feet or whistles on them, and rubber snakes, and pen knives and smelly cologne bottles. Once..a transistor radio. Rainbow notepads of all colors, good for the soul.