Okay so Christmas is over. And I didn’t get what I wanted. All I wanted for Christmas was a good-old fashion, traditional celebration.
As children, we gathered at my grandparent’s house on Christmas Eve. Because they had married on Christmas Eve, we celebrated Christmas and their anniversary every year. On their 40th wedding anniversary, they posed in front of the tree holding a tiered cake with a large, red 40 on top.
Every year the grandchildren sat at the kid’s table. Every year we debated whether it was the girls’ or the boys’ turn to hand out presents. That settled, in a flurry of activity, presents shed their wrappings and we showed off our look-alike dolls, guns or games and the gifts we bought for the one whose name we had drawn.
Christmas day we stayed home and opened the presents my mom had wrapped for Santa to fill with toys. Every year I received a new book and spent the day reading it and playing with the new toys.
Ahh, yes, those were the good ole’ days.
Then my family moved West – way out west. We settled in the tiny community of Beryl Junction, Utah with too little money and too many miles between us to go home for the grandparent’s Christmas Eve anniversary. Longing to be back East anyway, we began playing Christmas music early that fall, wrote long letters to everyone, drew names with the cousins, wrapped their packages and mailed them early. We shared a holiday meal with new friends, quietly opened our presents without all the cousins – settling for second best when we talked on the phone with them on Christmas Eve. They told us that our package of presents did not arrive in time for the family gathering. It showed up in June. A perfect month for my cousin to enjoy the stocking cap my brother sent to him.
Nope, Christmas just was not the same that year.
The next year, we lived in the copper mining town of Bagdad, Ariz. My brother saw our house for the first time when he came home from his first semester of college. We all celebrated his arrival – and later that of two cousins and an aunt who welcomed in the New Year with us. It was almost like being with everyone else. We played games, cracked black walnuts and made brownies.
But the time for family gatherings had begun to dissolve. They disintegrated as first my brother and then I married and went to live in our separate states.
Some years we visited during the holidays, others I simply could not. Having blended into an existing family of two boys, I had to change my traditional gift opening day to accommodate the children’s time with the rest of their family. Moving 1,000 miles away to live in El Dorado just added one more hindrance to traditional gatherings.
Nonetheless, I determined we would have a few traditions of our own. The children bought gifts for each other, we shared making the meal together and enjoyed our day at home – and some years made the long drive to be with family. But even those traditions did not last as my children also grew up, went off to college, married and began their own families with another set of in-laws, grandparents, aunts and uncles to consider.
While other families have worked out “Christmas with us this year, Thanksgiving next year” that formula has not worked with our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who live in six different states and range from newborn to new grandparents. For a couple years we held a New Year’s Eve gathering, but again time, money, jobs and other obligations trumped traditionalizing that plan.
Reluctantly I have accepted the inevitable and declared we have a tradition of flexibility. If they can’t come to us, we will go to them – which we did this year. As you read this I hope to be making the last leg of my journey back to Union County after a whirlwind visit to the North and East.
And if next year we absolutely can not leave town, we will pull out our new tradition of flexibility and begin making other plans.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)
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where we went, who we saw
Just for my own information in the future, but fyi for anyone else who would like to know.
Dec. 17 – 19 Left El Dorado, AR to drive to St. Louis, Mo. for a Christmas celebration with Nathan’s family (Joy, Sophie and Sam) and Sharon’s family (Jacob, Elijah and Caroline). Sharon said that the big gift of a slide converter was a gift from all 6 children. Sophie loved her new Bean dog: a mechanical robot. Caroline like Sophie’s baby stroller. Elijah played Santa Claus. Sharon and Joy prepped the meals. I guess I put the turkey in to bake. English poppers to get our paper hats and tiny toys. Nate gave us boxes of slides to convert.
Dec. 19, left around noon to drive to Robin and Rosemary LaRue’s House in Fort Wayne, IN. Spent a few hours visiting with them before sleeping in a cozy bedroom in the basement of their home. News! Rochelle will adopt one of her foster boys. Christine’s husband talked with the birth mother, but still no talking for Jonathan. Sean is working in the trailer industry. After our requested breakfast of plain cereal we drove to Huntington to see my cousin Maretta. Rosemary was working on cross stitch Christmas stockings for the newest family members.
Maretta shared some of Grandma Waight’s items. We heard glimpses of her life the last 30 years. Maretta gave us a box of books.
Went to Randy’s house to meet up with his family. We pulled out toys for Patti’s babysitting job, A huge doll house handed down to Olivia and a new shop vac that Randy could use. And handed out token gifts, played with Titus and Olivia, Visited with the big folks: Lindsay, Tim, Heidi, JJ, Chris, Brittany, Patti and Randy. They all talked about their plans for a biggest loser contest. Too brief of a visit, but they were preparing to watch a ball game and we needed to get to the hotel in Michigan.
Dec. 20 p.m. to Ypsilanti, MI to a hotel where I finished up my feature story on Dr. Seale while watching a movie/documentary on Dr. Kavorkian’s contribution to assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Dec. 21 Joseph helped Mert install a ceiling fan, we visited Mert’s store and he had a McD’s hamburger. Mert gave us books to take to Mark’s children. Then a 9 hour drive to PA to arrive at midnight at Mark’s house.
Dec. 22, Tokan gifts for kids, and English crackes – the big deal was Basil selected a helicopter as his birthday gift and developed some skills in flying it. Alexis took us to see the flea market booth she is renting. Alexis decided to recall her 50 Whoppers day as a child and have her kids enjoy quadruple Block Buster freebies. We went to eat supper at Stoner’s house. Very quiet and genteel folks. Violet finished her last day of computer school, as did Ginger. The children were all on computers when we went with Mark to get his meds. I noticed he had a limp. He said it was because he still had a numbness in his left knee that he noticed after the accident.
Mark’s family decided to stay up late watching DVDs, we went to bed in Ginger’s room with fleece sheets, very cozy. Left about noon the next day to drive to Rochester, NY.
Dec. 23 ate a small supper at an Italian restaurant, saw a modest yard filled with maybe 300 of the old fashion lit plastic holiday yard ornaments. and arrived at Sharon Lee’s house around 9 p.m. Slept on the futon in the TV room.
Dec. 24 Exercised with Sharon at Planet place, worked on her camp quilt for Ben and Jess, visited a Goodwill to donate some stuff and then went to Jeremy’s house to make Christmas cookies, have a mini-concert and went to their church’s Christmas Eve service.
Dec. 25 Quiet morning of working on quilt, eating Christmas food and smelling Sharon’s Christmas supper. We had 10 at the table that night including Ben and Jess and Amelia. After supper we opened the token gifts. Just enjoying time together, playing games and I talked with MM&N.
Dec. 26. To Church with Sharon in Rochester, NY. After a sandwich lunch we drove to Melvin and Deanna’s 40th wedding celebration – which was the real reason for the trip. I just wanted to be at the anniversary party and since I was going to be in SL one weekend and NY the next, it seemed easier to just drive on and visit everyone else.
Phil Habrook quit his position as vp in sales, a comfortable job, with a year’s severance pay so he will have time to think about what he would like to do next. Lucas’ son Thomas is like Caroline, in the bottom 5 percentile. Karen does research with fruit flies while Matt continues to work in maintenance.
Slept at Aunt Erma’s house in her basement bedroom with fleece blankets. If I lived in the north, I would choose fleece sheets, very cozy! She was ready for bed around 8 p.m. so I read a book and MJ went to sleep.
Dec. 27 We made our way through the blowing snow to the Interstate and headed south to the Pittsburgh airport. I made my plane in plenty of time, then sat and waited in Atlanta for a flight attendant who never came. Should be a good book “The case of the missing stewardess.” Spent at least an hour playing and talking with an impatient 5 year-old who just wanted to get on the plane and depart.
Finally got to Little Rock at 9 p.m. Sharon and I went to one “after Christmas sale” before settling in for the night. She showed me some of her pictures from her day of sorting out 1,000 pictures. Whew!
I slept on the couch until 5:10 a.m. Dec. 28 then headed south to make it to work on time.
Joseph should drive in tonight/this afternoon.
While I was gone, the intern took over my desk. What! I leave and they find someone that fast to take my desk!
I call it the 12 families of Christmas: Our 6 children and their households, My brother, sister, cousin and aunt, Joseph’s sister and the church family or the family of man at the airport waiting.
I suppose we will get together with Tim’s youngest three later this week. Which means the only one we did not see was Ashley. I think she was working.
It was an insightful week, seeing how patterns established early in life continue to exhibit themselves later on. Prime example, at the anniversary party, Deanna’s little brother stood up and asked if his niece and nephew ever got to play with their toys. For 13 years Deanna would put away his toys shortly he got them out. “I only had to deal with her 13 years, Mel has had her 40 years.” She did the same thing to her dad when he read the paper, if he set it down for a minute to freshen his coffee or planned to return to it later, it would not be there, She would have folded it up. She said, that even as a little girl, she told her friend she was washing the floor because, “I like a clean, neat house.”
Or glimpses of Maretta’s life and finding herself in the same type of situations time and again.
Lots of holiday food and once in a while we actually ate some vegetables. I enjoyed meeting with the far flung family once again. I doubt we do it next year, but it was great this year.
what we did
Again, just for my own information and memory tweaking.
St. Louis: Visiting, talking, playing with the grandchildren. Joy had set up a bed in the basement, but usually slept on the couch with the baby. Fixing meals, took the three older children to Krystal Kreme Doughnuts for a couple hours the first morning. We had forgotten our nice camera, so we studied the ads of electronic shops looking for one, if the one I had seen at Walmart did not materialize. At Walmart, an older gentleman at the door called out, “I see you have all the grandchildren with you today.”
No, just part of them. He was eager to be off to see his grandchildren.
Went to the camera dept. Could not find the Kodak I had seen advertised. Not even an empty post where one used to be located. I asked. The clerk pulled it out from behind the counter and asked if I wanted blue or purple. I wonder if they have hidden the cameras at the other Walmarts? It was a good price.
Took a lot of pictures at KK as the three sampled doughnuts and chatted. Their parents were delighted to have had a couple extra hours of sleep. Picked up some presents for the children to give their parents at the Dollar Tree. I guess the holders for the Wii toys pleased them.
Joy gave Joseph a HUGE bag of peanuts to eat on the way home, as a sort of joke. Funny. He was pleased. They all supposedly gave us a scanner to convert the slides to digital format.
And sent us off with the slides. Ate dinner after fussing with our crackers.
A lot of time here was spent on organizing little ones.
Joy gave me 4 boxes of multi-grain mix as payment for something, I forget what.
They went on to church, we went to Fort Wayne.
Mostly just visited with R&R. Robin let us know he needed to go to bed at a certain time and that the bathroom was his at 6:30 a.m. Okay. no problem. Rosemary said we were easy, we only wanted Raisin Bran for breakfast.
Maretta, just visited and gathered up the box of books and goodies she gave us. She says her hair has never been the same since the place with insufficient water to rinse out the shampoo. She pulls and digs at it all day as she watches TV. That or she has the hair pulling disorder, in a moderate form reflecting her anxiety/stress. She said I twice asked if she really meant she wanted us to come and visit.She wondered if I was that insecure. Well sure. It only took me 10 years at this job to realize people really do read and enjoy it – and I qualify that with “but the don’t know me personally.”
Randy’s family all seemed jovial and laughing and having a grand time in their determination to get on with losing weight … as soon as the holiday finished.
And I gather from facebook postings that is exactly what they have done.
Lindsay was stirring up some sort of tapioca balls in sort of hot water. Baby Titus zonked out and would not wake up for anyone. Tim gave us cash to take his daughters shopping for clothes.
Worked on installing a fan at Mert’s house. I took him to his appt. at the clinic and met with his clinicians. Expressed my concerns. He got McD’s, we snapped pix of him at work. and then we picked up a couple gifts and went down the road to Mark’s house. A 9 hour drive.
Arrived at midnight. Visited with the children, flea mkt. lunch, supper at Stoner’s house, DVD/Block Buster, and off again at noon to NY, another 9 hour trip, although it was supposed to only be 7 hours.
Quilted a bit with Sharon, shopped, partied, visited in Canisteo and home again.
Stuck in Atlanta Airport waiting on flight attendant who never showed. Went to do a bit of after Christmas shopping with Sharon.
Home and left cell phone at Sharon’s.
Now at work and struggling along to get all the pages of education done in time. I said we could put off the first publication after the holidays. I will use any extra time to prepare letters for teachers about the NIE section.