I'm Dreaming...

As a little girl in the 1980's, I spent my Christmases either in California with my mother or in New York with her parents. She tried to always be in New York for the Holidays, but it was rare. I was usually in New York without her. Both her parents birthdays fell in December with my grandfather's birthday falling on Christmas Day.

During the very few Christmases when I was with my mother in San Diego, she barely had time or money for any gifts. Sometimes she worked up to 3 jobs at once and my step-father worked, but a sitter for me was costly on top of food, car insurance and other household expenses. Rent out there wasn't any cheaper than it is today.

One particular Christmas Eve in San Diego, we only had a tiny tree that sat in the middle of our round, wooden kitchen table. I knew I wasn't to expect Santa to leave gifts, my mother saying there was no fireplace in our second floor apartment. I had plenty of playdough so I decided we would have gifts anyway. I made colorful, tiny little animals for each of us that would sit and dry throughout the night for Christmas morning. My mother made us some cookies and milk to drink for Santa before I went to bed. The next morning, I came out of my bedroom expecting to get a bowl of cereal and on the table in place of my little playdough animals, were two mugs. My excited jumping up and down woke-up my mom and step-father, and my mom asked me what was inside the mugs. I poured out the red & green candy and at the bottom of each mug, I found a tiny little gnome man in one and a gnome woman in the other! I had developed an obsession for gnomes and asked for every book I saw on the subject. There was no music that day, not that I can remember. I later brought those mugs back with me to my grandparents in New York. My grandmother put them in her china cabinet and every now and then I would drink tea or hot cocoa from them...they had been my favorite mugs as a child.

Christmas in New York with my grandparents was filled with family, friends and SNOW! Always tons of snow, it seemed to never stop! Today, in New York, I live in the same region of Niagara County, and it's sad that my sons barely got to experience the same weather I did for their Thanksgivings and Christmases. As a child, there was always driving to visit family or to attend parties, people coming and going from our house. For us, the drive home at night to Olcott, NY from either Niagara Falls or Lockport, was a half hour or longer and I usually fell asleep in the backseat. The squeak of the windshield wiper blades, rhythmic sound of the tires, and the radio playing softly while my grandfather drove, all lulled me into slumber. I always felt safe and loved, and very lucky!

We always had a tree at my grandparents house, which graduated from a real one to a fake one. The pine needles from a real one got to be a pain to clean up every day, and my two cats caused too many problems trying to drink the water from it. By the time we got a fake one, the cats had grown bored and left it (and the decorations) alone. Every weekend after Thanksgiving, since Black Friday was spent shopping, my grandfather would carry the tree's cardboard box down from their attic. He'd lift down all the other boxes of decorations they had stored through the years before I was even thought of, and we would decorate. Any Christmas, and birthday cards for either of my grandparents, that we had already received (and the prettiest from the year before) were taped along the fireplace mantel, or the two wooden pillars that separated the kitchen from the dining room. They had a kitchen island between the pillars, with stools. Many nights I sat there, eating a bowl of warm oatmeal or grits, maybe a bowl of cereal. While my grandfather cooked, he would tell me of his childhood and we would talk. It was a special moment between my grandfather and I. We had many of them. As a child, whenever I woke up in the middle of the night, he was the one who got out of bed to see what I needed. My grandmother had suffered a stroke when I was two years old. It was her second and she had survived, but needed a lot of physical therapy and rest. She had to re-learn how to do everything and needed a lot of support to do basic day-to-day things that we all take for granted. I learned early how to help her. When I needed help, it became a natural thing for me to go to my grandfather. Over the Christmas Holiday every year, as cards came in, I got the job of taping them up. We hung tinsel garland everywhere, it sparkled in red, green, gold and silver. Every year I would arrange on a rectangle square of fake white snow, their little wooden carved '3 Wise-Men' display, with the tiny baby Jesus in his manger. At some point I used my crayons to color all the people and animals. I'm pretty sure my guilt from that blasphemous vandalism of my childhood would still hit me if I still had to look at those crayon colored, wood carvings every year! Lights were not just put on the tree and in the house, my grandmother wanted them outside too. All the way up until I became an adult, even after she passed away in March 1998, Christmas lights were hung outside from her favorite trees. She wanted them visible from the sliding-door window in their bedroom. With all the houselights off, and the fire burning in the fireplace, I would snuggle, wrapped in my favorite red blanket on their couch, while watching Christmas movies. This created some of the most perfect childhood memories for me. My childhood was NOT the most ideal, but my loving grandparents made it beautiful!

Sometimes I would wake up and walk down the hall from my hot bedroom. The wind would blow all the heat from one end of the house to the other, my bedroom being the farthest away, became the hottest in their house during the winter. I could always feel the cold creep up the hallway while I walked. In the living room, the fireplace doors would be shut, but occasionally, embers would still glow as the wind blew down the chimney. My grandparents home on Lake Ontario and was affectionately called 'The Lakehouse'. It was meant to be their retirement home, only my grandfather never officially retired. He worked until he went into the hospital in 2013, just before his 87th Christmas birthday. He passed away on New Years Day in 2014. Their lake house had wall-to-wall windows which faced the water. It was a beautiful, picturesque view no matter what the season was. I would look outside searching for signs of Santa, my long, scratchy cotton nightgown (which I felt smothered me, but they insisted I wear it so I wouldn't get cold) sticking to my dry little legs. The view never failed to amaze me with all the white snow, blowing like waves of crystals, catching light and sparkling like sand. It seemed lit up from within, like magic!

The one song that reminds of those perfect, and not-so-perfect, 1980's Christmases of my childhood is Frank Sinatra's 'White Christmas'. When this song plays, I can almost smell the food cooking, hear my family talking and laughing, and I remember the taste of the different Christmas goodies melting in my mouth. I swear I can hear the snow outside their home as it blows while I play. I remember how the wood burning in their fireplace smelled. I feel the tingle of my cold fingers after coming indoors and taking off all my winter gear, snowsuit, boots, hat, scarf, wet socks, and finally my red fingers from wet gloves stretched out to get warm in front of the fire! Yes, we roasted marshmallows, my cousins and I, on long metal forks with wood handles. Always I remember that one Christmas with my mom in San Diego. She had seemed so sad. As a mother myself, I know the feeling. 'White Christmas' reminds me that the holidays are not about presents or money...it's about each other.

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