With Christmas less than a week away, I've been thinking about memories of Christmas past. Growing up, even though we were pretty poor, I always got what I asked for. Someone asked me the other day what my favorite Christmas present was and for me, it was a doll named Swingy. She was a blond doll who danced. She just kind of moved all around in a circle. At one point I had broken her, I think I actually threw her across the room for some reason. I remember picking up her head and crying because she was broke. What felt like months later, my mom called me into her bedroom and there she was, all fixed and dancing across the floor. I don't know if she fixed her or if she bought a new one, but I was happy as can be.
One year, I wanted a vanity. I came down the stairs and there it was, right in front of the tree. I ran to it and just knew it was mine. It was one of those antique white plastic vanity's with the pink top and little drawers to put things in. I sat there looking in the mirror not wanting to get up, but Mom and Dad made me sit at the table to eat breakfast before I could play with it.
I remember the year my sister Judy got four barbie dolls in one case. One of them was called Casey and she had short brown hair and had modern clothes. There was a black doll in the case, and I think her name may have been Teresa. The barbie I got that year was a Skipper doll with bendable arms. She had long long blond hair, just like Jan Brady. I loved that doll. I remember having a scooter doll with her and I looked more like Scooter than Skipper.
A few years, I had to laugh at my gifts. I was surprised one Christmas to receive a guitar. I didn't ask for one, but my brother John did. My mother couldnt' remember who asked for it, and she thought it was me. I don't know why I didn't just give it to John. I had no interest in learning the guitar. I played the drums. I wanted to play the flute, but I wasn't any good at sound instruments.
Then one year, my sister Tisha and I were snooping in Mom's room to see what she was hiding. She used to hide things under the clothes in her closet. This was right around 1968-1969 and I had never owned a pair of jeans or pants, other than an occasional stretch pants that I could only wear at home. We didn't wear pants to school or really outside. We wore snow pants with our dresses. Tisha and I found this bag and there was this ugly pair of pants in it, it was sort of brown and green patchwork. They looked sort of like camouflage. We laughed and talked about how ugly the pair of pants mom got for John was. They were hideous. Well on Christmas morning, much to my surprise, I opened one gift and there were the ugly pants, for me. Here I wanted the cool big bottom blue jeans like Amber had, and I had the ugliest pants in the world.
When we were married, my ex husband was never very good at buying christmas presents. For the first few years, I didn't really receive anything. Then one year, he bought me a pink sweatshirt. It was cute. And then my mom sent me a pink sweatshirt. I thanked both of them for the gift. This was around 1982 or so when sweatshirts were "in". Then for at least the next ten years, both of them bought me pink shirts, sweatshirts or sweaters. I quickly learned to despise pink shirts of any kind. But oh, those were the days.
My most favorite gift I received as an adult was a book by Jimmy Stewart. He used to come on Johnny Carson and read his poems and I just loved them. One poem, he wrote about his dog named Beau. We had a dog named Lobo and it just reminded me of him. I still have that book :)
I wish I could recreate the excitement of the holidays that we felt as kids. Every year Tisha and I were going to stay up all night and just catch Santa Claus (no, we never did). One year me, Tisha and brother John were looking out the window trying to see if we could see Santa and it must have been a falling star, because we saw this sparkle in the sky. John assured me it was Santa Claus. Even though we would all do our own thing throughout the year, every year on christmas morning the five of us would race down the stairs to scramble under the tree and pick out the packages with our names on them.
As we got older, Tisha and I realized that the one's who stopped writing to Santa Claus received less and less each year. So we continued to write Santa Claus well into our early teens, to the point that our mother told us, "No, there is no such thing as Santa Claus. It's just us." We argued and pleaded that no, we still believed, we still believed :)
I don't know what the holiday is going to be like around here next week, but at least I have the wonderful memories of a house full of giggling kids watching their dreams come true.
Merry Christmas :)
