Christmas Memories - 5

After we moved back to Seymour, my parents lived three blocks away from us on High Street.  There were Christmas ornaments there, too, and in time some of these came my way.

This red bird was on the tree when we lived on the farm on French Road.  It came along with my parents when they moved to Seymour.

Soon after that the clip that held the bird to the tree went missing and my mother decided to throw it away. I salvaged it. Gary found a clip and the red bird found a place on my tree.  It's been here ever since.

Not on a tree, this Japanese lamp hung in our farm kitchen each Christmas as long as I could remember. On Christmas Eve we lit a candle but kept a close eye on it.  It really wasn't all that safe.

Chipped and worn paint, but it is still on my wall.  On Christmas Eve, my grandson helps put little electronic LED candles in all my candle holders upstairs and down and on this one as well.  Modern technology has given this ornament new life.  Is it beautiful?  No.  But the memories are.

***
A good book sale at Sissy's today.  I am down to one copy of The Glen Valley Compact.   My theory is that the local people are buying it to see if they are in it ... and who was killed.  Susan Manzke is in the middle of it and says she knows who the murderer is. We'll see about that!

Christmas Memories - 4

In those early days, there was little money to shop for ornaments but they came slowly, some as gifts from relatives and some through advertising. Somewhere on my tree is a crystal Energizer Bunny that I must have gotten in a package of batteries.  

Chris found one of the mice in Disney's Cinderella in a McDonald's Happy Meal. The mouse has been on the tree ever since. We didn't eat out very much in those days. A trip to McDonald's was a big treat. 

As soon as he had a job delivering newspapers for the Appleton Post-Crescent, he began to think about things he could get me.  His first Christmas present was this little train made of tin. He found it on sale (my boy!) at the local drugstore.  It was a nice addition. 

We were beginning to have a real tree but at this point I was still adding paper ornaments and stringing popcorn to fill in the empty spaces. But the collection on my memory tree was growing. When I look at that little train I remember the cold winter days when he went out with his bag of newspapers, day after day, year after year.  

***
Last night I "boysat" with my grandson.  We played video games, watched movies, read, and best of all, played his new piano.  Evan has only had lessons for three months but he is progressing quickly.  We were able to do a duet together.  I haven't played a piano in at least two years but we muddled through. He has a recital in another week. This proud grandmother will be there.

***
Bettyann Moore concludes her story "Queen of Acapulco" at http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com/2013/12/queen-of-acapulco-part-ii.html  Betty is growing in her storytelling. In some ways, it reminds me of  Nobel Laureate Alice Munro's short stories. I've been reading them lately for inspiration.

Christmas Memories - 3

When we lived in Schaumburg, Illinois, I discovered an interesting store in a warehouse district. It was where unsold crafting items were stored and sold off at huge discounts. It was there that I found sketchbooks, water colors and pencils for my drawings. I found yarn and floss that I used to make pillows that I gave for presents. It was there that I found kits of all kinds for crafts I could do with Chris. I bought some and for a few years, he and I made ornaments for our Christmas tree.

We did ceramic pieces that required putting some kind of clay in molds and baking them, then decorating them.

I don't remember how many we made.  Over the years, all but this one broke. Perhaps we didn't bake them properly

Another kit contained metal forms and colored plastic beads. We had to very carefully put the beads in the forms that rested on a cookie tray.  This was a very laborious process but it gave Chris good exercise on his fine motor skills. Once we had filled the ornaments it was my job to take the tray to the oven for baking.  In the end we had some pretty little stained glass (plastic) ornaments that have lasted over thirty years.  

Each year I put them in front of a light so that they glow on the tree.  

Another year we tried doing the same thing.  We did all the work but I tripped on the way to the oven scattering little beads all over the kitchen.  We never did that again.  It was around that time he realized what a klutz his mom was. 

When I place these ornaments on the tree I am remembering time I spent with my son at the kitchen table as we prepared for Christmas.  

Christmas Memories - Part 2

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you hoped for. -- Epicurus

Anyone looking at the photo of my Christmas tree in yesterday's post might think I was the ultimate consumer, filling my tree with ornaments to the point that there's scarcely room for any more. But look closely and you would find that many of them are old, going back decades. Each year, I might have added one or two ornaments. Eventually the tree was filled.

I've never had much money to spend on Christmas or on anything else. Some years,I even got the tree from the dumpsters of local schools. I usually made three dimensional snowflakes folded out of old business letters and and made string of popcorn.

When Chris was young, I thought he should have a decent tree and began to think about collecting over the years.  We had lights back then of course. Every year I had to spend hours getting them to work. I usually had to buy six bulbs to replace burned out ones and every evening  worked on keeping the tree lit. One year, just before Christmas, I found boxes of "gingerbread men" for ten cents, six in each box. I bought two boxes and that was my big expense for the year.  Made in Japan, they were made of  painted Styrofoam. The eyes always looked Oriental to me.

When we lived in Schaumburg, Illinois, I found some sale material printed with a Christmas patterns. They were meant to be sewn into six fabric ornaments. A neighbor looked at what I was doing and said if I backed the material in red fabric, I would have a dozen ornaments instead of six.  She furnished the red fabric out of her stores. I hand stitched the ornaments and filled them with old shredded nylon stockings.

I only have three of those gingerbread men left, but all the stuffed ornaments have survived. They aren't attractive but they always bring back the time when we had so very little to live on. No matter, we loved Christmas.

Every year, these ornaments remind me of how far we've come since then. They'll always be on the tree.

Christmas Memories - Part I

I finished decorating the Christmas tree today.

As I worked, I went through the story of my life, revealed in Christmas ornaments. I have never spent much time thinking about the past. "Forever" is an overused word. No one is remembered forever. But once a year, I take time to remember those who went before me when I decorate the Christmas tree.  

This is the first memory. 

My mother's mother lived in California. We never knew her that well.  At Christmas we received a crate of fresh fruit and a long distance phone call.  

Besides oranges and grapefruit, the crates sometime included unusual fruit. That is how I got my first taste of pomegranate. I didn't much care for the seedy pulp, but the taste was so sweet.  Later we got Hawaiian Punch in a can. I recognized the taste immediately.  

One Christmas some time in the early 1950's Granny showed up in person . She had a present for us, she said.  It was a box of glass Christmas ornaments. She gave one to each of us kids. I don't remember the others being thrilled with their presents but I loved mine. All the bulbs went back in the box after that Christmas, to be hauled out year after year. I always made sure that I put mine on the tree. 

I became fascinated with the Christmas tree after that and made sure I was part of the decorating process. Back then the trees were cut in our own woods, fresh.  My job was to put on the tinsel.  Does anyone do that anymore? I laboriously did each strand, looking for perfection while I listened to Christmas records. My favorites were the albums of Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, a choral group.  

And always there was that gold ornament.  As I went off to live my own life, I took it with me. Through my years of moving from one state to another, it was always carefully packed away. I  sometimes had poor excuses for trees and had only home made paper ornaments but I always had one bit of gold, my grandmother's ornament. Over fifty years, I've managed not to break it.

It is still the first ornament on the tree. It shines to the memory of my grandmother.   

***

The first box of The Glen Valley Compact arrived today. I took five to Sissy's for Saturday's book sale. I took another to the Muehl Public Library.  I told head librarian Elizabeth Timmins that I killed a librarian in it. She said she'd better take it home to read. She'll find out the sleuth is a head librarian, too.  

I have an order to fill and another to save for our postal carrier.  That leaves me with two books so I'll soon have to place another order. 

Christmas is Coming

Today I took my Christmas cards to the post office.  At the same time, I collected the mail that had been held while we were in Illinois.  Along with bills, flyers and offers, there was a single Christmas card and we're off and running toward December 25.

Gary got the Christmas tree up. It isn't a real tree. A few years ago I discovered that the reason I had laryngitis every December was that I was allergic to the mold on the trees we brought into the house. Now I have a fake tree, though a good one. Together Gary and I wound the lights around it.  As usual, the lights worked when we tested them but once strung, sure enough some went out once on the tree. We persevered and tonight the tree is lit.

Tomorrow I'll add the decorations.  That task will take most of tomorrow as I go through all the ornaments I've collected over sixty years, from the little gold bulb given to me by my grandmother when I was perhaps eight years old to the things made for me by my grandson. Some of them were made by crafters.  Some I made myself.

Tomorrow I'll take another photo of that tree when it is completed.

December News

We took it easy today with just the beginnings of Christmas starting.

Today, we found the wreath that goes out to the cemetery.  I needed to rewire the wreath to its stand.  I found a new red bow in my Christmas boxes.  Now we have to find a way to stake it into the ground in front of the graves. Usually, the ground is softer when we do this, but now the ground is harder.  We'll find out about that tomorrow.

Gary found the big Christmas tree and dragged it down the steps  from the cubby hole on the second floor, but on the way down he upturned a big humidifier, dumping two gallons of water down the stair case.  Now he is dealing with that.  Looks like the tree goes up tomorrow.

We do have the electric candles in the window.  These are clever battery operated LED lights. They have timers in them we've set to go on at 4:30 pm. They turn off all by themselves at 10:30 pm and then are dark for 18 hours.  We started them before we left for Illinois to make it look like someone was in the house.

So Christmas is coming slowly which is a good thing. I hate to push it. Slow and gentle, that's the holidays for me.