Skip to main content

The In-Between Christmas


The In-Between Christmas

The Christmas memories of my childhood are as magical as Hallmark would have you believe.  Each eve and morning were filled with joy and wonder, and then the inevitable hissy fit when, after opening our new toys, we had to immediately set them aside to attend church.  

Once, when I was very young, we arrived home late after a Christmas Eve dinner with relatives in the city.  It might have been one of many harrowing drives through a snow storm, I’m not sure. For whatever reason, my parents announced that my brother and I could each open one gift under the tree.  It was magnificent.  I can’t recall which pretty box I opened, but we, kids, went to bed happy, and a family tradition was born. This is my earliest Christmas memory.

A stand-out memory as an adult, is the Christmas I realized I was an adult. (And, not a moment too soon, as I was in my mid 30’s.)  My future husband and I had bought a house in a lovely, leafy neighbourhood, taking possession in early December.  Christmas morning dawned with big, fat fluffy snow blanketing the world outside, while inside our tree twinkled with light reflected from the roaring blaze in our fireplace.  It didn’t matter what presents sat under the tree, that morning I was overwhelmed with comfort and joy.

It is a close second to my favourite Christmas of all time: 1973, the year I discovered rock and roll.

I had my heart set on Malibu Barbie. Rarely could our family afford the things advertised on television – in fact, we’d only recently acquired a television and indoor plumbing.  My joy on Christmas morning, as I caressed Malibu Barbie’s perfectly tanned plastic skin, was jolted when my father announced I was now far too old to be playing with dolls.  This was the last one I’d ever find under the tree, he told me.  I clutched her impossibly tiny, moveable waist and improbably large, impervious boobs to my chest, promising her that we would be friends forever and I would never stop playing with her.

Then I put her down on the piano bench and ignored her for days. The next gift I opened was a shiny new transistor radio!  My brother got a blue one and mine was orange, the hippest and coolest colour of the 70’s.  That little box changed my world.

Up until that time, our sound track was strictly gospel, and country and western.  My Dad was renowned for his rendition of Webb Pierce’s “In the Jail House Now.” He taught me all the words to Johnny Cash’s Burning Ring of Fire when I was three. And, he never failed to sing along when Jerry Reed came on the kitchen radio: “She got the gold mine. I got the shaft!”

With radios of our own, my brother and I would sing “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” with glee.  For hours I danced around my bedroom to tunes like “Brandy,” “Crocodile Rock,” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”  Was there ever anyone as soulful as Mick Jagger exhorting “Angie” not to weep? Roberta Flack “killed” me softly with her song, Gallery caused a “commotion in my soul” and the opening riff of “Long Cool Woman” made me feel sexy before I knew what sex was. 

1973 was the year I set my dolls aside and embraced the music that set my parent’s teeth on edge.  I was a child leaving childhood behind. Maturity was decades away. It was an “in-between” time, remembered vividly.  It was my “In-Between Christmas.”
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In the Manger with Jesus

  Young children have a hard time understanding complex ideas and things they can’t see. This is why they say the darndest things as adults struggle to explain concepts like God, death, and the small microbes that live on their grubby little fingers which they should wash before supper. My nephew, we’ll call him Sebastien, was four years old when my father passed away. Dad had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, and while he had trouble breathing and didn't have much energy, he always had time to read a story or share some red grapes with Sebastien. There were lots of naps in the big easy chair with Grampa. When Dad got sicker, the chair was moved out of the front room to make way for a hospital bed. Dad died on December 24, 2009, as my brother and I held his hands and my mother stroked his face.   At Sebastien’s house, his mother struggled to explain what had happened. Why there would be no more naps, stories or grapes with Grampa. “His get-better-bed didn’t work,” s...
9 comments
Read more

Life with Neville

  Neville and I exist in a drafty, clapboard house at the end of a gravel road. We don’t see much of the neighbours. It’s conversation-worthy if a car goes by or, more likely, turns in our lane to avoid the dead end ahead. Neville mostly does his own thing and, especially in the winter, I rarely see another human being outside of the monthly trip to town. The view from every window is white and devoid of beauty.   The interior landscape is just as bleak. I dust, mop and wipe, yet see only a film of gray blanketing my home. Neville and I sleep in the same bed and eat our meals together, but the deeper connection we once had has now also accumulated a hazy grey-white patina. He used to gaze lovingly into my eyes, sit cuddling close, and pay attention to whatever I was doing, angling for my attention. Now Neville looks at me when supper is late. In lieu of meaningful looks, caresses or conversation, I tell him to do the thing he’s already doing. It gives me the illusion that he...
2 comments
Read more

Red

  Mother summons me to her office on Monday morning to scold me and  I’m transported back in time. I’m five years old. Her red pinched lips are shouting and her red-tipped finger is wagging at me. You horrible bad girl, where is Mother’s sweater? What did you do with it?   I’d taken it to bed with me, to feel something soft that smelled like her mix of menthol cigarettes and Chanel Number Five.   While she and the rest of the family were skiing in Mount Tremblant, I’d explored our big empty house, including Mother’s walk-in closet. The sweater, cashmere, lay crumpled on the floor. I hid there, amongst her clothes, shoes, purses and scarves, missing my family – my father who was rarely home but smiled and sometimes told me stories; my boisterous teenage brothers, who were rarely home but sometimes played games with me; and my mother who was always home and whom I tried so very hard to emulate and please. I hid the sweater under a pillow in my frilly pink bedroom. Rosi...
Post a Comment
Read more