CHRISTMAS REMINISCENCE

CHRISTMAS REMINISCENCE

I was reading the wish lists of Cancer Kids early this morning and was so reminded of being maybe 5 years old and leafing through the HUGE Sears and Roebuck 2 inch thick catalog at the train sets, cars etc. when it arrived each year. I remember also spending time in the lingerie section looking at the pretty Women...LOL. God I love Christmas.

My parents were and still are the best! At Christmas my Dad would mess up the logs in the Fireplace, leave the screen ajar and eat the cookies and milk we would leave for Santa! Always a few crumbles left on the saucer and a note thanking us for feeding him. My parents had a Christmas Club account because they saved a little from each paycheck weekly to insure that the 4 of us and the extended family always had wonderful and thoughtful gifts. They were not and are not wealthy but they did spend a disproportionate amount on us carefully working with "SANTA" each year!

To this day, the Christmas season is my favorite, I am missing my 2 sets of Grandparents Nita (Booger) and Lewis (Grandpa) Harris, my Dads parents Bernice (GiGi) and Russell (Buck, PawPaw) Sackett who always promised to buy us a Pony, he loved teasing us and GiGi would say "Buck stop that you are not getting them a Pony!", my uncle Mickey who was one of this nations early AIDS victims did get us Ginger our first puppy, my Uncle Fred and Aunt Francie, Francie was a model and was the first to model the Hope Diamond when it was on tour. And they lived in a "modern" 60's house, so unique. 

One of my favorite Christmas memories was the year, (at about 10), when I got my 5 foot high model of the Saturn V Rocket! It had about 300-400 pieces, and my Uncle Fred came to my room and we spent all of Christmas building it together, hours upon hours, it was the coolest thing ever!!!!! It lasted three years until our house burned down and the Firemen accidentally knocked it into a million pieces while I guided them to the fuse box on their way through my room in the blackened dark.

Such vivid memories! I can't wait to go home to Kansas City this Thursday morning to listen to sappy Christmas Music, see my friends and family and to eat a few bad (very good), things! It's of course never about the presents for me any longer, I have too much as it is, it's about being present! Remembering, reflecting, settling and being HOME!

Our traditions mostly remain, ground up lunch meat, chili and Mass often at Midnight on Christmas Eve. And piles of gift wrap on christmas morning were always the best. I skip the Mass now as a nonbeliever but still always wait for Santa and his cookies and milk!

And he always comes! 

Merry Merry!