Mom was Christmas

My Mom loved Christmas. She had an enthusiasm and joy for Christmas that I haven't really encountered in anyone else I know. I can see her bright smile now as I picture her. She also loved winter and the snow. She's one of the only people I've ever known who was bummed out when it didn't snow enough. After she died, I lost most of my Christmas spirit. It's just not been the same without her. Growing up, she made sure we had gifts every Christmas. This was not an easy thing for her to do given our money situation but she made it happen every single year.

I remember opening all the presents and sitting in the middle of the room with all the wrapping paper around. The paper went into the trash bags but the bows always got saved. Our stockings were always full of a bag of candy she had bought and created especially for each of us. Mom wrote her list of everything she was going to buy for each of us. She had to hide the list because we'd always want to peek. She kept it in her purse and would take it out to review when we went shopping. She would always do one night of shopping on her own and on that night, she wouldn't come home until very late. I missed her on those nights even though I knew she was out buying fun things. She also kept the sizes for shirts, pants, underwear, slippers etc. for everyone in her address book. Her address book over the years got so worn that she kept a rubberband around it to keep the pages from falling out. She paid cash for everything which she kept in an old paycheck envelope. One of those with the clear plastic windows in the front. Everytime she took the envelope out of her purse to pay for something it made a crinkling noise when she opened it up.

We had the same decorations every year. They went the same places. Mom had her traditions and I don't think it ever occurred to us to move the Christmas decorations around. The nativity went in the old dry sink, the stockings tied to the stair case spindles, and the garland with bells draped through the wood spindles above the entry into the living room.

On Christmas Eve, we would pile into the car to go to church. Mom would always forget something and have to go back inside. That, each of us found out as we got older, was the time she put all the presents under the tree. It just so happened that Santa had always come while we were at church. We'd come home from church and run into the living room and see the stacks of presents and rip into them all at once, but only after Mom and Dad got settled into their spots. After all the presents were opened and the mess "organized", we would make popcorn, get to pick out a pop (having soda pop was a rare thing in our house) and Dad would put the Woody cartoon on the film projector. We'd watch it on a sheet he had put up on the wall. I can still hear the wap, wap, wap when the film ran out but kept going round and round until Dad turned it off. On Christmas day, after church, we'd travel to one of the relatives homes. We rotated houses every year. It was a day full of cousins, food, warmth, and those huge, hot, bright lights from Grandpa's video camera when he tried to shoot video of all of us. There was so much laughter that day. So much of it from my Mom. It made me happy to see her so happy. I can still hear Mom, and my Aunts and Uncle laughing up a storm. I never wanted to leave. I wanted it to be Christmas every day.

I think my Mom was happiest at Christmas. This time of year she is always on my mind. Her last Christmas was in 1996. She died the following February. She was so sick that last Christmas but still ate Mint Dazzler dessert and smiled for the camera. I think maybe she hung on partly because she wanted to experience Christmas. I'm so glad we were all together as a family that Christmas. It was the last time we were. The picture of all of us still hangs in my hallway. She's standing right in front of Jack. Maybe the two of them spend it together now. She probably tries to get him to go to church with her and he tells her only if she'll change a tradition and go biking with him on Christmas Day.