Giddy Up and Go
December 22, 2006 | permalink
I was browsing around some of your writings the other day, Gentle Readers, and Emily of Pretty Crabby and Brian of An Audience of One were writing about Christmases both imminent and long gone, respectively, and it got me thinking about Christmas when I was a kid, specifically Christmas at my Mother's.
My parents split when I was seven or so, and my Mother got together (and eventually married) Red, and we had a real Brady Bunch situation going on. There was me, The Star, and The Rockette, of course, and Red had his daughter Cat and his sons the C.O. and The Architect. Three boys, three girls, all of us just about a year apart. There is actually a small three day window every year between The Rockette's birthday and The C.O.'s birthday when the six of us are in consecutive chronological order. My Mother says that then we are In Alignment, and tries to get a photo of us during this time every year.
I've strayed from the point of my story. Which was Christmas.
The Christmases when the six of us were all there together (roughly every other one) were great, by far the best holidays of my childhood. Up until we were too old and self-conscious, we would all camp out in the girls' room (which was the larger) on Christmas Eve, too excited to sleep and excitedly speculating about what the next morning would bring. Eventually, of course, no matter how hard we tried to stay awake and catch Mom and Red putting out the presents, we would one by one drift off. I don't think we ever did manage to stay up late enough to find them out; my Mother insists to this day that Santa, and not her or Red, places the gifts under the tree. She's cute like that.
In the morning whichever of us woke up first would wake the others, and our excited chatter from the night before would continue. We usually were up well before dawn, and even though we weren't supposed to wake up Mom and Red until at least 6am, we discovered we could usually push it to 5:30 or even 5:15 if we made coffee for them and sent it in with whichever of us was most in their good graces. Which was usually Cat or The Star. The Rockette and I were too consistent to ever be especially in or out of favor, and The Architect and The C.O. fought too much to ever rise to 'Golden Child' status.
I'm hard pressed to actually remember anything I got on those Christmas mornings; its the camaraderie I felt with my brothers and sisters (well, this subset of them, anyway) that makes the memories so special to me. So I will leave you with that happy picture, Gentle Readers, whilst I head upstate to see The Old Man. Happy Holidays, and I will return next week, no doubt with tales of holiday mayhem.
Posted in Family Matters & Growing Up & Holidays & The PastDonate to Wikipedia was the last entry.
Stuff in The Old Man's Yard is the next entry.
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