This Christmas memory first appeared in the Escondido Times-Advocate in 1983.
When I was a young girl growing up in a small farm town, I figured everybody celebrated Christmas the way we did. That was not so long ago, really, when decorations didn’t go up until two weeks before and sales didn’t start until the day after and mothers gave from their hearts, not their pocketbooks.
Christmas Eve found us hanging our stockings in the kitchen (all the easier for Santato find, since we didn’t have a fireplace) and listening patiently to the Bible version of the Christmas story, then being totally entranced by my mother’s best “let’s keep a secret” voice reciting “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
Then it was off to bed for my sisters and me. With lots of extra kisses and hugs, our night was complete. But Mother’s was just beginning.
First to the secret hiding places to retrieve the treasures collected over the past year. From behind the sheets in the hall closet came new petticoats, from under the bed with the polka-dot spread came new socks, and from the cedar chest came baby dolls in homemade frocks. All year, Mother would search out the sales to find the perfect gift for each of us. Her Scots blood made her able to get more out of a dollar than most—a good thing, since there wasn’t money for luxuries at our house.
Instead of dollars, she invested time, energy and imagination. Plain petticoats were transformed with a snip of ribbon and a touch of embroidery. With a little creative nudge, they became passports to the “Nutcracker Suite.” Thick socks were not merely instruments to keep out the Missouri cold, they were puppets for our hands or magic skates to try out on the slippery kitchen floor. Baby dolls were no longer toys, but friends to invite to the next tea party with Mother’s cherished demitasse cups.
With the gifts tucked under the tree in their recycled-from-three-years-ago wrapping paper, it was time to stuff the stockings. Sure, she always saw to it we all got new toothbrushes and some nuts to shell. But more important, she personalized each sock in a special way.
One year I got a fried-egg sandwich (my favorite). For three years in a row, my eldest sister got the same old tired penny loafer (she finally burned it). Stockings stuffed and re-hung, it was time for Mom to get some sleep.
It was 2 in the morning, but try as she might, sleep simply wouldn’t come. She tossed and turned, remembering her own childhood Christmases when the Depression was written about in the newspaper but certainly not felt in the lovely home of a Southern gentleman. She remembered the Christmas she and Dad were snowed in without benefit of indoor plumbing.
Then she imagined the boundless joy of her three girls, and all thoughts of sleep disappeared. Grabbing her daddy’s school bell, she raced through the house chiming, “Christmas gift! Christmas gift!” and giggling us all out of bed. Wrapped in Grandmother’s quilts, we carefully emptied our stock treasures into our laps with squeals of delight. Mundane necessities transformed into precious gifts, plain ideas turned into cherished memories.
Last year, after inheriting a comfortable sum of money from a long-lost uncle, Mother felt honor bound to “make up for all those years I couldn’t buy you presents.”
No, I didn’t turn down the new shoes and nice clothes, but I also didn’t tell her she already gave me the best gifts of a lifetime when she made memories from her heart. I think I’ll tell her that this year.
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