On Christmas

As a child, I remember Christmas being my favorite day of the year. Dad and I would carefully shop for everyone in the family, and I loved running around the mall, picking out gifts based on what each of them enjoyed. I remember getting to do the majority of the wrapping for him, even though to my mother's chagrin, I was definitely far from good at it. We'd pile everyone's gifts into the truck, and most years, make the 30ish minute drive through snowy slush that meant Grandma and Grandpa's yard would be the perfect place for snowmen and snow angels. I always looked forward to the homemade haluski and kolachi, and watching grandma skewer pineapple rings onto the ham and baste it with the juice and some brown sugar. I swear that's where my dad and I both got our love of Hawaiian pizza.

When my cousin and I were old enough, we got put on dish duty so Grandma could finally get a well-deserved break, and instead of pouring out the glasses, I would sneak sips of the leftover wine while the adults were busy in the front room keeping the younger kids from tearing into presents instead of following tradition and sorting them out by name first. There will never be another room that screams Christmas as much as that room did every year until just before my grandfather died. On December 6, 16 years ago, as I was organizing my high school choir group to come sing him Christmas carols at his bedside in ICU, I got the call that destroyed me. All I could think of were all the Christmases when I'd come running through that pocket door, across the kitchen, and straight into his arms for the best bear hug ever. Even after he finally got confined to a wheelchair. All the years Dad would stop at McDonald's for a chocolate milkshake first, just to give Grandpa when we got there. The Thanksgiving a week prior, when Grandpa's eyesight had disintegrated so badly he couldn't see the webcam to wish my dad a merry Christmas in China, and we all got choked up, realizing it was probably the last time we'd ever hear him say it.

Tonight, my oldest child's school choir sang Where Are You Christmas? and I'm not ashamed to admit that right there beside my ex husband, I had to stop singing because I remembered that being the only Christmas song left that I could sing that year.

This year is the first Christmas I'm aware of my mother's passing. Technically she'll have been gone a year on the 18th.

If it's even possible, she loved Christmas more than I ever possibly could. Her tree always looked like it would make Martha Stewart jealous. Of all the awful childhood memories I have, there are a few Christmases that were made incredible because of my mother.

The first one I can think of is the year she realized I had begun to stop believing. My letter to Santa that year said that if he really existed, he could bring my Great Grandma back to celebrate with us, since she hadn't been alive for enough of my life for me to remember her. My mother was so dedicated to me having that magic in my life, she worked with my uncle, my grandfather, and my great grandfather, to not only draft a very convincing letter, but also an absolutely incredible photo album that even had pictures of my grandmother that showed that she and I were genetic twins. When my great grandfather (as a side effect of the senility of old age) ruined the surprise by asking her when he could have the originals back, I found her in the kitchen crying while she washed the dishes. I legitimately didn't realize until I wrote this that maybe she worked so hard to make Christmas magical because she'd had so few magical Christmases herself, and maybe part of what finally broke her was the thought that she'd completely failed to give me better than what she'd ever gotten. She may have failed at a lot of things, but I don't remember her EVER failing at Christmas.

The next Christmas memory I have is the one that caused us to have a hamster re-creation of The Great Escape. Mom and my aunt co-ordinated us leaving our house with my aunt arriving there with my new hamster. Awaiting me at my great-grandpa's were the wrapped empty boxes for the cage and tubes, and a hamster ball. At first, I was shattered because all the boxes were empty, and I thought everyone was just playing a cruel joke on me. Then they all managed to finally explain that my aunt had just dropped the hamster off in my bedroom, and put the cage and pieces together there for me. That hamster led to a second hamster, which led to several dozen so quickly we ended up having to donate a TON to the high school for biology, and we found out later that someone at the school left the cage open. We also ended up with at least one loose in the house, never to be seen again.

The next Christmas memory I have with her was the year she got me a jungle green Nintendo 64, complete with Donkey Kong. My stepdad was on a business trip to Florida, and it was just the two of us. Even though she had to work the next morning, we stayed up all night, taking turns trying to beat the armadillo boss. We were both so happy to realize the arcade version was built in, and made a point of making sure my aunt got to play it, since it was always her favorite game.

The only other Christmas I can remember, before things started to fall apart, was the year I asked for a GameCube. A day or two after Christmas, I found a paper bag behind the couch that said GameCube on it, and I asked if it meant she'd gotten it from a thrift store. She almost started crying when she saw the bag in my hand, but managed to say yes. I shook my head and told her I wouldn't have cared if she'd just handed it to me in the bag, there was no shame in buying it used, and I appreciated the fact that she'd even put so much time and effort into getting me one at all.

To this day, I still have that same GameCube. I still have the photos from that album. I still have the GameBoy Color and Pokémon Red she got me for my birthday when I was 11 or 12.

No matter how I've felt or what my circumstances, I have always made a point of carrying on the tradition of making sure that my children never go without at Christmas. Years ago, I started shopping in October, finished a week or two into November, and then got laid off for six weeks starting the day before Thanksgiving. I've carried on that shopping tradition ever since. To be sitting five years later beside the man who bailed me out financially the year after our divorce, singing Christmas carols and sharing Christmas stories from our childhood, with one child sitting at our feet singing along and the other on stage with the choir, carrying on the gift passed down to me by my mother's mother, I felt so blessed I almost couldn't contain it. As the kids sang The Nutcracker, I remembered Mom taking me backstage at Packard Music Hall just before the show started, where her friend showed me his best stagehand secrets, and my love for set construction was born. I pictured her as a little girl, on pointe in a tutu, spinning in circles to the ballet. I swear I even heard her voice singing in my ear. No matter how old I get, no matter what I've been through the rest of the year, even though there's one carol in particular I'd rather never hear again as long as I Iive, I will always love Christmas.