Yesterday
&
amp; Today
By the time festivities ended that year, Mom taught me more
about the meaning of Christmas than either of us imagined. It was
that one holiday experience, when I was age 7, when the old adage
about all good things coming to she who waits, truly hit home.
Yesterday & Today
By the time festivities ended that year, Mom taught me more about the meaning of Christmas than either of us imagined. It was that one holiday experience, when I was age 7, when the old adage about all good things coming to she who waits, truly hit home.
Christmas is nearly upon us, bringing back both fond and wistful recollections of past times with loved ones. All the principals in my most enduring Christmas memory are gone now: Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa. We lived almost kitty-corner from each other at Fifth and Dowdy streets. We always kept the same holiday pattern, Thanksgiving was held at the grandparents’, and Christmas was at our place.
It was the first week of December 1950. As always, on the first Sunday in Advent after church, we’d gone to a sales lot south of Gilroy to purchase, drag home and set up the tree. Before long it was hanging with tinsel and draped with the old colored light set, the one with frayed fabric-covered cords dating back to Mom’s girlhood.
For awhile in the 1950s, it was fashionable to have a decorator tree stylishly done in one uniform color. Either the tree was heavily “snow blown” in white, pink or pale blue plastic foam, or it was hung with the same color ornaments. That year Mom chose the latter. Schiaparelli’s new “Shocking Pink” was the fashion color that year and she’d found several boxes of ornaments in the brilliant hue. We hung the tiny ones, like rosy ping-pong balls, near the top branches and medium ones in the center. The biggest, like silvered-ruby grapefruits, dangled from the lowest limbs, just right for the cat, who took a swipe each time he sauntered by.
Nightly as soon as it grew dark, our tree lights were turned on, spreading a pink glow through the front window of our boxy little Dowdy Street home.
For the first time since the war had ended, our 1950 Christmas was going to be ritzy. Dad was finally making a profit from his Studebaker business. Every few days Mom came back from San Jose shopping trips laden with big bags, quickly whisked in the front door and rushed to the back bedroom closet. Afternoons, when I returned home from school, I’d notice more freshly wrapped gifts stacked beneath the tree, most labeled with my name. After dinner each evening it was a pleasure to sit in the living room basking in the potential Christmas gifts to come.
But when you’re only 7, the temptation is overwhelming. First I began to count my presents. Then I lined them all up, just to gloat. One afternoon I clamored, “Pleeze, Mom, can’t I open just ONE gift?” As the entreaties grew, Mom sternly repeated that every opened gift meant less fun and anticipation when Christmas finally arrived.
At last, she gave in to my persistent nattering. “Oh, all right, but just one,” she admonished. “And don’t tell your father, he’ll be livid.”
The floodgates were opened. For the ensuing two weeks, each afternoon I’d plead to open “just one more.” Dad issued orders that this would stop, but Mom was a softy. I timed the cajoling to begin when she entered the kitchen to prepare dinner, hoping the distraction would offer me an easy “yes.” One evening, I was unwrapping a gift just as Dad walked in from work. Sternly, he looked at Mom and asked, “You’ve let her open ANOTHER one?” From the kitchen Mom calmly answered, “She’s learning a valuable lesson.”
In the eyes of a 7-year-old, even with 10 days, then a week, then three days to go, the gift supply seemed endless. No matter how many I opened, I figured, more would appear under that tree by Christmas.
But by the time Christmas Eve arrived, there was exactly one package with my name on it left under the tree.
Grandma and Grandpa came over, we had dinner, and then gathered in the living room. As the gifts were being distributed, the one, final, small box was placed in my lap. Persuading myself that big things sometimes come in wrapped in small boxes, I tore it open. Inside was a pair of flannel pajamas.
In shock, unable to grasp the finality of the moment, I gazed around at the parents and grandparents. Seemingly unaware of my distress, they were visiting, telling jokes and enjoying the evening. As reality dawned on how I’d spoiled my own Christmas, I began to sob. But abundant waves of sympathy were not forthcoming.
“I’m sorry, I tried to warn you, but you kept clamoring all last week to open just one more,” Mom remarked. In her softer way Grandma patted my head. “Your Mom was just letting you learn a lesson. You won’t do it again now, will you?”
It was evident further whimpering would get me nowhere. Anticipation being half the fun of Christmas, that year I really aced myself out of it. Even today, the memory of that 1950 Christmas doesn’t evoke fun thoughts.
Years later, when it was their turn to wheedle at me in the same fashion, I told my own kids about what happened and reminded them what my own Mom had told me, that all good things come to she who waits.
