Christmases Past...

We all have memories of Christmases past--childhood, teenage, young-poverty-stricken adults...  Perhaps I'm more aware of childhood recollections now that Mother is gone.  She was raised in an orphanage where few gifts were received by children.  I think Mother vicariously celebrated her losses from childhood through her efforts into birthday and Christmas celebrations for my brother and me.  When layaway plans at department stores were popular--do they even exist now?--Mother would begin her Christmas shopping in July.  Layaway not only provided for easier payment, but a storage place where nosy kids could not enter.

Yet with all Mother's pretense at secrecy, her "hints" when we asked her what are you getting me? were SUCH give-aways!!  We almost always knew the contents before unwrapping each package.  However, because she wanted to make these occasions so special, the gifts were almost always just what we'd asked for. 

One year I got a Mary Maher doll--so named after my favorite aunt.  I loved and played with that doll for several years until my brother--four years my junior--broke her fragile body into several unfix-able pieces.  On my age-14 Christmas I received six pieces of fabric--soon made into six new school outfits!  

The Christmas I was 10, my grandparents gave me a ring.  Last spring, going through my old jewelry box--which my grandparents also gave me--I found the ring--the stone no longer in its place--and took it to a jeweler.  Now, polished and with stone replaced, I wear it and think of lovely childhood memories. 

Don't you wish you could take a single childhood memory 

and blow it up into a bubble and live inside it forever?

                                     ―  Sarah Addison Allen