Day Nine

When I was in the 8th grade and my time as a boy scout was in its death throes I went to “snow camp” at the boy scout camp on mt Lemon in Tucson AZ. I am told that the scout camp there is actually a great camp and that boys come from all over in the summer to attend. But this wasn’t the summer this was December and it was cold and sleeping on the ground in the snow was not something that growing up in AZ had exposed me to . But I went, and was cold. I also learned about “being prepared” using a frozen banana that weekend, but that is another story.

So there I was: cold, in the snow, and sleeping outside the week before Christmas and I thought I had it bad. It is all about perspective. The night I came back home someone broke into our house in the middle of the night, came in through my bedroom, and was in my Mom’s room when she woke up and started screaming and scared him off. Jenni woke up from the screaming, but I slept through the whole thing. The cops came out, turned on all the lights, investigated everything and I slept through the whole thing.

Where the hell am I going with this? Needless to say we were feeling a little uneasy in our home after that. The next day instead of driving all over town in search of a perfect tree, or fun presents, we went in search of mace.
Christmas eve we went to the family service at the Unitarian church, which traditionally consisted of Christmas carols on request, a reading of ‘a child's Christmas in wales’, (again growing up in AZ made this whole story seem so un-relevant to me), and candles and a discussion about being the light of the world. We drove up to the foothills to have Christmas eve dinner with the Reed family. And then we were supposed to drive back down into the city to see Sara dance at Christmas eve service at first christian church. While we were at Christmas eve dinner Julie Reed invited us to stay the night Christmas eve and have Christmas day with her family. Mom had an argument that we would have to go get all the presents from our house and we were not really ready, but in the end it was decided we would stay.

I slept through the Christmas eve service at first christian, (really how many Christmas eve services does one family need? I never questioned it growing up but looking back it seems we went from one to the next to the next). Because of my nap I was wide awake that night when we were supposed to be asleep. Jenni and Amy Reed and I were listening to Mom and Julie and Bill doing the last minute Christmas wrapping. That year Mom gave Jenni the wedding doll that her mother had given her when she was a child. The doll’s name is Mary and had been in a trunk wrapped in plastic for years. We could hear Julie saying “that looks a mess Janice,” and Mom saying “I’ll just fluff the skirt it will be fine”. Julie said “Aren’t your kids traumatized enough without that scary thing waiting for them under the tree, where is the iron I can fix it.” And Mom “can you iron 20 year old satin?”

There was also a discussion about whether they should open the package my dad had sent to see if it needed batteries or not. In the end it was not opened because there were no batteries in the house if it did need batteries.
But perhaps the best conversation of all was how does one actually wrap a lump of coal. Do you put it in a box? Stick it in a sandwich bag and shove it in the stocking? Throw it at the recipient? Evidently Jeff Reed had found his Christmas gift in his parents closet and had worn it to school thinking he would not be found out, and of course he was.

Again, not the traditional Christmas, but a good one. Evidence that although my Mom was an only child and living far away from her actual biological family, she found extended family wherever she was that loved her and her family.