Christmas With the Family - Revisited

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been four years since I started this blog. Instead of writing new posts, I thought that I would go back and repost some of my favorites. This post is from December 26, 2010 and is about Christmas in my family. Whether you’ve read it before or not, I hope you enjoy it.

I’m sitting in my living room, the football game on the television and the snow piling up outside. The forecast is calling for 15 – 20 inches of snow today and tomorrow! Yesterday was Christmas and I got to spend the afternoon with most of my family (those who weren’t there were absolutely missed). We talked, we ate and we laughed. As usual, we laughed a lot, especially talking about things from growing up. And of course, we talked about Christmas. 

My childhood Christmases, at least as far as I remember, were pretty great. Christmas for us was not all about Santa and presents, partly because of our financial situation. With such a large family we didn’t get a lot for Christmas, yet Christmas was still awesome. Don’t get me wrong, we still did the Santa thing. We made our list for Santa, went and saw him at the mall, and did our best to behave because “He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sakes!” We got presents, just most years not too many. One of my all-time favorites was Rockem Sockem Robots. I loved that game and I especially liked playing my brothers and knocking their block off! I’m sure they’d say they let me beat them, but we know better, don’t we?

But the biggest thing about Christmas was that my parents made it more about the birth of Jesus. They taught us about the reason for the season and we talked about it. We also had a Nativity scene, or manger, and that became the focus on Christmas Eve. One of the discussion topics yesterday was our Christmas Eve tradition. After dinner, we’d turn out the lights, light some candles, take some of the figures out of the manger and we’d parade around the house singing Christmas songs like “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger”. The older ones got to carry the candles, while us younger ones got to carry one of the manger figures. Oh, and if we weren’t really singing, Dad let us know to pick it up a bit.

Some people might look at this and think we were nuts, but it’s one of those things that I still remember decades later. And I remember it in a positive way, with happy feelings and thoughts. I don’t know if other families did this, too, but when I think of Christmas as a kid, I definitely think of this. The weird thing about it is I don’t remember when we stopped doing it, other than when we moved from my childhood home when I was in high school.

Whatever your holiday traditions, I hope you enjoyed time with friends, family and loved ones, and had time to reminisce and laugh. Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to read my posts this year. Happy New Year!

A Little Bit of Room

My wife and I have been watching a lot of those shows on HGTV where people are either buying a house or fixing up a house. Sometimes the people are selling their current home and buying a new home. I especially like the episodes where they’re fixing up an older house, where they gut it down to the studs and the subflooring, and then redo it all up to so-called modern standards. That’s a talent that I definitely do not have.

However, there is one thing that really annoys me as I watch these shows. Most times, there is a couple with one or two kids, and every once in a while, there are three kids. I guess that is the typical family today and I fit into that category with my own. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s the way the people have to have a monster home, and every kid has to have their own bedroom and bathroom. Okay, so I exaggerate slightly about each kid having their own bathroom, but only a little. Many people say they absolutely need 3000+ square feet, at least three bathrooms, a fully finished basement, and the obligatory “open concept” main floor.

Really? There are only four people in most of these families and they must have these ridiculous sized houses. At one time, when all nine kids were still living at home, we had about 1000 square feet, three bedrooms, one bathroom (that is NOT a misprint) and no basement, finished or unfinished. Was it a bit crowded? Yes, it was. Did we need more room? Yes, we did, but that didn’t come for a few years, and until the three older ones were out of the house. How did we do it? We just did, just like a lot of other families did back then.

We shared bedrooms. Mom and Dad had theirs; another bedroom had two sets of bunk beds and another bed in the middle for the five oldest boys; and the third bedroom had two double beds, one for me and my younger brother and one for the two girls. So not only did we share bedrooms, we shared beds. Like I said, we made it work, we had no other choice really. But, it wasn’t just that we gritted our teeth and toughed it out, we actually didn’t mind it. At least I didn’t.

There was something about lying in bed, talking, laughing, and telling stories that I wouldn’t have traded for anything, even my own room. It built a great friendship between my younger brother and me, and with my sister who is a year older than me (the “Three Little Ones”). If we had each had our own room, I don’t think we would have had that. And I don’t think I would have learned to get along with others as well either, because being together in such tight quarters teaches you some great life lessons – sharing, respecting each other and each other’s space, working out a conflict, and compromise. It’s best to learn those at home while younger than learn them the hard way later in life.

I still watch those HGTV shows, even if they do annoy me at times. The people that think they’re doing their family a favor by buying huge houses where each person gets their own wing of the house will find out some day that they missed something. It wasn’t space, nor was it amenities, but something far more important; time together in the same room.

No School

As September turns to October and summer slips away, something just doesn’t feel right. The baseball season is winding down, football season has kicked off, and hockey training camps and preseason games are underway. The leaves are starting to change colors, the days are getting shorter and there’s no need for an air conditioner anymore. Then I see one of those silly commercials about who is happier about going back to school, the parents or the kids, and I know what’s making feel out of sort. School is back in session, but not in my house.

For the first time in about seventeen years, I don’t have a child in a public school. That feels very strange, almost disorienting, because from September to June, the schedule always revolved around the kids and their schedule. My wife and I worked our appointments, errands, and dates around the kids’ schedules that were defined mostly by school. We had to pick them up from their after school activities, run to the store to get supplies for a project (usually the day before it was due and ten minutes before the store closed), and make sure we didn’t stay out past 9:00 on a weeknight during school. We don’t have to do that anymore.

I saw the few young neighborhood kids waiting for the bus the first day of school. They were excited, they were smiling, and they were happy, probably looking forward to learning a whole lot of stuff and meeting new kids. I loved it, because whether it was their first year of their third, they still liked school. Their optimism and joy hadn’t been snuffed out yet. If only they could stay that way forever.

I thought back to my first day of school and how excited I was to be going. I was moving up to the “big” kid level, going to the place my older brothers and sisters had gone. I didn’t go to kindergarten, so Elementary school was a big step for me. We lived close enough to the school that we didn’t take the bus; we were Walkers, as they called the kids who didn’t take the bus. I don’t really remember if Mom walked us to school on the first day, or if she drove us, but I do remember that first day.

Mom was holding my hand as she walked me to the classroom. I was nervous, excited, and a little scared because the school was a lot bigger than I thought. As a matter of fact, I liked the look of it from the outside better than the inside. When we got to the classroom, I suddenly realized I was going to be here at school all day, with all these strange people, WITHOUT MOM! Now I was really scared. I decided that, no thank you, I don’t want to be here and refused to go in to the room. I started crying, probably thinking that would get me off the hook, but Mom and this “Miss Zona” lady were doing their best to calm me down and get me into that room.

Unfortunately for them, nothing was working. That is until I heard the sweetest words ever. “At snack time you can have milk and peanut butter cookies,” Miss Zona said. Wait. What? Peanut butter cookies if I go into the room and stay for a while? And some milk to go with it? I let go of Mom’s hand, turned off the water works, and gave her the brush off. Why hadn’t they told me this earlier? We could have avoided the little misunderstanding at the door. I went into the classroom, looking forward to snack time, figuring I could hold out until then. The amazing part of all this was that I actually enjoyed the whole day, not just snack time, and Miss Zona turned out to be an awesome teacher, having just the right balance of motherly kindness and teacherly sternness.

I’m still getting used to not being involved with school, teachers, homework, projects, plays, and chorus. I don’t have to make sure the kids are getting enough sleep and eating something before rushing off to school. It’s wonderful in many ways, but there’s one thing that’s nagging me: What am I going to do with all this extra time?