Today's blog is a new part of my autobiography, Windsong. 圣诞快乐。

Christmas in California

165a    Every once in a while, as I think back on my life (this time on Christmas Eve, 2013) I remember a story I want to modify in Windsong.  So, I open the document and search for it, to find it doesn’t exist!  That is the case with this story.  I could have sworn I was in my autobiography, but a search on “Nancy,” “Christmas,” and “Betty” convinced me this story has never been written down before.

165b    When we arrived in California, we needed a place to stay and Christmas was a few days away.  We pulled up at my oldest sister’s house, where she lived with her husband, Pete and son(s?), we all piled out of the car.  The nice house (as I recall) had a large living room (today it might be called a family room or even an enclosed back porch) and a smaller “front room” for a formal living room.  There seemed to be plenty of room in the house for the crowd, mom, dad, me and my four younger siblings, and Betty and Pete and their boys.  Two of my older siblings were there aside from Betty.  Robert would soon graduate from high school and Ellen was not yet married.  Richard, Jr., may have been gone and in the Navy by that time.  So, it may have been our first of four (instead of three) family reunions we’ve had with all nine siblings since the oldest first left home.

165c    Mom, especially, always worked very hard to make Christmas special and this year would be no exception.  Even in her old age, mom would try to send a gift to every child, grandchild (23 of them, by the time she died), and great grandchild (23).  This year (December 1963) really illustrates how I remember Christmas very well. 

165d    Somewhere along the line, mom and dad took the station wagon to the grocery store.  When I started writing Windsong I never thought I’d have to describe what a station wagon is, or a typewriter for that matter.  Maybe in the future, they won’t have grocery stores!  Station wagons, large cars that have been replaced by SUVs today, had a large open area in the back.  The government essentially outlawed the production of station wagons in the 1980s by requiring “cars” to get better gas mileage.  So, as is typical of poorly managed laws, everyone who might drive a low profile (and so better gas mileage) station wagon today drives a larger, taller SUV that consumes even more gas.  In the mid-2000s, I noticed a parking lot full of almost exclusively SUVs in Atlanta, and thought, “Most of these should be station wagons.”

165e    My point?  You could get a lot of stuff in the back of a station wagon.  Mom and dad went to grocery store to stock up on food before the holiday.  They came back with the wagon stuffed to the gills with groceries.  Mom said, “The checker was really surprised with the bill came to $77.77.  With inflation, that’s probably nearly $500 of groceries in today’s money (RMB 3000, in 2013).  “Don’t get into the bags!” mom warned.  She didn’t want us high-grading the groceries and pulling out any Christmas gifts. 

165f     Christmas morning came quietly and I was one of the first, but not the first, awake.  I snuck into the living room to take a peak until the tiny desk top Christmas tree.  “We don’t have time or money to get a bigger one,” mom had said on Christmas Eve.  Santa had left a few presents under the tree, but I instantly knew something was wrong.  This could not be a Christmas tree my mother set up.  It had far too many presents under it.  I knew we would have to have breakfast before unwrapping presents, one of many standard family rules!  So, I waited.  Soon, Mark and D. J. wandered in and instantly assumed this could not by all the presents.  Mom had awakened and insisted, “We haven’t had time to get more presents.  That’s all there is this year.  You will just have to be satisfied with it.  My younger siblings complained loudly, but I already knew mom’s secret.

165g    I was probably eating breakfast by the time Nancy woke up.  I do remember sitting on a bar stool in the kitchen, watching my younger siblings wander in in the other room and react to the tiny tree.  We all knew dad liked to get the largest tree possible, and I had not bought into this “tiny tree” idea from the first moment.  “Nancy [my youngest sister] was perfectly happy with the tiny tree” and 8-10 presents mom would often say later.  But dad had done his California-Christmas usual.

166g    Dad had gone out late on Christmas Eve and found the largest tree he could find on sale the night before Christmas.  I had already peaked into the back room and seen the gigantic tree.  “I had to cut off five feet (1.5 m) to get it in the house,” dad would later say.  I’d always been impressed by my parent’s Christmases, but this time they outdid themselves.  The tree was probably 8 feet across at the base with 10 to 12 feet in diameter of presents, the biggest Christmas I ever remember.  We would spend hours opening presents after breakfast, to the great enjoyment of all.

166h    My point? That, to me, was Christmas: A large family and children waking up on Christmas morning, a few pranks like the tiny tree, mom and dad waking up and saying, “Breakfast before presents,” doing their best to surprise us delighted children, unwrapping gifts that seemed to never end, even if I always received handkerchiefs and socks aside from toys, and mom and dad sitting back enjoying the fruits of their labors.  Mom would have spent the night before wrapping presents and dad helped with various chores.  After the presents were unwrapped, gathering a mound of wrapping paper, and so on.  Mom always made sure each child had a gift for each brother or sister, a task in itself for a family of 11, including my parents and their nine children was huge. 

166i     Now, you can see why I’ve never felt like my children never really experienced the spirit of Christmas that I did as a child.  With only two or three children at home at Christmas (Gail and I had two, Sheila and Steve had three, but our five never spent Christmas together), it was just not the same.  But life changes.  I’m sure there are people my age in China longing for the large Spring Festival celebrations they remember in light of today’s “one child” families.  Large families experience things small families can never realize.  Such is life.  I don’t worry about it.  But I do miss those times and days. 

166j     Lately, Sheila and I have begun to emphasize to our children, “If you guys want to see us, you are going to have to do the traveling.”  Unfortunately, Gail died at a young age of cancer, so she does get a Christmas experience at all anymore.  But as we age, we are very slowly becoming less able to drive across the country and either chose or can’t afford to fly.  Our Christmas this year (2013) is almost non-existent, without any children or grandchildren near.  But we are not sad.  We still enjoy the season, and Sheila’s doing some traveling even if not on Christmas day itself. 

166k    “Don’t your children come see you?” my Chinese friends often ask.  I end up explaining costs and distances, but some of them just don’t like to travel.  If we see them at all it has been at their homes.  Sad, perhaps, but like in China, that’s a side effect of modern life and mobile extended families.  Even my nine siblings all live in different US states. 

165l     “You can’t go back,” one friend used to tell me of the past.  True.  Nevertheless, I can go forward.  That’s my main goal in life . . . going forward and enjoying the ride.