This year I really got into the Christmas spirit, big time!!
Only problem was that this meant I was terribly homesick as well.
Growing up my daddy was in the ministry and we moved around quite a bit. I have made four states and ten different cities home in my thirty-three years! And though I have probably lived in my home in Clinton now for the longest single period, I still feel restless. Especially this time of the year.
I guess that’s because I have always found my heart to be in several different places all at once.
My daddy, a Mississippi boy, found himself in seminary falling in love with and marrying a Missouri girl. This meant that our Christmas time as a family in subsequent years was spent divided between the two states. We always tried to see both sets of families this special time, no matter where we ourselves had made a home that year. This usually meant a road trip of at least a few hours if not several, and though we became good little travelers, I know this was hard on my parents who drove us through ice and snow up and down the highways and interstates. But I am thankful to them for doing it! I have so many lovely memories of this time of year spread out from the north to the south!
Mom grew up in a little town called Mountain Grove, but her parents had settled at The Lake of the Ozarks by the time I was born. “The Lake” is a wonderland of excitement during the holidays!! I can remember as a kid just about jumping up and down in the back seat when the scenery began to familiarize itself to me and the game of spotting Christmas lights through town would begin. We had usually driven all day and would arrive just in time to view the scenery in its wintry night splendor! Since this part of Missouri is a lake community much of the decoration centered around water sports. Santa dressed in swim trunks atop local businesses, the reindeer attending a pool parties and elves enjoying some time in the sun were all expected sights each year. But the best of them all came just as we crossed the bridge over the lake! If we strained in our seats to peer out the window and over the side of the bridge we could see the Big Man, himself, water skiing on the lake!! What fun!
Mom’s parents, Mamal and Daddy Duke, had a home high on a steep hill just outside of town. When we were younger the whole family tried to gather here for at least a few days. This meant a large family of aunts, uncles and lots of cousins!! Some of my best memories are of sleeping on pull out couches, or divans, as Mamal called them, with some of my precious cousins, giggling long into the night as the old clock in the living room chimed the night away. I can still hear its sound and funny as it may seem, I can recall some of those late night conversations we had as girls.
Dinner time was always a grand affair! Daddy Duke was head chef and his meals were and still are, legendary! Roasts, mashed potatoes, parsnips, Cornish hens!! “The Sisters” all helped him make it, in their matching aprons and the smells were intoxicating! But our favorites were always the me-maw rolls!! A labor of love well worth it for the taste!!
Christmas in Missouri almost always means lots of snow! Bundling up and trekking out into the cold was one of our favorite things and there are many memories we made as kids together in those woods.
If you carefully made your way down to the bottom of the steep hill the woods opened up to reveal the lake below. This time of year it was usually frozen on the edges and though not cold enough in this part of the country for it to freeze solid, this was always a source of excitement to me. It didn’t get cold enough in places where we lived like MS and TX for the water in lakes and such to freeze at all. I can remember standing at its edge with some of my older cousins and just marveling at it, wondering how far out we could walk before it would grow too thin. (Thankfully we never dared to see!)
We were always the entertainment at family gatherings such as these. It was always a big to do planning what we would sing and perform. I can still feel what it is like to be standing in the “red room” with Merrilea, Caroline, Minda and Coday, our matching sibling sweaters traded and turned into cousin sweaters, knowing that the parents and older cousins are just outside the door in the downstairs den waiting to hear what we have been practicing. Usually “Silent Night” or “Away in a Manger” but it seemed big business back then!!
And then the parents would get in on the act together as well. As Aunt Polly played the piano they all would sing and laugh. We loved to watch and listen!
Such simple things we took for granted then.
The sound of our parents all singing together in harmony.
The look on Mamal and Daddy Duke’s faces as they sang.
So many, many memories.
Christmas in Mississippi was usually a bit more warm. But I do remember one Christmas where we got almost all the way to Mimi and Dandy’s house only to discover that ice and snow had knocked out the little bridge we had to cross to get to their house. We were probably ten minutes away and had to take a detour that took maybe another half hour, but you better believe that felt like an eternity after driving so far and being so close!
Though Dad’s family was smaller, the excitement over cousins was just as great!
Much of our time was centered around the same activities, cooking, eating and singing.
Mimi and Dandy’s house had a little balcony from which we could perform our Christmas “pageants”. I was the oldest cousin on this side and therefore the director! Ha ha
We almost always did some version of the manger scene. I always gave myself the lead as Mary, Minda would play the angel, Scott, with his mascara painted on beard would be Joseph, a baby doll would play baby Jesus and Wes and Coday would be barn animals or shepherds! If Kate and Emily were there we would get them in on the action as well!
And then it was downstairs for songs and games. Mimi and her sister, our Aunt Evie, who I talk about a lot on here. Were big game players. Evie usually had a game of some sort she had copied from somewhere for us all to play.
Bed time brings to mind memories in that house too!
Pallets with all the cousins bundled together as we waited for Santa.
And I recall the clock in that house too.
Not the same high pitched chime as the one in Missouri, but rather a lower, “bong, bong” sound that rung out the night. I guess I must have spent countless hours trying to stay awake for Santa in both houses to remember the sounds each old clock made. It strikes me that this is a memory that Campbell may never make one like in this new era of digital clocks!
In both houses we opened gifts one at a time. I remember the first Christmas I spent w my husband’s family when we were still just dating. When it was time to open presents they tore into them all at once and though there was joy over seeing the person beside you open a gift it was all over in about two seconds! We always take turns, even if there is a large crowd, and make it last. Each gift is opened slowly and the joy of giving it is experienced greatly by the giver as well as the receiver. I think this is the way giving is supposed to be!
Wow! I am really reminiscing now!
But those two houses play in my mind almost as important a role in my memories as the people who filled them, As the years have gone by and grand parents sadly have passed so have those houses passed on to new families. Its such a strange thing to think I will never set foot in them again.
New memories have been made in new homes since then. And precious new family members have been added that I cant imagine life with out.
But no matter where we had Christmas, no matter what precious memories I made with family I loved and held so dear, there was always a longing in my heart.
I say always because I truly remember feeling it even as a child.
No matter what I asked Santa to bring, a baby doll was always on the list.
Mamal always got us a porcelain collector's doll but they were not really for playing with. We usually got our play dolls from Santa.
We asked for Cabbage Patch dolls one-year, care bears the next; I even remember one doll that I had to go back and Google just now to find out what it was called. It was a magic nursery baby and it came with a little card that youd dip in water to discover the gender of the baby. This deserves a YouTube search if you never had one or even if you did, so that you can walk down memory lane as I just did.
I think I was about 12 or 13 when I got my last doll for Christmas. I remember asking for one that looked as real as possible. I wanted a boy baby doll (probably the only boy doll i had ever recieved.)and I remember that I had decided to name him Michael.
Momma did her best to find a little doll that looked real and I remember her talking to me about how she thought that maybe this ought to be the last doll I ever got for Christmas.
I think she knew how much I longed, even then, to be a mother. She understood that no doll, even this really real looking one could fill that void. She knew it was time to put away those childish things, not many little girls at my age still played with dolls after all, and I think she was right to talk to me about this. But even now I can feel in my heart what I would feel that Christmas and for many more to come.
It would be almost 20 years of that longing.
Time is such a funny thing.
How it drains the hourglass taking with it so many things, and yet it also fill our lives each day with blessings.
Those sands pass quickly it seems in some ways and yet in some ways I feel that someone, somehow flipped the hourglass over.
This Christmas we spent Christmas Eve as a little family, just Cliff, Campbell and me at our home in Clinton as Cliff had to work. (if you go out to a store or restaurant or coffeeshop during the holidays that's open tip the people who are at work!) It it was a tiny bit sad to be away from the other loved ones on the eve of the big day.
It was also sort of nice to be just us. The Lord has blessed me this year with all that my heart has ever desired at Christmas or at any other time and I'm thankful for the time that I had with my very own Christmas wish made complete in the form of a husband and a preious baby.
As I wrote this blog I was struck by the thought that for Mary and for the Jewish people as whole, there had also been a time of great longing.
The Isrealites,too, had known many homes over the years, their memories made in times of change as the nation itself was growing and learning to trust God throughout the stories we read in the old testament.
Years of slavery followed by wandering in deserts, replaying the same scenarios of sin and sacrifice, and all the while longing for the messiah to come.
In fact it was in a distant place far away from loved ones that Mary found herself alone that night in a stable with just she and her new husband. I can not imagine what that must have felt like.
And yes, at that moment, when the hopes and dreams of all of God's people was finally made complete it, too, was in the form of a baby.
I do not attempt to draw comparisons here between myself and the holy family. I only mean to say that i think this Christmas, more than any other before, I understood.
I understand what it is to finally have the void filled.
I know better what it was that Mary must have pondered in her heart.
I can begin to comprehend on a small level the sacrifice that the Father made to let Him go.
To let Him come to us.
To be born a lowly birth to an imperfect, earthly mother.
And to become the grace that the Israelites had yearned for, for so long.
The hope of the whole world resting upon His tiny head.
I do not know what the years to come will hold for my little one, for our new family.
I can only trust that same Hope will lead us forward into the Love it came to create.
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