Holiday Rememberance

I response to a thrown gauntlet, to reinitiate the blog for the season, here is my rebuttal:  Humbug.

No, that is not the rebuttal, but just something to open up the blog.  The theme is remembrances of days of yore and thoughts regarding Christmas and the holiday season.  It can be seen that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  The world moves on all around us, regardless of how the flow pulls us along.  There are days of sitting on the side of the stream, watching things move by, while others seem to be pulled under by the current.  And everything in between.

Fondest holiday memories tend to involve the children and Grandpa's farm in West Virginia.  

The sheer joy of watching the kids tear through their presents,and start playing with the current toy, or reading the book, before realizing there were MORE presents under the tree.  The Fisher Price Little People house or the pink & purple tea set with service trolley just come to mind.  My daughter going around and around the house pushing that tea set, having a good old time.  Pulling my son's nose out of a book, to investigate something else.  Ru-ru's (Great-grandma Ruth) "Nuts and balls" for breakfast, warm and fresh from the oven (hungarian coffee cake, I think is what it is)

But then the memories of the farm float to the surface, with all the years of seeing cousins, aunts, and uncles and the grandparents farm.  Catching up on what is going on with our lives, and finding new activities to entertain ourselves when we were young.  The endless card games of WAR, sometimes with three people and two decks.  Every year, we'd reshare the story of how we were going to slide down the carpeted stairs...on a plastic snow sled.  The oldest cousin present acted as the "pusher" at the bottom, to help the rider to get around the wall, and into the next room.  Needless to say, it didn't work.  All the aunts come running in, wondering what the devil we were doing, and us going "what?  We shouldn't do this?"

Once the mealtime arrived, we had to eat in shifts.  Usually the grownups would eat first, and the uncles would then drift to the TV room to watch whatever sporting event was on (i.e. NapTime!), then the kids would get our shift at the tables, then go tromping around the hills, looking for cats in the barn, or cows up the holler.

As we grew up, and had children of our own, the "little kid table" was still the place to be, with the little bird mouths of toddlers, opening up for a new bite of food, and the story telling of the time a cousin was sent down the stairs in a sled.  The best year was having 4 generations snowed in to the farm.  There are two hills which can be treacherous in the weather, and two families had walked in from the hill, when their vehicles could not make it up the hills.  In the snow, two young cousins, playing in the snow, wearing some adults jacket like a top coat, snow balls tossed about.  As the evening progressed, grandpa went out to a hill in his truck.  Stopped and tried to go again in 4x4 drive.  But he decided it wasn't safe for anyone to leave, and nobody really was going to argue anyway.

Now picture: 25 people, 4 or 5 under 10 yrs old.  couches and beds and floor all being slept on.  Oh yes...one bathroom in the house at that time.  But we all remember this fondly of that holiday.

Now, the farm is being sold soon.  No new memories for this branch of the family.  Right now, some distant cousins are looking at buying it, for them to make new holiday memories.  And for us to remember, and to find new sources to create common memories, to keep quilting the common blanket, which wraps us in its warmth.

Okay.

That's it.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone !