December Remembrances

The month of December always takes me back to my hometown of Crystal City.


I remember walking up and down the sidewalks downtown and shopping and peering in the windows of the storefronts.


I remember Christmas plays where I played an angel in the nativity scene only because I had blonde hair and they thought at the time I guess that angels needed to have blonde hair!


I remember the Christmas lights decorating contests in neighborhoods.


I remember our hometown's homeless gentleman, Assi Alli, walking around near the Christmas tree lot where my Dad took us to buy a tree one year. I was afraid of that man in the ragged clothes and the American Flag bedecked hat, but as I got older I learned more and more what a kind soul that man was, and was saddened to learn years later that he died on Dec 26th, the day after Christmas.


I remember counting on getting new Nancy Drew books every year to read and add to my collection and the year my parents decided I was old enough to have a transistor radio and the year they decided I could wear makeup and gifted those items as well.


I remember a few years when Dad decided to help Mom with the Christmas shopping. When we were little, he gave me a little robot and a steam engine plant powered by sterno fuel and a remote controlled airplane. When I got to be a teenager I remember one year him buying me perfume...this was not long before he passed away.


I remember helping to cut branches from our juniper bushes and tying them to the fence in front of the house just before stringing Christmas lights over them.


I recall the year my mom, feeling festive, put a blue light bulb in the porch light, to go along with the other decorating and then wondering why the police car drove slowly by our house...


I remember some cold and rainy winters and some winters where I was still wearing shorts.


Christmas school holidays!


And then as the month draws to a close as it has now, I recall that my mom always said that all the world would be celebrating her birthday on the the 31st. Happy Birthday Mom, Happy New Year!