The season
t’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas everywhere you go.”
And it certainly is. I love Christmas lights. I love the brightness and the cheerfulness of the landscape when it is covered in Christmas lights. I love the brilliance of a roof covered in lights. It just makes me happy.
I often wonder why some people don’t have any Christmas decorations up ... not even a big red bow or a wreath hanging on the door. I guess some people just don’t like decorating. Maybe their religion frowns on it. I can’t imagine, but each to their own. I am not in their category.
We’ve had four kids ... almost little stair steps. I used to tell people I was pregnant for ten years, from 1973 to 1983. It surely felt that way sometimes, and I loved it. I never felt better or more alive than when a baby was a part of me, still growing, and would someday become a member of the family.
Heather is our first. She was a perfect little doll. One of the nurses in the hospital liked to carry her around and show her off to people. She told me she was the most perfectly beautiful baby she’d ever seen. I thought so, too.
On her first Christmas, she was around six months old and we had tornado watches and warnings out. I was uneasy. Our good friends, Holli and Tim, came over to spend the evening with us. It rained “cats and dogs” as the old saying goes. Our road was flooded at the twin lakes for a while. We came through it unscathed, thank goodness.
Through the years, Santa has brought her a wooden little red wagon which she still has, a handmade dollhouse her father created, an adopted Cabbage Patch doll with the name of Heather, Strawberry Shortcake dolls, along with books ... always books.
Heath is our second child. He was such a perfect little angel ... dark curls and huge brown eyes. He still has the dark curls and huge brown eyes. He was my 30th birthday present and his siblings have always said he is my favorite. I don’t have favorites. I have enough love to go around to all four equally.
Through the years, Heath got every little Hotwheel known to man along with a Big Wheel he rode like a crazy kid down our driveway. He also wanted a Castle Grey Skull from the Masters of the Universe collection. Although hard to find, Santa managed. He got all kinds of Nintendo stuff, but once he conquered it, he’d rather be outside.
Hayden is our third child. He was just the cutest little baby ... precious in so many ways and the only really good thing that came out of Bill and I moving the family to Gatlinburg for a short while. That’s another story, but Hayden made it beautiful.
He always liked miniature things and he was so careful to take care of them. Santa brought him a little bitty television set and he still has it in the original box with that tiny square of cellophane over the picture. He, like his brother, got all kind of electronics and that Big Wheel he drove like a maniac down our driveway. He always wanted sports stuff like soccer balls, gloves and such. He used to drive me nuts kicking a soccer ball against the side of the house! He also would stand in the side yard (a swimming pool is there now) and hit rocks into the pasture with a broom stick or whiffle bat.
Hartwell is our fourth and last child. Oh, how adorable he was! He’d have some of the most precious expressions on his face. He liked to play in buckets. I have this great picture of him in a five gallon one. He always wanted GI Joes for Christmas, but I remember when the Buddy dolls came out. I do believe he still has it somewhere. Buddy went everywhere with him for a good while. He showed acting talent very early and at 5 years old was doing a killer impression of Peewee Herman. He liked to write plays so Santa kept him in notebooks and pens. His imagination is still vibrant to this day.
When 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to the New York Sun editor Francis P. Church in 1897 to ask if Santa Claus was real, Church took the opportunity to offer his final declaration on the matter. “Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus ... Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
I believe.