Christmas is my mother’s favorite time of the year. When we were kids she would start saving for our Christmas gifts before Valentine’s Day. Daddy was a welder who made just over minimum wage for most of his working life and it took most of that money to put food on the table clothes on our backs.
My mom washed and ironed clothes for people around Dora. She also sold her mouth watering amazing cakes. It was something she could do to earn extra money and be at home to keep an eye on us kids.
One of my favorite Christmases, she bought my sister a Sylvania transistor radio in a leather case, my brother got a Benjamin Franklin pellet gun and I got a Huffy bicycle.
Mom always managed to buy a few gifts for neighborhood kids whose families were less fortunate than we were. Our house was always decorated with a tree and lights as big as goose eggs. We also had bubble lights.
When I was drafted in 1971, it almost destroyed my mom. Vietnam was a hotspot and lots of boys from Alabama were being sent there. When it was time for me to leave, she asked, “ Do you think they will let you come home for Christmas?” I didn’t how to answer.
The first year I was stationed at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey and I got to come home for Christmas. The next year I was in Panama and coming was not an option.
She sent boxes of homemade candy and cards and letters. I call home on Christmas Eve and I could hear all the commotion in the background, but I could also hear the sadness in her voice.. She told me I sounded like I was a million miles away and at that moment I might as well have been.
A few years ago my mom fell in early December and broke her hip. On one visit to her hospital room a few days after the accident, I noticed she had been crying. I asked if she was in pain. She said her hip hurt some. She managed to choke out, “ I won’t be home for Christmas.”
I was crushed. That would have been her first Christmas ever away from home.
But over the next several days she improved and she got to come home on Christmas day. We sat around the living room opening gifts and eating turkey.
Spending Christmas at home was the only gift she had wanted. What better gift could anyone have asked for?
