The upstairs bedroom had some wooden steps to the dining room. The living room was closed off during Christmas because there was no heat in the room, so all six of the dining room chairs where claimed by a member of the family by putting their Christmas stocking on it. She couldn't wait till morning so she snuck through the boys' rooms and down the steep stairs afraid at any moment she'd fall down the steps. In the dark, she found her chair and saw the beautiful black hair baby doll sitting there. She couldn't pick her up but she couldn't help but touch her face. She had a hard time going back to sleep. In the early morning, the excited siblings woke and yelled down to their parents. Everyone rushed down to the dining room, but the magic of Christmas was gone for her. She couldn't manufacture the excitement she had felt hours earlier.
She wanted nothing more for Christmas than an eye-lash curler and her brother was so excited that he had enough money to purchase exactly what she had wanted. But she couldn't wait, and she had money burning in her pocket. She bought her own eye-lash curler. She does remember the lecture she received from her mother on how her selfishness had totally destroyed her brother's Christmas.
When she thought about Christmas she got tears in her eyes, "Everyone is dead," she said quietly and then she smiled big. "When I was a teenager I got a bike for Christmas and the snow had melted that day and I got to ride it all day." She felt so free. Even to this day, when the snow melts she remembers that bike!
His brother got a puppy Christmas Eve night and they put it into the basement because it was barking so much. Somehow in the middle of the night he got out and into the presents under the tree and tore off all the ribbons and especially the name tags. Everyone got to open presents, but they never knew who it belonged to until it was opened and then they had the privilege of giving it to the person it belonged too.
On their second Christmas, together she had decided to stay with her family for Christmas and he had decided to go spend the Christmas with his family, because it was believed his mother wouldn't have another Christmas. On Christmas Eve day she couldn't stop crying, so she got in her parent's car and drove to Kalispell in the snow on Christmas Day. His mother had bought her a nut-cracker, at the secondhand store, which was so special because she had remembered she loved everything nut-cracker. It turned out to be his mother's last Christmas and the memory still blesses her today.
I thought for sure if I asked two grade school kids about Christmas they would remember some toy they had received, but instead he said he remembered going to a beach with the rest of his cousins and playing in the ocean. She said she remembered last year her father's eyes got really big when he opened his gift from her. "He really liked it." She had moved from getting a gift to giving the gift as the best memory.
Most can mention food. She said they have a feast at Christmas-twice baked potatoes, crab, prime rib, shrimp. He only mentioned one word-Lefse. Her mother's potato soup. The whole family and all the neighbors would come over for her mother's potato soup. She had tears in her eyes. "We have never done it since."
It was a GI Joe. He found him under the tree from Santa. "I treated it like Gold." The second memory was finally making it to being Joseph in the Christmas play. You had to spend your time first being a sheep, then a shepherd, then he made it to being a wise man. But the big event was finally becoming Joseph.
She remembers the Hopp Hall Christmas parties. The whole southeast community showing up, all the children in the program, Santa coming and giving presents with paper sacks full of goodies. The community party and the sense of community lost in time.
