10:20 am Villa 36/Ajijc
I've already done my writing in my spiral this morning but this idea keeps coming up so I better write it down. I woke up a little before 6am and failed to get back to sleep, although I tried. As I lay there, memories of Christmases past kept floating up and I got the idea to write my own Christmas evolution, how I ended up quitting Christmas and how that has affected me.
Today is my 64th Christmas and I've only celebrated a portion of them. My parents became Jehovah's Witnesses when I was 12 and that 12th Christmas was my last for quite some time. But I'm getting ahead of myself and really should start at the beginning. Or at least the beginning I can remember.
1958. I was 5 years old when my mother married Richard Van Roekel and he became my step-father. I didn't meet him until a few months after they were married but I loved him instantly. We lived in Southern California (not sure of the city) and we had an apartment. I remember the Christmas tree there as my first one and it was magnificent! The lights were magical and it was covered in silver icicles, the kind no one uses anymore. Photos were taken in front of the tree but I only remember mom and dad in their individual photos but I must have been in one, too. Gerald didn't live with us that first holiday, not sure when he was retrieved from Auntie Jan and brought down from Baker but I do remember resenting him somewhat. Selfish little thing that I was, I enjoyed the attention of being the only child after being shuffled around with so many cousins for the years before that.
After that first Christmas, I didn't have another really memorable one until we moved into our big house on Geneva Lane in Garden Grove. Mom bought a fake tree made of silver tinsel and it had a light with a round rainbow that rotated and made the tree turn different colors. I think the only decorations were blue bulbs. It was weirdly pretty and we all like it. That tree lasted for the two years we lived in that house.
I remember those two Christmases well. The first one there in 1962, I woke up with big red circle marks on the inside of my knees. Why I remember that, I don't know. I had asked for a typewriter but got a camera instead, something I had not asked for and didn't know I wanted. I loved that thing! I also got a watch with a heart-shaped face. I still have the watch but it hasn't worked in almost 50 years. Later that day, we drove to relatives and had more Christmas. Auntie Colleen gave me a little doll that I just loved, her face was so beautiful. The next year, 1963, President Kennedy had just been shot the month before but we still managed to have Christmas. I had asked for a typewriter again but got a transistor radio that I loved since the Beatles had just come onto the scene. Also, I believe that's the year Barbie showed up. I only ever had the one.
The summer of 1964, we upped stakes and moved to Baker, Oregon, a move that was devastating to me in so many ways. I started 6th grade at Brooklyn Elementary just after Labor Day and sometime in October, the Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on our door while I was at school and when I arrived home, Mom was all excited about studying the Bible with those fools ... I mean, those people ... again. I say again, because she had been hooked into them a few years before for a while, before we moved into the house on Geneva Lane. Maybe that's why I don't remember Christmas 1961. We must not have had one and may have even gotten rid of all the former decorations. A good reason the start over with a new tinsel tree and a new look entirely. When I got home from school that day in Baker and heard the news that we were going to be JW's again, my heart sank. I may have even gone to my room and cried.
Religion not withstanding, we got our last holiday season in 1964 with Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Just before Halloween, Gerald and I had gone to York's market (which is still there, by the way) and in addition to the bits of candy I bought, I got a set of wax teeth that I imagined Dad putting in his mouth and mugging around at us. So vivid was that image, I can still see it in my mind's eye as if it actually happened in the kitchen of our old house of Baker Street, now long gone.
We had a real tree for Christmas that year and it was so beautiful but strangely overshadowed by the beliefs that were coming. I was very excited for that Christmas but didn't bother to ask for a typewriter. Instead, I wanted an Easy-Bake Oven so I could make my own little cakes. I hunted the house daily after school wanting to find evidence that the thing I asked for was to be mine until I actually found it in the laundry room one day, stashed between the washer and dryer. I was able to contain myself until Christmas but the let-down was awful and as much as I had wanted the gift, I never fully enjoyed it. Many years later when Christmas was resumed, I never wanted to have even a hint at what my gifts might be and I got so bad later in my marriage to John that if he guessed what was in the box, I unwrapped and returned it.
But that's a story for next time. As I look over what I've written today, I realize that I only have memories of four Christmases in my young life before religion took them over. How sad. I'll see if I can get more of the story later today.
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