All The Small Things

All the small things make me happy and I suppose sometimes they also make me sad. I guess I don't realize until those quiet moments how much of a difference they make.

We got our Christmas lights up yesterday, the outdoor lights I mean. We seem to be keeping with the theme of both color and clear. I usually want the clear but I think Dennis has convinced me that colored lights can be classy too. Especially the big bulbs. The set I got is the LED kind which normally I can't stand,  definitely can't if they are the clear version.  I think the light from those is just harsh and almost cold. I suppose it's ingrained in me from childhood.  I grew up in the warm yellow glow of the old fashioned energy sucking bulbs so I associate that with Christmas.  I guess my kids will feel the same about the new energy efficient kind.

It's  funny how much a difference that something small like lighting can make on my mood and Christmas spirit.  Have you heard the song,  "Where Are You Christmas"? That's kind of how I've felt of late.  Despite all the fun we've had regarding the tree, the fact that I have presents bought and some wrapped and that I'm doing many of the things we always do at Christmas, I have still felt something wasn't quite there.

My Christmas from my childhood hasn't been quite right for a long time now. As a kid Christmas consisted of all of my cousins spending the night at my aunts house making cookies,  drinking cocoa,  watching Christmas movies and listening to music and laughing at each other as everyone sang.   A few weeks after that would be Christmas Eve. We'd go that night to my Great Grandmother "Nannie's" house to have supper with all of the extended family.  Great Aunts and Uncles, their kids, my Dad's cousins and their children,  even more cousins. When I was a kid the second and third cousins we're more like first cousins.  I saw them at all the holidays and lots of cookouts and reunions between. 

I remember Nannie's house still smelling sweet from the cream pulled taffy she made every year and the pies she'd have cooling on the deep freeze lid in her side covered porch.  People ate in shifts, men and kids first, the men at the table in the kitchen and the kids at card tables in the living room.  It didn't dawn on me till I was older how sexist the set up was. After dinner the house would be hot while we waited for the mom's and aunts, great aunts to eat then clean up. Men and kids would drift in and out through the back door where they'd go to cool off in the December cold and/or smoke depending on the age of the person.  Every year my uncle's and cousins who felt like uncles would look up to the dark, sometimes starry sky and tell the kids the news had reported sightings of Santa.

The kitchen was always a little crowded and not just because of people.  Nannie's bed was in her kitchen because my Great Grandfather was ill most of his life. He'd had his first stroke at 35 and back then not as much medically could be done.  So  Big Daddy stayed in their big brass bed in the kitchen so he could be close by Nanny while she cooked and took care of kids.   Every year, for as far back as I could remember, my Daddy,  uncle Eddie and uncle Lawrence,  occasionally when they were older a cousin or two, would shine that bed and also help Nanny pull the creamed taffy from a special hook she had in her kitchen.  All that to prepare for her Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas day we'd get up at the crack of dawn to open what Santa had brought us next to trees that fluctuated between cedar, once an aluminum foil version,  to eventually an artificial plastic one.  After presents we'd go back up the street to Papaw and Grannies house, Daddy's parents,  for a big breakfast of homemade biscuits, sausage and tenderloin (from hogs that had been slaughtered by Papaw and the other men that fall), gravy and fried potatoes.  Then there'd be fudge, candies and cookies for dessert.  After that presents.   Then we'd leave for my maternal Grandmother's house to eat lunch that I was never hungry for but where I'd still eat fried apples,no matter what, because she made them special for me.  (She made them right up until she grew too old to cook,  every year seeming to add more and more sugar till they were all but candied by the time she could no longer make them.)

It was the same until I was maybe twelve then my Great Grandfather passed away and people started to drift. Second cousins and extended family didn't come as much. Eventually Nanny couldn't do the dinner Christmas Eve so Granny tried to have it at her house and still have breakfast the next morning.  Nanny always seemed so sad when she would walk down there from her house,  two doors up. I think she missed her own Christmas. Pretty soon Christmas Eve dinner went by the wayside and we just did breakfast Christmas Day.

Great Aunts and Uncles,  Grandparents and even Uncles and cousins have passed away. People grew distant,  fights were had that never got resolved.  When Papaw was gone and Granny grew older soon Christmas Day breakfast became a meal with no true set date,  falling here and there in December when it didn't conflict with new family traditions from newly married couples.  Granny is in assisted living now and we'll have a meal for her in their community room but it's not the same.   It's an obligation now with family that doesn't get along and probably never will.

So many little things.  The smell of candy and cigarette smoke.  Cedar trees and crowded rooms.  Stupid jokes and eating dinner at little fold up tables. It was none of it perfect.  The food was too fattening,  half the people too loud and perhaps some even a little crazy.  There were fights and people had to rush here and there. It was excessive and gaudy, it wasn't politically correct,  it was brightly colored, like the big lights I put on our porch railing last night.   It was Christmas.  At least my Christmas.

The lights seemed to bring that back to me.  At least the memories of it. I know there's no going back.  I know perhaps the others who shared that same Christmas did so seeing it in a completely different light than I did. What's gone is gone but I'd still love to have shared it with my girls at least once. 

Dennis is just now going through the  Christmas transition.  I wish I could make it easier for him. You just don't really realize how important the small stuff is to the makeup of family life, you may not even realize things have changed until one day they are just different. 

I know things have to change.  People grow older,  traditions change and are lost. Some of it doesn't have to though I think.  Like those silly lights, that I didn't have time to put up. That I had started thinking,  maybe they weren't so important and I'd just have to take them down in a few weeks anyhow.  But I also still didn't have Christmas.  I couldn't find it. Not until their gaudy colored glow illuminated the way.

Sometimes we have to make time.  Sometimes we have to make exceptions for people who drive us insane and are not at all PC. Sometimes we need to eat too much fat, be too loud, make bad jokes and talk too much.  We need to rush and cram excess into a day. We need all those small things to add up to the bigger picture.  Because every tiny brush stroke adds up to make a masterpiece. Without them things might be clean and neat but it won't be much to look at or back on.

I don't know what I'm saying really.  I guess I'm just affirming for myself that letting stuff fall by the wayside won't do.  Even if it's changed we need to cling to some old time consuming ones or at least fill in with new traditions. Even if I'll never stand on a cold back porch looking for Santa's sleigh at the direction of my uncle's maybe I can sit on a front porch swing, by the glow of freshly hung lights, singing Christmas songs and laughing with my husband and daughters. I can make new small things.  And I can make sure I make time for them no matter how silly they may seem at the time. Because one day my own girls will be remembering the new traditions as old ones.