I get the blues every Christmas... it's an old ailment... I've had it for as long as I can remember. A little back story here. My mother's family lived in Rhode Island and when she married my Dad June 26, 1946 she never spent Christmas with her family again. Why? Well, Daddy moved her to Florence, Alabama and at first there was no money to travel North at Christmas ... then kids that needed to stay home and have Christmas. My memories of Christmas are wonderful except for Christmas morning... every Christmas morning Mother would call my Grandmother Dugan and cry for the five minutes they talked (remember back then long distance calls were expense) then my Auntie Vi and Aunt Dot would call mother and more crying. Then Mother would start the Christmas feast and cry the entire time.... she always told us it was the onions that made her cry but I knew her heart ached. I lost my mother June of 1978 so Christmas 1977 was my last Christmas with her. She was fifty when she pasted from lung cancer.
Mother's love of Christmas and her family is part of the reason I go slightly overboard for Christmas. But when something or someone influences your actions... you have to take the good and bad with it... every ornament, Santa figure, or nativity I put out brings back Mother and those tears on Christmas morning. I stride to leave happy memories of Christmas spent with me, never sad.
My Christmas motto:
Be kinder to strangers, you don't know the stress they have in their life
Be a better friend because you do know the stress in their lives and you shouldn't neglect them just because you're busy with Christmas
Be more generous with your time, money and talent... it will make your heart joyous
Be grateful for what you have, not sad at what you don't
Be thoughtful, Granny always said... you catch more flies with honey but if you shovel crap... those flies will be all over ya. Thoughtful is the honey and rude is the crap... Her point was flies will come into your life no matter what but don't draw more with your attitude.
1 comment:
I can't believe I'm saying this to THE MOST EXTROVERTED PERSON I KNOW, but Pat, I want to be just like you when I grow up. I didn't know that story about your mom on Christmas morning. It goes on the tape. xo
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