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My aunt and I share a chuckle this time of the year when we talk about my mother\u2014her sister\u2014and Christmas gift giving. As my mother aged and became less able to do anything, my aunt, a \u201ccrafter\u201d herself, engaged and entertained Mother as much as she could with projects and activities.<\/p>\n
One Christmas-time project was making and decorating bookmarks. While they labored over the task, Mother decided the bookmark she was making would be her Christmas gift to her pastor. Her pastor was a really special person who lived more than 100 miles from Mother\u2019s new residence. Even so, he continued to visit her regularly and was her designated minister to \u201cpreach her funeral.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mother completed the creation of the bookmark, and in typical Mother fashion, laid it down on the table and rubbed her hands together in the \u201cI\u2019m done with that\u201d motion. And she said, \u201cThank goodness I\u2019ve gotten that out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
We laugh, but this exemplified Mother\u2019s attitude about Christmas\u2014feeling she had so much to do to provide the best Christmas possible, and it had to be done in a particular way. This seemingly robbed her of her own enjoyment.<\/p>\n
The middle child of a Great Depression-era family, Mother loved Christmas. It grew, of course, from her meager childhood Christmases. She began in late summer asking my sister and me what we wanted for Christmas.<\/p>\n
Mother scoured the countryside for what she thought was just the right doll for me, and now I have collector\u2019s items. There was the Christmas we hid from my sister until Christmas morning a piano in the house, partly by distracting her after it was delivered late the day before Christmas. Thus began our Christmas Eve tradition of driving all over town to \u201csee the lights\u201d until we were so tired we\u2019d fall asleep quickly upon returning home.<\/p>\n
We were a small family. Add two sons-in-law and one grandchild, and we still only numbered seven. But, from Mother\u2019s kitchen came cakes, pies, cookies, candies and all sorts of nibbles\u2014enough to cover a table by itself. Always, as the season drew to a close, we heard, \u201cI guess I\u2019ll just have to take all this to the office for people to eat.\u201d An abundance of treats meant Christmas to her, no matter how difficult the work for her or the amount that went uneaten by us.<\/p>\n
As much as Mother wanted Christmas to be outstanding for everyone, she couldn\u2019t get past the burden or the \u201cought-ness\u201d for herself in order to make it so. I can\u2019t recall a single time of her just sitting down, enjoying being with her family or really tasting one of her own concoctions.<\/p>\n
Women sometimes hear a saying inside their heads, \u201cOh lord, I sound just like Mother.\u201d This echoes for me no more than at this time of the year.<\/p>\n
In my best moments, I know the success of Christmas isn\u2019t up to me. Christmas is already special. Each person can celebrate and find meaning in his or her own way. More and more, I choose to celebrate by just being instead of through ought-ness.<\/p>\n
But thank goodness I\u2019ve finally gotten this blog posted. I\u2019m done with it!<\/p>\n
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My aunt and I share a chuckle this time of the year when we talk about my mother\u2014her sister\u2014and Christmas gift giving. As my mother aged and became less able to do anything, my aunt, a \u201ccrafter\u201d herself, engaged and entertained Mother as much as she could with projects and activities. One Christmas-time project was… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jbowrites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}