"Christmas Post...Inspired by KittyCat..."

KittyCat, over at  Perception Is Everything, has a neat post on Christmas Traditions...  I posted about my annual search for reindeer ornaments and stuff HERE last year...

I had scanned several photos that I have found of past Christmases, and would like to share them... The most important person missing from these photos would be my Mom... 

Shoes, Brother Shoes (Tom)

Christmas

This photo was taken just before Mom left to take us to be in the Christmas Parade that year...  Tom had been so sick... Mom told him he needed to stay home and in bed, but he wanted to ride on the Christmas float with his goofball brother... imagine that.  For the record, those bows were red...  I see that expression on his face, and his little half-hearted wave, and can still feel how badly he felt that afternoon.  I was in kinder-garden, so I am guessing that makes me about 5...

Tom, Lil Shoes (front)

John (back)

Two things about this above photo tell me that it was Christmas time...  the ribbon on the mantel right behind me, and the three angel candles that Mom loved so were on top of the mantel...  I am 14 months older than Tom, yet Mom dressed us alike.  That always started conversations about the 'twins'... since we were about the same size, I am sure that made shopping for clothes easier for Mom...  It appears at that early age, I had already learned a great deal about 'pocket pool'...

John, Lil Shoes, Tom

This photo was probably Christmas after that in the first photo above... Tom would have been back in kinder-garden for HIS year... I used to abuse him telling him that he was the only person I ever knew that had to take kinder-garden over...  As you can tell, he was feeling a Hell of a lot better than he was the previous Christmas parade...


I'm sure that Tom being dressed as an angel caused all kinds of consternation in Heaven and other holy sites... it was just wrong...  John sure had those jeans hiked up there, didn't he??  And I would have loved knowing what the Hell I must have been thinking or doing... that expression on my face gives it away that I was definitely up to something...

I miss Mom and Dad...

I miss those days...  *sighs*

_________

It's exam week here at Alluvial Flood Plain State University... the marginal students are sweating it...  I went to lunch today at a fairly new restaurant here... the owners fancy it as a 'bistro,' but, Hell... this is the Mississippi Delta... A place has to be pretty fancy to escape being called a 'cafe'...


Anyhoo... about half way through my sandwich, I realized that James Taylor had been singing 'Winter Wonderland' for WAY too fucking long...  It would end... and start back up... he sang that damn song for 55 minutes... on the way out the door, I stopped to get a drink refill, and I asked the young lady if that was the only song on that CD...


"Huh?"  


I love intelligent responses...


As much as I like James Taylor, that had become a form of Chinese Water Torture...

_________

I think of myself as being half way intelligent... but... never... EVER... try to slice a lime while holding it in your hand AFTER you've probably had a bit too much to drink...  that damn knife was sharp!!!!!!!

~shoes~

"The Ghost of Christmases Past..."

This spirit always seems to rear its head just before Thanksgiving, for my Mom died on the Saturday before Thanksgiving... a Holiday on which Mom should be working in the kitchen to feed her family and bringing the meaning of Holiday to our household...


Now that Dad has been gone almost fourteen years... and Ive been divorced now thirteen years... the Holidays have changed. Somehow time is supposed to make things easier, but it doesn't... I seem to miss Mom and Dad more every year... every day...

It's a rainy, messy day here in the Mississippi Delta today... we've been under flash flood warnings all day... heavy heavy rains... but the tornadic activity that had been forecasted didn't make it to our area...

So, I went to the grocery store to get the things that I will need to make Christmas Eve Dinner for my son and his girlfriend... my daughter isn't making it home for Christmas this year... the first Christmas that I will have missed having her around... but she's married... she has her own Life... it's ok, I suppose... but I did fight back tears earlier when we talked on the phone... My Life is changing...

After making all of the rounds earlier, I went to see Mom and Dad... and left flowers for them... and I cried... I hope that I made Christmas as special for my children as my Mom and Dad did for me... but I fear that their Mom has left them jaded about the Holidays... at times, I sense a great indifference in them about the Holidays... and when the day comes that I am no longer here, and Christmas rolls around, will they remember how much Dad loved them and how much he loved Christmas?? And will they honor Christmas somewhat just because Dad did love it so??

I have this 'Yogi Bear' stuffed animal, and a 'Mister Magoo' car... that 'Santa' brought me distant childhood Christmases ago... and I wonder how Mom must have felt when she would look through things and think, "I bet Jimmy would like this!" Both of these items are under my Tree tonight...

I miss the Christmases that Mom and Dad provided for me... and I miss the Christmases that I helped to provide for my little 'shoe' kids...


And I try each year to make Christmas special for them...


And maybe some day years down the road... they will think... "It's Christmas... Dad always loved it so..."


If you have a few moments read this... it's very touching, I think...




Merry Christmas, Mom and Dad...


Merry Christmas to any of you that read this...




~shoes~

"Christmas Traditions..."

When I was lil RedShoes, I would always get SO excited when Mom would start to get the Christmas decorations out...  And she would always let my brothers and me pick out one ornament to hang on the tree... they were all glass for the most part... and very fragile...

My mostest favorite ornament... one I looked forward to hanging on the tree EACH and EVERY year... was a red glass ball with a painted reindeer running across a snowcovered field... I covet that ornament... that was MY ornament...


And somewhere, it got lost... or broken... When Mom died, one of my brothers named himself the owner of all of the great decorations... so maybe he has it... he knows that part of the Christmas ritual every year is that  Shoes is going to ask if he's got the red reindeer ornament...

I guess I lost track of caring about the red reindeer ornament, other than to bore the Redshoe kids about it each year when we would decorate the Christmas tree... but when I divorced... and was putting my Life back together... the first year I put up a tree, I wanted a red reindeer ornament...


Every year I look for new ornaments for my Christmas tree.. and I mark the year I buy them on the bottom of the ornament... so that I will know when I became the owner of that decoration... I have found ALL kinds of reindeer ornaments... some of them are even red... but I haven't found THAT ornament... I figure some yard sale... some old antique place some year... I will walk in and there will be my ornament...


I shopped for the RedShoe "Kids" yesterday... wound up buying a whole crap load of ornaments... but no reindeer ones... But I suppose I will look tomorrow...

I love Christmas... it's my Mother's Fault...