We gave grandpa a little booklet designed for grandparents to fill in with your memories in answer to some basic questions. It is so valued by us now that he is gone. It is so much like listening to him talk.
"Grandpa, what was the first Christmas you remember like?"
We always had a real tree. Mother and Dad would decorate it after we were in bed. They saw to it that Santa remembered us with a full stocking we had hung on the fireplace, and a nice gift. Like other important memories something sparks it. The first important one of these was when I wanted (badly) an electric train. My 2 brothers were 5 & 7 years older than I was. They got up real early -set up the train and had it running. Then they came and got me up to see it. They told me to listen. I did and I could here it downstairs.
Another year when I was about 12 I wanted skis. By this age I knew that if you let Santaknow early enough that there was an urgent need, he was good for it. Of course you had to be reasonable. I got up and there were the skis. I put them on and thumped around downstairs until I was sent to bed. I got up again and thumped around the attic. Back to be I was sent. I got up and went outside to thump around. It was hours before daylight even then. No one bothered me.
"Where did you hang stockings and how did you decorate the tree?"
I covered these already however- as you might well guess I have a lot of Christmas stories. One year after my Grandfather died & I got his Big Ben alarm clock with large double bells. I wanted to get up Christmas AM very early - like 1:30 AM so I set the alarm for 1:30.
I couldn't get to sleep for I had put this noisy ticking Big Ben under my pillow so as not to awaken everyone within a mile, I kept looking at the time every few minutes. Hands and face glowed in the dark. at 1:25 I turned off alarm- put the clock on my dresser thinking that I would have no problem staying awake 5 minutes. Wrong!
No comments:
Post a Comment