Month: December 2022

I’ve been amazed at how quickly Christmas decorations began to appear this year. I have a mid November birthday that has always been the start of the holiday season for me, but up until recently fall decor was still very dominant from that time until the day after Thanksgiving. Now the lights seemed to go up as soon as Halloween was over. There is a  Christmas wreath on the door of the house across the street and pumpkins and colorful leaves on another next door. It is as though we can’t quite decide when is the best time for transitioning from one celebratory season to another. 

I’m a rather linear person who has a routine that I have faithfully followed for years. On the first day of September I deck my home with fall colors. When October arrives I bring out the ghosts and goblins and jack o lanterns, but promptly store them away the day after Halloween. I leave generic pumpkins in the decor and add a pilgrim or two to the mantle. All of it stays in place until the day after Thanksgiving when I begin to transform the house into a winter wonderland. 

It takes me days upon days to do all of the Christmas decorating. I have to make may trips up and down the ladder to my attic to pull out dusty boxes of the treasures I have collected over the years. I used to have the energy to just get it all down in one very long day, but my knees and hips and bones complain when I try such things now. I have learned to be more patient and do a bit here and a bit there until everything is in place. 

I have to admit that I like seeing the Christmas decorations that arrive in November. I’m quite open minded about letting each family do its own thing. I’d be okay with starting in October if that’s what somebody wanted to do. I actually find if fun to watch the transformation of my neighborhood each year. The decorations and their timing tell me so much about how happy my neighbors seem to be. I laugh at the perfection of some and the haphazard look of others. 

What impresses me the most about all of it is that we humans just keep ploughing on in both good times and bad. Somehow when Christmas comes all of the troubles we have had melt away in the awesome realization that we are all mostly good and loving people just trying to do our best with whatever we have. We stop from the frenzy of the year to be with family and friends. We decorate to demonstrate our joy. Those lights in the windows or in the yard bring smiles.

I remember as a child riding with my family to see the lights of Christmas. We’d choose a neighborhood and go up and down the streets oohing and aching at the displays. There was a place near Wayside and Lawndale streets that had one of my favorite scenes. It was a life sized manger from which the sound of Silent Night echoed into the air. My mother would always stop the car and just sit in front of the house until we had heard the full song and then we would move on. It was an almost sacred yearly ritual for me. I always felt that Christmas had finally come when we saw that display. Sadly it one day went away and I was devastated wondering what had happened to the people who had so faithfully provided it for us for so many years.

When I was a young mom the displays in Glenbrook Valley were always awesome. At one home Santa sat in a huge chair near the curb handing candy canes to the children who came to see him. My little girls were always so delighted when they saw the jolly old man. It was a destination that we never failed to visit each December until it too was no more.

Of late we have enjoyed the spectacular views in River Oaks where people come from all over the city to see the incredible sights. There are even horse drawn carriages that ferry folks from street to street. Some park their cars and walk around taking photos of themselves in front of the extravaganzas. When we go we always follow up the drive with milkshakes or hot cocoa just as we did when we were young.

Our own yard is a hodgepodge of things that we have collected over the years. It’s a bit on the tacky side, but the parents of young children tell us that it is a favorite among the little ones. We have a wooden Christmas tree lit up with colored lights. For fun we have a Grinch appearing to be stealing the presents and strings of lights from the tree. At the corner of the house we post a snowman that is so old I can’t believe that he still lights up each year. We put lights around the flowerbeds and along the sidewalk and line the fence on the side with icicle lights. We’ve never won an award for the best display, but I feel good about what we’ve done. Everything in that yard means something to us.

Every year we wonder if we will have the energy to do our usual thing, but when the time comes we pull the boxes out of the attic and make quick work of the process even as our knees complain a bit about our efforts. When it’s all done it really does feel like Christmas and leaves us with time and determination to remember that Christmas is really about love. 

That baby born in a manger would grow up to teach us all how we should live. We don’t always remember his message, but the annual celebration of his birth sets us back on track. It’s not the gifts or even all of the lights that make the holiday season special. It’s all about our brotherhood and sisterhood in the world. 

As we enter the Christmas season I think of the people whose nations are at war. I hope that my lights shine for them for anyone who is suffering anywhere on this earth. I’ll be putting them on display soon and thinking of how I might do my part to create more peace on earth by letting my little lights shine. It’s good to resolve once again to be our best.

Back in nineteen sixty eight I was a not quite yet twenty year old bride barely two years out of high school. The reality is that I had no idea what I was doing. In fact, I was winging it from day to day, playing a role for which I was not fully prepared. I approached each my life as a wife with a wing and prayer, thinking that I had my future all figured out as long as I had my handsome husband by me side. 

Both of us were still attending college at the University of Houston so plan A was to find an apartment close to campus. Things cost a great deal less back then so leased a nice one bedroom space for one hundred ten dollars a month. Utilities were included in the price. In spite of such a fabulously affordable rate, we were cutting it close with my two hundred dollar a month salary as a teachers’ aide. If not for my mother’s tutoring in living on the edge financially I suspect that we would have been broke and on the curb in a couple of months. Instead I knew how to cook frugally and account for every penny like a miser. 

That first year was an acid test of our commitment to one another because there were literally times when we had nothing to eat in the house but a can of pineapple chunks and a head of cabbage. I’d literally manage to get two meals from our meager fare and make safely to the moment when I held a paycheck in my hands. By carefully spreading out the timing of our visits to our former homes, we managed to actually get some hearty home cooked meals from our mothers, along with leftovers that tied us over for another day. 

Somehow we did indeed manage to survive and when our first summer as a married couple came my husband worked as an electrician’s helper with his uncle. His days were very long because they were stationed at NASA where preparations were under way for the first moon launch. Sometimes he would work sixteen or more hours a day, seven days a week. We felt rich and squirreled away lots of cash in a savings account knowing that the fall, winter and spring months would be lean by comparison. When the new school year came my husband landed a position as a teaching assistant at the university while pursuing his Masters degree. We believed that the worst of our economic woes were over but we would learn soon enough that surprises came along that stretched the budget to a breaking point.

When our second summer together came he landed a job at a downtown bank. We were overjoyed that he earned a whopping four hundred dollars a month. We actually felt wealthy and able to splurge now and again. When he decided to continue working full time at the bank our coffers swelled, at least in our minds. Those horrific moments of wondering if we were going to make it to the next payday were finally gone, but not our need to be careful with how we spent what we had. 

I suppose that it is human nature to have a bit of dissatisfaction with one’s fate because it was about that time that I began to dream of being rich, which in nineteen seventy meant to me having a one thousand dollar a month income. I wondered if we would ever get that close to living a luxurious lifestyle. Even though it seemed so untenable, I kept up hope and did my best to make what we did have work for us. 

My husband moved up in the ranks at the bank and I took care of the home front which eventually included two little girls. I also did odd jobs here and there while earning my own degree. Before I accomplished my goal I had worked in a daycare center, watched children in my home, worked as a pre-school teacher and served as the Director of Religious Education at my church among many other little gigs here and there. Along the way we had reached the one thousand dollar a month milestone, but by then it was no longer the kind of salary a wealthy person might enjoy. My goals reached ever higher as the cost of living increased for everyone. the days of twenty dollar grocery bills and twenty five cent gasoline were long gone. Fortunately we had purchased a lovely home for twenty thousand dollars before housing prices had gone up as well so we just hunkered down and let life proceed. Eventually I became a teacher and together with my husbands salary we felt comfortable, but never rich. We learned that money was a necessary component of feeling secure, but we were content with the jobs and the budget that we had.

I suppose that when two people fall in love and decide to get married they don’t always consider the financial aspects of the partnership. Sadly it’s something that can make or break the relationship if times get too tough. I applaud the young people today for being more conscious of that kind of thing than we were fifty four years ago. Without sacrifice and determination we might have ended up going our separate ways after only months because we had not realistically determined our course. Living on the economic edge is a major strain on a relationship and it was much more difficult that we had ever envisioned.

The younger generation is getting married at an older age than we did back then. it’s no doubt a wise move. My husband and I were still just kids, quite immature if truth be told. We managed to grow up together but might just as well have grown apart because of the stresses that were so much a part of our early years. In many ways we simply got lucky as we stumbled our way through very adult situations. Today’s youth seems to be much more aware that joining together can be lethal without a plan.

I suppose that my mother and my husband’s mom quietly had a great deal to do with our success. They never once indicated that they were worried about our well being, but I know they must have been quite anxious. They found surreptitious ways to keep us afloat without criticizing our efforts. They were as responsible for our ultimate success as a couple as we were. Their surprise visits always came with gifts that kept our pantry filled or provided us with extra breathing room. They did these things with such grace and love.

I suspect that success in marriage requires effort from everyone, including the extended family. If we truly love and support each other it’s possible to overcome great challenges. We did that but knowing that we were never totally alone made the difference we needed to keep striving. Now we sit in comfort reminded of how fortunate we have been. In retrospect I’d recommend waiting until there is a firm plan for paying for the joint venture, but I’d never change what we ultimately decided to do.