HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

 SO glad to be Back in the Bucket after sometime  at the Brigham in Boston.

It is a great hospital and I am grateful that I can go there for procedures and surgeries.

But I am grateful to be back in my home and awaiting the first big storm of the year.

This really feels like Xmas to me and brings me back to the Xmas times of my childhood.

I recall one  Xmas when my mother waited until near Xmas  Eve to purchase a tree. I was so afraid that  we were not going to get one,  Then she told me to dress warmly and walk with her to a place where she had noticed trees for sale. It was a freezing night in December  but I was happy to  go. We left my two sisters alone and we  looked up to the second floor tenement  windows where they were  both watching us and waving happily.

When we arrived we had walked  what seemed to me a long way in the wind and blowing snow. We went up Columbus Avenue and there he was a man with a few lopsided and skinny trees  standing in a bare spot next to the railroad tracks on York Avenue. He was closing shop and clearly did not expect  to sell these  neglected and rejected trees.

My mother told him that she  had only 5 dollars. Could he sell her a tree for that  price?

He looked at her and me shivering in the wind  and he picked the scrawniest of a scrawny bunch and tied it up for us and took the five dollars. Then my mother  picked up the  trunk end and  I held  onto the  top of the tree and we retraced our steps. 

 When we got to our house on Englewood Avenue, we looked up and my sisters were watching for us still.  We waved and they came running down the front stairs to  help and the four of us  hauled  that tree inside. I said that we had waited to the  last moment. She laughed and said yes and in two days we could pick out a better one from  trees thrown out  the day after Xmas.  

We laughed and said  that we would keep ours for the Twelve Days of Christmas.  AND WE DID.

NOSTALGIA DURING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

 CHRISTMAS WAS ALWAYS A MIXED BAG

I have already written about  the ways that my Aunt Grace provided  the food for our Thanksgiving and also our Christmas feasts.  But there is so much more to  Christmas than the  big meal which is really the entire focus of Thanksgiving.

We had various ways of preparing for Christmas.We thought a lot about Advent.  I also tried to go to daily mass.  Devotional aspects of the season increased after my father's departure in 1953.

Even before that sad event we celebrated or at least I did by saving whatever money I had and buying Xmas gifts.  Our gifts to each other were  not very glamorous. I would pace around Grants and Woolworth's looking at lipsticks for my Aunt Anna and  a perfume for my mother. I got my sisters paddle balls one year and that was a big hit. They could  play with them quite successfully. I had seen them borrow those of other kids, and I knew they could make the ball bounce off the paddle.
 I remember that when my friend Lucille came over to see  my tree and gifts and she looked at the three piles of  gifts that we had opened--one for each of us children. They were almost identical--pajamas, underwear, a new robe, socks. She said, "I see that you have a very practical Xmas." My mother laughed and my Aunt Anna said that she was rude. She was not, she was just being truthful.
We did not get toys. None of us cared about dolls.The only thing that I got that my sisters did not get would be paper doll books and coloring books. Our stockings were filled with an orange and an apple and some walnuts in the shell. Also sometimes hair ribbons or hair clips.
One winter I  had complained to my Aunt Grace that I had to wear some cast off hockey skates of Lucille's brother when we went to the  Blue Pond to skate.  I was amazed when new  lovely white figure skates showed up under the tree for me.There was no giver's name--these were from Santa.  My mother  warned me  not to whine anymore to  my Aunt Grace and I  knew what that meant.
Aunt Grace was always  my secret Santa.  
When  my father was still with us, I do recall some  sudden eruption of a great gift--like a tricycle. Later when I was about six, he brought in a large and gorgeous doll house. Somehow, there was some suggestion of  scandal  about these gifts--that he had won them in a card game or even stolen them.

 I remember that one Christmas morning he reached under his pillow and took out a small box and in it was a gold cross very plain and simple on a gold chain.  I still have that cross.

SECRET SHARER IN THE BUCKET

Joseph Conrad--one of my favorite novelists-- has written  a novel  with that title  THE SECRET SHARER.

 I recently received not one  but two communications from someone who wishes to stay  an anonymous fan. This person  knew my home address and sent cards.  The second one was  to celebrate my  50th anniversary.

  I have been absent on my own  blog and this caused some concern.  I had another  visit to the Brigham and a surgical procedure --  I am now  in my second day  recovering at home.

These medical events are  difficult and   discouraging.  I have a bunch of new  appointments in December and I doubt my ability to keep them.

Time will tell; I certainly can no longer tell.

MY Secret Sharer tells me that he/she?  likes the fact that my blog recalls details of growing up in Pawtucket in the 50s.  I take that endorsement as a hint that she also recalls those times and that decade in this little city.

I enjoy recalling  that part of my life also, but recent events have demanded a more topical response.

  I have  made a point of staying away from politics and  yet, I could not evade the pandemic and the effect that it has had on so many people.

Even the Brigham seemed changed--chaotic and  over run- in my recent visit there.

I am glad to be home  And I will try to return to the 1950s in my blog. STAY TUNED!