The Christmas we ate eggs....
07/03/2005 11:43 p.m.
I wrote this about a Christmas I remember and what I didn't remember I just made up...lol...call it creative license.

m.e.





I say it was a lean year but only come to that realization in retrospect because as a child in the country playing with my sisters, I was quite unaware of any trouble. We would bundle up in the morning and go about making the best snowmen in rural Greene County. When the snow wasn’t deep enough we would forge ahead anyway. We didn’t mind that we were picking up dirt and straw and twigs and such as well.



A few days before Christmas, Dad topped the pine in the front yard. I’ll never forget the cold of the window as I pressed my nose against the glass. The fear as he climbed ever higher and higher. The sight of the saw dangling on the rope hitting his leg with every branch that took him higher. We held our breath as he steadied himself and sawed rhythmically thru the trunk. As the tree top made a silent fall into the gleaming white lawn, a great cascade of powdered snow flew in our direction. We were so relieved to see Dad make his descent and watched as he cut off another ten inches to make the tree fit inside the house. We wrapped it in colorful lights; hung our glass ornaments about its fragrant branches and rounded it out with angel hair, being ever so careful not to cut ourselves.



Cinderella and Walter Boone, our neighbors across the street left us in charge of their chicken coop that year while they went to their daughter’s house in the city and so we didn’t go hungry that Christmas. Mom made everything that she could with what we gathered from the chickens every day. I have a vivid, wonderful yet terrifying memory of the inside of that coop. The criss cross of the chicken wire, the smell of the straw, the way the sun streamed through in slices of dewy like glitter. The startled clucking of the hens horrified me as we reached under them and took their warm eggs. I would make a quick exit out of the little chicken door that had a small ramp.



That year I remember omelets, French toast, pound cake, and deviled eggs. Sitting at the kitchen table while Mom baked, we drew pictures in her Good Housekeeping Cookbook. The plaid red and white cover was splashed with the stains of past bakings. In later years, the treasured pages would be poured over by us girls. “Maybe I drew that one”. “Look, Susie you did that.” Cathy Lynn, the oldest of us three had the best memory of those times and filled in all the empty spaces with fond recollection.



A package came from Florida about a week before Christmas. Dad’s brother and wife always kindly remembered us Anderson kids and Mom hid the brightly wrapped presents away so that Santa would have something to place under the tree.



Too excited to sleep on that Christmas Eve, we listened for the sound of reindeer hooves landing on our roof. We watched for shadows on the snow at the window. Our breath left little wisps of clouds with every whispered word as we worried that the slope of the house was too steep or the fireplace to small. Eventually as all small children do on Christmas Eve, we fell asleep in spite of our resolve and awoke early to all of the wishes and dreams that children have on Christmas morning.



In our flannel nightgowns, running and giggling and bumping into each other to get there first, we raced to the living room to see what Santa Claus had left under the tree for us.



Colored building blocks that fueled our imagination were unwrapped. They became castles, houses, bridges; roads….there were the richly painted Disney figures, two inches tall and wonderfully detailed. Tinkerbelle with her tiny wings, Goofy in his oversized trousers, Mickey Mouse, Cinderella and more. But I will never forget the smell of the doll that Uncle John and Aunt Marge sent to me that year. Each one of us girls got one. We hugged them close and just kept putting their heads up to our noses. That plastic sugar sweet like smell has stayed with me all these years. And when I think of Christmas past, that is the smell I remember. Not the pound cake baking, or the eggs halved and sitting with their bright yellow middles. That doll is the smell of Christmas. It is the smell of happy thoughts. It is the wonderful smell of childhood to me now that I revisit every time I pick up one of my Granddaughter’s dolls, give it a hug and smell its little head .

I am currently Reflective