Collected memories

Dec 14, 2006

Round 71::7 — Thirteen Winter Memories (some holiday-related, some not)

Those of you who have been waiting for the story of the neon sign — voila. Sorry it took so long! As for other Christmas, New Year, and winter holidays from childhood, I remember...

1. My family drove up to the mountains for a day of snow-fun. I was on a sled, being pulled over a solidly-frozen-over pond. Well...mostly solidly-frozen-over. At one point, there was a smallish hole in the ice. I decided to stick my hand down there. I'm not entirely sure why...but I did. The water soaked my knitted mitten, and the next thing I remember is being inside, my now-mittenless hand getting warmer, and eating a Marathon bar. (I miss those. I haven't seen one in ages — I think they discontinued them. Two loosely “woven”, flattened lengths of chocolate-covered caramel...mmm...)
2. I was once taken on a drive, to look at the Christmas lights around town. (This was also to give my Grandma a chance to set out all the presents...yet to the kiddies' eyes, they'd “magically” appear.) At one point, I fixed on what must have been an airplane's red landing lights. I think I thought I was seeing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
3. My family went on a skiing holiday up in the Sierra Nevadas with a family from Dads' workplace. A day or so after we arrived back home, I had a seizure. I can't recall much of that weekend...and for weeks after the seizure, I couldn't remember anything at all about it.
4. I learned to ski (sort of) by going on a ski trip with my eighth-year class. We went to Lake Tahoe's Squaw Valley. I spent the first part of the morning on the bunny runs. Then, in a fit of supreme teen idiocy, I let a (charming, semiattractive, male) friend talk me into going on one of the black-diamond runs. For those unfamiliar with skiing, the black diamond marks an "expert-level" run. We took the ski lift up the mountain, I kept my feet getting off, and went down a short bit of hill. “Hey” I thought, “this isn't so bad!”
   
   Then I went down the "onramp" and actually started down the actual ski run. Things Got Bad.
   
   I managed not to hit anyone else, and I didn't hit a tree; but I deliberately steered off to the side, into what I devoutly hoped was a soft pile of snow that would catch me when I fell (to avoid hurtling down the rest of the hill at full speed.) Lucky me, it was a nice drift, just waiting to catch someone like myself.
   
   I laboriously took off my skis and walked — carrying skis and poles — the rest of the way down the hill and into the lodge. I did not speak to Mr. Charming Semiattractive until sometime in April.
5. In college, I went on a four-day ski trip with a student group. I didn't ski, I just hung out at the lodge and sipped cocoa and spent the evenings with the rest of my friends. One day, when I stayed at the cabin we'd rented, it snowed...and things got so incredibly quiet that I sat in the front window, wrapped in two blankets, with a mug of tea, watching the snowfall and listening to nothing at all.
6. My brother and I would write letter and draw pictures (and write lists of what we wanted for Christmas) several times each December. We'd fold these letters up and leave them in the livingroom windowsill, addressed to Nick and Nack, Santa's special helper elves. The next morning, there'd be a few pieces of candy, or little tiny toys, or sometimes small Christmas ornaments (in other words...knickknacks).
7. Many Decembers, right around the feast-day of St. Nicholas, Nick and Nack would announce their “appearance” by painting our bedroom windows with snowmen, candy canes, big Christmas trees with lights, and angels.
8. The second or third New Year's I got to stay up until midnight, I sat upstairs building a house for my new Barbie doll out of colored construction paper. (I'd gotten the monster pad of construction paper as a gift that Christmas, but I've never been a craft-ish type. If I couldn't easily color on the paper, I had to find other uses for it. [And just in case anyone had any doubts...construction paper is a lousy building material. Even when you staple 3 pieces together, they've got no load-bearing capabilities at all.])
9. One holiday season I worked retail at JCPenney's. In addition to the normal holiday crowds and chaos, I was witness to the drama of seeing two grown women — one in her late twenties or early thirties, the other in her late fifties — have a screaming fight in the middle of the (busy) store, arguing over who would get the commission for a certain customer's purchases. (I wish I had gotten the customer's attention, gotten them to a register, and just rung them up under the "anonymous" code. It would have let the poor customer get out alive, while seriously aggravating the two women...and yet not bringing me into line for discplinary action for taking a sales commission that wasn't mine.)
10. One of the first years I lived in Canada, I went to sleep with my knees aching horribly. I finally slept...and woke to a city under about a foot and a half of snow. I went on my morning walk, and was one of the first people stirring: seeing Jericho Park covered in a blanket of white, with no other people around and no distant noise of cars and busses, was wonderful and amazing and lovely. Someone had been to the park before I had, though: the person had built a snow-person sitting on a bench atop a hill, snow-arm stretched across the bench back, one leg crossed over the other. There was a single set of footprints leading to the bench, then straight away: the person must have built their snowperson while sitting on the bench, to keep from leaving footprints all around.
    
    The next morning, I passed by on my walk and looked to see if there had been any additions to the family. The snowperson's head had been partially knocked off, the arm had melted and thinned quite a bit, a passing dog had peed on the leg. The magic, she was gone.
11. One year, hyper-organized thing that I am, I sat down with the Sears catalogue and wrote down page and item number of every toy on my list.
12. Another year, I listed several specific books and cassettes. (Woo, look, I just dated myself!!) Moms gave the list back to me, saying, “This isn't enough. You have to have something besides just books and tapes!!” (Note: this is the same parental unit who, almost two decades later, asked me if I wanted two solid oak bookshelves — each 82 inches high, and over 40 inches wide.)
13. One December, my parents received a miniature blue spruce from some relatives. They gave it to me, seeing how I didn't have a tree; then I gave it back to them in January and Moms planted it out in the “North forty” (the overgrown, wild area behind their tiny backyard — technically it's state land, and a wildlife refuge; but Moms has redecorated (there she goes again!!!) the small portion that is flat land. The steep hillside is left to fend for itself.) Those same relatives once again sent a miniature blue spruce...which, beginning this weekend, shall be in my custody until sometime in January. Possibly longer, now that I have a patio of my own.

Links to other T13 posts

• Baggage that goes with mine with new-house-pride-and-glee (congratulations!!)
• Yellow Rose Garden with general thoughts, and a rant about rude commenters (warning: site automatically plays music when it loads. If you're at work, or if the rest of your household is asleep, make sure your speakers are turned off.)
• In a nutshell with zzzzzingers
• Fond of Snape with things on her mind
• The Screaming Pages with songs burning out her iPod (yeah, I've done this. Who am I kidding — I'm doing this right now!!)
• Di's Book Blog with unused blog post titles
• Writing Aspirations with her 'cast of characters'...both real, and completely fictional
• The Meme Section with several highlights of her birthday week (congratulations!!)
• A Virtual Hobby Store and Coffee Shop with a list of craft / hobby / project blogs
• Writer's Cramps with the story of her grandmother...who sounds like a wonderful person
• Chez La Laquet with the 13th item from her previous lists-of-thirteen...on this, her thirteenth Thursday Thirteen (and if I get any more meta-regressive, I may get dizzy...) :D
• The Zeus Excuse with photos of holiday lights from around his neighborhood
• Big Leather Couch with photos of 45"-record labels
• Still Life With Soup Can with things to do in her life (I am so with her on #8, there...)
• The Naked Truth with the things that went wrong
• Why I refuse to blog
• Ramblings... by Alyndabear with her inaugural T13 post
• This is TheMadStyle with the urgent to-do list (another inaugural T13 participant!)
• Whiskey Talking with a random list sent in from a roller rink
• The Chaotic Home with a partial list of reasons why the home is so chaotic
• Beaumont Blue with her own list of past Christmas memories
• A Little Cheese with that Whine with guilty television-show pleasures
• Philly Transplant with things his other half *won't* be getting for Christmas (apparently, she's begun visiting the site, so he can't list what she will be getting)
• Mommy, Inc. with a list of holiday songs
• The Gnostic World of Candy Minx with thoughts on comments
• Buttercup and Bean with Blogger-related aggravations
• Where the Heart Is with some random commentia

Related entry: From behind memory’s glass: Thanksgiving then and now
Keywords: | Thursday | memories | memes | holidays | Holidailies | childhood |
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