Sunday, December 20, 2009

A few more Christmas memories

I've thought of several more Christmas memories since I made my first post about Christmas a couple of days ago. My family also had several Christmas traditions related to food. There were several Christmas goodies that we would make every year, and we always had the same special dinner of clam chowder, meats, cheeses and crackers on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning my mom would always make sweet rolls, usually cinnamon rolls and caramel pecan rolls. I'm not a huge fan of cinnamon rolls, but I dearly love caramel pecan rolls!

Yesterday I thought of another favorite Christmas gift that I received as a child. When I was in kindergarten we had to tell our teacher what we wanted for Christmas so that she could write it down on a piece of paper. Then we had to draw a picture of the thing we wanted. I was embarrassed to tell my teacher that what I wanted most for Christmas was a microphone and a radio. I'm not sure why this embarrassed me, but I remember thinking I should come up with a gift that was a little more girly, like a doll. However, I ended up telling me teacher that I wanted a microphone and a radio even though I felt embarrassed.

I did get my microphone for Christmas. It was actually a little red keyboard that had a microphone attached to it with a cord. I'm not sure why I wanted a microphone so badly, but I thought it was so neat how microphones amplified people's voices. Anyway, this red keyboard and microphone was a huge hit the Christmas of 1989!

Christmas 2003 was definitely different for me since I had just gone through a complete physical transformation and I was spending my holiday season in the ICU that year. I definitely missed participating in all of the usual Christmas festivities, and especially being at home with my family and friends.

One thing that especially disappointed me was that I wasn't able to make my mom's Christmas present. Earlier that fall I'd come up with a really good idea of something that I wanted to make my mom for Christmas that year. From the time I was a little girl my mom had often given me little love notes in my lunch or on my pillow. I saved them since they were special to me and I had them all in a box. I thought it would be really special to glue some of these notes around a picture of my mom and me and then I would frame it and give it to her so that she could display it in her bedroom.

Needless to say, now that I was paralyzed I couldn't make this gift like I had originally planned. I was still determined to get the gift made, so I asked my good friend Adam to help me make it. He went over to my house and got the supplies that I needed, and then one Friday he came to the hospital and we spent the entire evening alone making this present for my mom. I told Adam what I envisioned the finished product looking like, and then we worked together, Adam doing all of the physical things like cutting and gluing, while I provided the artistic input. The finished product turned out well, and I was so pleased that I was still able to make this gift for my mom, and it was made even more meaningful considering what the two of us were/would be going through.

I scanned a picture of the finished product (minus the picture frame), but it's so big that the entire thing couldn't be scanned. Hopefully you get the gist of what it looks like, though.

2 comments:

Kathe said...

Heather, what a great idea. What do you mom say? I bet she loved it! It looks really cute:)

Jen@Because I can said...

What a sweet present and sweet little notes! I'm sure that's got to be one of her all time favorite gifts!

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