Cheryl insists I post this story. She really likes it.
FIREPLACES
Sitting in the front parlor on a cold December day, the gas burner hissing in the fireplace; warmth radiates into the room. Time is a malleable thing. I am also sitting in the back parlor in my grandparents home 57 years ago, the gas burner hissing in the fireplace. It is Christmas Eve, and I am waiting for my cousins to arrive. My sister waits with me, as we stay warm in front of the glowing ceramic panel. In a while, the old house will fill with happy children and harried parents, today, and yesterday. In this time, we open gifts tomorrow. In the other time, we open gifts tonight. Tomorrow, 25 will fill our old house and eat dinner and celebrate with the grandparents looking benignly on. In the other time, 25 ate dinner and celebrated with the grandparents looking benignly on. I am the grandfather, I was the grandchild. So much time has passed, but time is a malleable thing, and no time has passed. All is fresh in my mind as though yesterday is today. Gas hisses through the tubes, bursts into blue flame, gives off its ephemeral warmth, and is gone, but memory is eternal. The time is December 24, 1956, or is it December 24, 2013. It is, I know, Christmas Eve.
………..
My family always celebrates Christmas at my grandparent’s house in Jefferson City. Mom and Dad load up the Studebaker with four kids and a trunk full of presents in Columbia, and off we go, driving 30 miles south to Jeff City. These grandparents are my mother’s. We call them Momma Fritz and Daddy Roy. My father’s parents, Mama and Papa, live in Saint Louis, and we never go there for Christmas, but always a week later.
Jefferson City is the gathering place for all the Cox family children and grandchildren, and there are many, arriving at different times during the day. Uncle Bill and Aunt Marge and their numerous brood live in Jefferson City, so they show up late for dinner and gift opening. Aunt Betty and Uncle Bill Chapman live in Kansas City, which is a long days drive in 1956, and they also get there late with their two boys. Aunt Donna and Uncle Don, also with a numerous brood, come down from Fulton, not so far, and they get there early. I can’t give numbers for the grandchildren, because there were more added every year, so I guess. My mother was the oldest Cox child, and we were on the average older than our cousins.
When we arrived at the huge old house on Vineyard Square, I dash to the door, push it open, and shout ‘Christmas Eve Gift’. My mother always told me to do it, and perhaps I thought it meant we would open gifts on Christmas Eve, which we always did, never waiting till Christmas Day. Gifts piled up around the Christmas Tree impressively as the other families arrived. The grandparents didn’t go for big trees with lavish decorations like we did at our house, and as I do today. Their trees were always sparse and something of a disappointment to my eyes. I guess it was a generational thing. They came out of the Great Depression, and lavish trees were probably frowned upon. But the gift pile made up for it.
A stand up lunch would appear in the kitchen early in the afternoon. You could sit in the little breakfast nook and snack, but you could not take anything out of the kitchen. It made for some togetherness as people crowded in. Eggnog and whiskey was available on the south counter along with small glasses. I discovered early on that I liked the taste of eggnog and whiskey, and I would help myself. No one ever objected, but then, this was a different age. The cousins did the same, and soon we would become rather sleepy and quiet. Perhaps that was the secret goal of the adults. It worked.
The afternoon progressed, and Momma Fritz and the daughters prepared the huge and sumptuous Christmas dinner. Turkey and ham, greenbeans, potatoes, and all the rest. They would do it all again tomorrow, but that would be various leftovers and not quite the same. About seven, dinner would be served. The dining room was reserved for the adults, and the children were set up in the back parlor with folding tables lined up to the several day beds that lined the walls.
Dinner went on for a long time, but eventually all were finished. The women retired to the kitchen to take care of dishes while the men retired to the front parlor to relax and smoke. All men smoked in that day, none did dishes. My grandfather smoked cigars. My dad smoked Camels unfiltered. My uncles all smoked. No one minded a bit. We children retired to the back parlor to rest for the big event.
I had a privilege that was solely mine. I was in charge of lighting the gas fire in the fireplace. I am not sure when that privilege was granted, but no one touched the wooden matches left on the mantel but me. My older sister sat on the hearth on the left side; I took the right where the gas valve was located. Striking a match, I held it to the burner and turned the valve. A blue flame spread across the bottom of the ceramic heat plate. Gas hissed, and the ceramic slowly turned cherry red. We sat in the warmth of the gas fire, Nancy on one side and me on the other. My brother and other sister and cousins came in to sit on the day beds and watched out the east windows for the arrival of Santa Claus.
We waited an eternity for the sound of reindeer hooves and the jolly ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’ that signified his arrival and departure. My brother, the oldest of all, always managed to see Santa and the sleigh arriving, and would shout to us, ‘There he is, there he is. See! Right there on the roof.’ Then, sure enough, all would hear the patter of hooves, and in a few minutes a distant ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’. Various children would shout ‘I see him, I see him’. Then, an adult would come in to tell us Santa had come and gone and we could come out now.
We ran to the front parlor where the gift pile had magically grown to even larger proportions, and took our places with our parents. The places were set by some tradition. My Aunt Betty and her family were to my right across the archway to the dining room. Uncle Bill and his brood were directly across the room under the front windows. Aunt Donna and her brood were to Uncle Bill’s right. Momma Fritz and Daddy Roy took the couch by the front door, except Daddy Roy always stood over the furnace register in the corner by the stairs, where he could see everything and keep warm. My younger aunts distributed gifts around the room but nothing was opened.
With all the gifts handed out, we began opening, one gift at a time, youngest to oldest. This wasn’t too bad when there weren’t too many of us, but in later years it became far too time consuming. Eventually, the rule was set that when anyone ran out of gifts, everyone could open. My mother collected all the bows and tissue paper. I don’t know why.
About midnight, children started dropping from exhaustion. Uncle Bill and Aunt Marge loaded up gifts and children and headed home. The rest of us retired to the cold sun porch on the second floor that was full of big beds with feather mattresses and comforters. We would all pick our spot, get carefully positioned, and drop onto the feather mattresses, sinking like stones into the softness. The mattresses folded up around us until blankets were hardly necessary, and we drifted off to sleep as happy as only children on Christmas can be.
Christmas morning was always glorious with presents waiting to be played with and a sumptuous breakfast of bacon and eggs and toast and sausage and hot chocolate to be eaten. We played until early afternoon when we ate up the leftovers from the dinner the night before. Gradually, the families left. Aunt Betty first because they had so far to drive, then the rest. On the way back north, I would sleep on the rear ledge of the Studie, waking up as we pulled into our drive and home.
…..
Many, many, years have passed. Momma Fritz and Daddy Roy became old and left us, and Christmas in Jefferson City was forgotten. Christmas at the Obermiller home in Columbia never turned into a family event. After a few years, my brother and sisters were scattered too far apart to make a pilgrimage home. Family Christmas at the grandparents was lost for a generation, and I think that is generally the way it is.
But family traditions never really die. They may sleep for a while, but then wake up when circumstances permit and the time is right again. So tomorrow, all my children will come to Opa and Oma’s big old house. Some will get here on time for our traditional breakfast. All will get here on time to open presents. Our gift pile is huge and fills our entire entry hall, spilling up the stairs and out into the front parlor. Around noon, each family takes their traditional place in the front parlor, and aunts/children distribute gifts. Then we open, youngest to oldest, one at a time. Oma collects all the bows and tissue paper. After a while we will tire of gift opening and gather in the dining room and back parlor for Christmas dinner, prepared by Oma and daughters. After dinner, we will reassemble in the front parlor to finish gift opening. Soon after that, children will scatter to other family’s festivities, and Oma and Opa will go to a movie.
Christmas at Oma and Opa’s will continue for a few more years until we, too, have left this world. Then, I suppose, the gathering will divide again among my eight children, only to reappear in another generation in another home. It is just possible the gas will still be hissing in another fireplace. I will listen for it.
END
slicesdotlive 