My parents and my brothers and I would suck it up through the 4pm mass on Christmas Eve but really between the crowd, dying of hunger and literally insane with anxiety, that 4pm mass was the looooongest service on the planet. By the time we got out of church it was dark and things were definitely starting to feel in motion for Christmas.
We would then drive home and enjoy an extensive meal of ham and all the the trimmings and politely help my mother put the dishes away before retiring for the night. Yeah right... NO! Forget that crap. We would all pile in the car, shivering because it took the thing 9 years to warm up in the -9 degrees of heat Michigan sports in late December. We would also be without the ability to shut up or stop moving or in general stop bothering each other in the way only siblings can on Christmas Eve.
We would all actually have dinner at Como's Pizza which definitely wasn't empty for being Christmas Eve. That was also the only time all year that we ate at Como's but it was some darn good pizza! And we got to have pop. Except my little brother Mike who would order chocolate milk. And one of us would generally spill. Because that's the way we roll.
We would then start the drive from Ferndale to Royal Oak where my grandparents lived... a whole 15 minutes... trying not to cause my dad to pull the car over to drop one of us in the dirt pile of snow that seems to cover every street corner on Woodward from November until March. Luckily my dad was actually the worst instigator of the craziness because he was more kid at Christmas than grown up.
My dad would take us through neighborhoods to see the decorations and lights. Which was too bad for the sucker kid sitting in the middle seat of the station wagon! (HA HA MIKE!) I loved the houses on Vinsetta- so beautiful. When we'd finally get around to Hawkins there was usually another car or two in the driveway belonging to my Aunt Kate (grandmothers sister) or my Uncle Tim (dad's brother).
My brothers and I were assuredly still hopping from the pop from dinner and then LOW AND FREAKING BEHOLD, the kitchen table was covered with cookies and candy. There had to be dozens of these little tiny cookies and homemade candies, chocolates and fudge. My personal favorite were these small powdered sugar snowball looking things. My grandmother made a good majority of them herself and the rest were from the church cookie exchange. I don't get too far in to remembering Christmas without remembering those cookies! AND, the best deal of the night was getting shooed to go play in the basement or sent off on a beer run from the basement refrigerator because it gave you the chance to snitch more cookies on the way!
Everybody would eventually go out and sit in the living room and us three kids would have to sit there and try to be normal so that sometime before Easter we could open our presents. Our stocking was usually full of gumball machine quality toys that we would break on first use. Or the adults would break them showing us how they work. And when we'd get to the actual presents. Without fail, we got stuff like dress shirts. Dress shoes. Bathrobes. All the kind of crap you'd least want. But that you needed.
With my parents, two brothers and myself, plus my grandparents, my grandmothers sister, my uncle, a cousin or two and usually even my great uncle (my grandfathers brother who didn't drive so his car was never in the driveway!), all the family I really knew would be in that living room. They'd be telling stories, remembering their childhood with exaggerated angst. Remarking about who got shafted the most. Cursing in muddled Polish. My dad would hand out the gifts. My grandma would try to save the bows, my uncle would put them in the trash. My grandpa liked to be cute and write silly Polish names on the gift tags to confuse things or endearing cheesy names for his dear Helen. I can't remember any specifically but the joke never got old. It just got missed when it so abruptly stopped.
In December of 2000, I was having my first Christmas away from home. I stopped by my grandparents on the way to the airport. My grandmother was still sleeping (you don't wake her... no matter what). But grandpa was up and making himself breakfast and doing some daily puttering. I had a gift I was dropping off and he thanked me. He hugged me and said he loved me (not usual for this proud man). I left and had my first Christmas away, and missed the cookies, missed the cheesy gifts, missed the silly name calling and the Polish cursing.
About a week after Christmas my grandfather was admitted to the ICU with a brain hemorrhage. He would briefly wake here and there but eventually he stopped waking. I returned from my trip early but only could stand there to see him unconscious and not the grandpa who would smack his hands together as he laughed or the one that would swear in mumbled Polish and English at the stupidity of life's ways. Most of his family was around him as he took his last breath and died on January 6th, 2001.
Christmas gets different when you're not a child and when you grow up and when people move on or when you finally settle for the fake tree one year for whatever reasons. I still think of all of those childhood Christmases and hope that by writing it down I won't forget the details. It also makes me wonder what details my boys will remember when they grow up. I spend a lot of time thinking of their gifts, but I would be more than happy if when they grew up they never remembered a single present and instead remembered what they did, who they were with and what they would miss if it wasn't there.
-Sheryl
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