Tonight, as my mind drifted back through the years, I tried to picture the corner in my modest, early childhood home where I thought a Christmas tree had stood. I wrote a poem sometime back entitled “I remembered a tree,” it was that tree that I tried to picture tonight, the tree that was never there.
I can still see the wall that divided my parents’ bedroom from ours. A cedar chest stood against that wall. My mind can see the two sisters who sometimes babysat us sitting there. Mom says they had a teenage crush on our father. He was very handsome back then, when I was young. I can still picture him with his wavy dark black hair, wearing his Al Capone style dress hat and the troubled frown he wore on his face.
But, that same wall also held the tree… didn’t it? I can recall hanging one of my dad’s long woolen stockings for Santa to fill with hard candies and assorted nuts. We hung them on the knobs of our parent’s bedroom dresser in that same room. Their bedroom was where a normal house would have had a living room, but we didn’t have one back when I was little. My daddy built that little house that is now my mom’s garage. It was supposed to be temporary, but six children out of seven were born in that small four- room-house; without running water, no living room or a bathroom. Oh, the joys of a chamber pot.
I can still recall the excitement I felt with the anticipation of Santa Claus. I remember attending midnight mass at Holy Family Church in Flat Rock, Michigan when I was older, and I’m sure mom took us even at our young ages, but I can’t be certain. How could I? After all, I remembered a tree that was never there. The ringing of bells can still be heard, if I close my eyes and journey back in my mind to the age of seven. It was Santa Claus and his reindeer, we were certain of it.
The morning came and little footsteps sneaked around the corner to see if Santa had come. The gifts were there, not many, but I didn’t know there weren’t many. I had gifts, a giant coloring book and a new box of crayons and some new underwear…and…there was that sock. Yes, over flowing was that long woolen sock of my dad’s. Assorted peanuts, nuts and hard candies filled it, and I was the happiest little girl who ever was.
One time, a Betsy Wetsy baby doll was under there, along with that coloring book…under the tree that was never there. And that’s not all; there was a cardboard suitcase that held a change of doll clothes. Oh, that was the best Christmas.
Silly girls, my sister Carol and I were back then. You see; we tore up that little cardboard suitcase and threw it into the black, potbellied stove that burned the wood and coal to warm our little home. We were angry because mom left us home alone. Maybe those pretty young girls who liked our dad were babysitting us, I don’t remember, but we wanted to punish our mom. “She will be so sorry she didn’t take us,” we said as we giggled and burnt our special Christmas present. I guess the giant coloring book stood alone under that … “tree” the following Christmas.
I can only recall having gotten two dolls in all of my childhood and it was that same Betsy Wetsy doll that got me into a whole lot of trouble one time. I held that little doll to my, as of yet, undeveloped flat chest, over my clothing no less, and pretended to nurse her. My sister Diana saw me and cried out, “You’re a pig, I’m telling ma.” That little brat made me scratch her back for two months or she said she’d tell on me. I was probably eight at the time, maybe even nine. One day, tired of scratching her back, I screamed out, “Go ahead, tell, I don’t care.” Well, I never did get into trouble for my “sinful” deed.
I was 56 years old or so when I had a conversation with my mom about our years in the garage. I told her that I remember exactly where the Christmas tree stood.
“But, Gloria, we never had a Christmas tree during the years we lived in the garage. Where would we have put it?”
“No tree?”
“No tree.”
To this very day, the child who lives within me still remembers that tree…that tree that was never there.
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