Christmases Past

In 2009, Dave and I took a volunteer trip to India and tacked on another one week of vacation where we met this Santa in India.

The very first Christmas I remember was in Chico, California when I received both a bicycle and a “Suzie Bake oven.”  It wasn’t long afterwards that we ended up moving to Yerington, Nevada.  The first Christmas,  I recall there was the night Mom crawled into bed with us after a terrible fight with my Dad.  We were living on a feedlot there.  

Some of my favorite memories as a kid were Christmases living on Main Street in Yerington after my baby sister

 was born and Mom had remarried.  We were a blended family of step-brothers and sisters, my brother, older sister and baby half-sister.    Our step-father would give each of us $10 from his paycheck to allow us to buy gifts for each other. There were only a handful of stores to shop for gifts.  Each of us kids would dodge each other in the stores attempting to keep our gifts a secret.  My brother would always buy me a skein of yarn.  My older sister would buy me play makeup hoping that perhaps it would help me resist the urge to get into her makeup.  We would pool our money together to buy gifts for our folks.  At that point my life, my Dad wasn’t present. 

Once my Mom left my step-father, our Christmases revolved around time with Grandma in Paradise, California. My little sister, participated in a nativity play.  We had Christmas dinners at Grandma’s house.