I am always compelled to write but do not often yield to it, after all, it is work. But, tonight i was watching the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performing their Christmas Special and it was fabulous! As I could smell the pine boughs and feel the cold wet snow I imagined I was a boy again in a small Mormon town with my grandparents in their old classic home on a dirt street. That was long ago and I have been homeless at Christmas since.
My parents, both from small Mormon communities, migrated to Wyoming to teach music and start a business. They had the most loftiest of ideals and good clean living enforced by their church Ward as they called it then. They became well known and loved in those communities as they grew their clan to six children and success soon followed.
Christmas was mostly wonderful to me as a small boy. I remember the elegantly decorated home and a freezer full of home made rolls and pies that we could never quite keep our hands off. My mom was so mad because we could eat it almost as fast as she made those delights, as well as home made fudge to die for, and I almost did!
Then we always made the trek to Utah to visit my parents families in Santiquin and Payson. The long, seemed like twenty four hours or more, drives were torturous and to keep from killing my little sister and not to mention my other siblings, we had to be creative. My eldest brother Bill always seemed like an uncle since he was fourteen years my senior and in school somewhere. We learned to make lanyards from long pieces of craft plastic stuff and even zig-zag looking paper creations made from stick bubble gum wrappers.
Next came every little town that had a stop sign on that then only two lane highway and then, of course, we passed the cemetery and came to the famous corny joke. The question was, “do you know how many dead people are in this cemetery?” And the obvious answer was, ” All of them!” We fell for it every-time until we were past being grown up. We almost had a rating system for each little ho-dunk town on that two lane highway on who had the best Christmas decorations on their main street.
The last straw of boredom was reserved for the dark when we could no longer count license plates or hit each other. We called it twenty-one. Every one got a turn to play and had to pick any object and gave only one clue on whether the object was organic or inorganic. The rest of us had to guess the item or lose to the one who was so clever to deceive us all. It is amazing how far one can get with twenty questions!
Finally we were there and Grandma Broadbent would always lay out a huge table full of food at a moments notice. It was amazing, if not a little dysfunctional as I now know. She would hug us and kiss us with wet sloppy kisses and doted on us. My mom never did that. I supposed because she never had the time. But we, as kids, feasted on the attention we got from both sides of our families.
Then there were tons of cousins! If my parents had six kids and others had six kids in those Mormon Communities, we had a lot of cousins and had a blast! We played in the street irrigation systems and pulled blood suckers off our legs later. It was pure fun and heaven for me followed by the best kid food made-by my Uncle Richard.
We always had a huge car, usually a station wagon that became a huge Buick as more kids left¬† for college. I could always sleep on the floor of those huge cars as they purred going home. They always left for the trip home at night or late afternoon knowing we would sleep most of the way home. I always cried when we left to go back to ‘ole Wyoming. It was so green in Utah and we could always get the best apples and pears and corn and pine nuts to bring back. A piece of me was lost in Utah and never regained in those early years.
We were growing up and made fewer trips to Utah for Christmas. We still had the elegant decorated home and cool gifts, but something was missing.
I think I found it in several bottles hidden in book cases, laundry room and behind the towells in the  bathroom; it was filled with a clear water like fluid and I poured it out and filled it back up with water thinking I had fooled the offender which turned out to be my mother. This was in the fifth grade.
[ To be continued...]
[continued part 2]
( I apologize for any discomfort the reader may experience with the following words. Please remember that this how I saw it and your experience may have been different.)
As our immediate family began staying in Wyoming more for Christmas and Thanksgiving Holidays, the environment began to change for me. There were more arguments and yelling and slamming of doors. And of things breaking! Now mind you, that this was mostly during any holiday or family event. The rest of the time was a time bomb waiting to go off but was held off, for a time, because everyone learned to go their own way. Or get out of the way or at least go away. The secret code was to don’t ask and don’t tell anyone. We were the successful family living in a six bedroom home on a golf course. Shhhh….
I imagined that a golf course to a cowboy in the 60’s was about as useless as tits on a boar! We were living the California lifestyle that most people did not know existed. My father was one of the first color TV dealers in the whole state. We were the only ones who had affluence to enjoy early brainwashing by the boob tube. And we did. The first remotes were magnets that struck little pitch forks that would change channels. If you walked into a room with one of these TV’s all you had to do was shake you car keys and the TV set would go nuts, but it was fun to screw up someone else’s show. It was not a TV yet but a Television Set. The control of the remote was king even in those days. We spent many hours, if not years, watching the best quality color TV on the planet. All of our friends would come over to become useless blobs of flesh sitting on our dining room or rec. room floor. We had it made!
In the summer we took golf lessons and played in forced leagues to prove we were normal. I am still a normal lousy golfer who has never learned to enjoy that stupid game, and yet, I want to relax and enjoy it as so many of my friends do. It is a mystery! I even chose a set of clubs as my twenty-fifth reward for lasting that long with General Motors. I have used them once or twice but they look cool and has a cart and even a new box of balls which I lost in ruffs and water hazards the first time I went out. I always defeat myself playing golf. If I have to lose against my self every-time, why play. That’s a no-brainer to me!
On the other hand, my dad used to play two golf balls at the same time. I believed he could play left or right handed clubs and seemed to always cheat. I was not into the new math of the sixties. He loved golf and my mother loved it even more. She was a consistent good little golfer and never took off those short white golf socks with the rabbit puffs on them. She tanned to resemble and old sun cracked Indian’s face with a slight grin burned in. It almost killed her when she could not play on a regular basis because of a foot injury; maybe it did kill her.¬† Things went down hill pretty fast from about that point.
Most of the rest of the summers were spent at the country club pool of which we lived almost across the street . I mean my little sister and I lived there all summer! I learned to swim just by being around it so much. We became brown and tanned like my mother but with out the cagey Indian persona my mom could get away with.  At least they knew where we were and it was free babysitting the TV could not compete with. When we got hungry we would sneak into the actual clubhouse and charge a huge plate of french fries and maybe a couple of burgers; cheese burgers were the new thing then. Those were my Wonder years! Then they ended following a series of events and my Christmas became homeless and lost.
[ to be continued...}
[Continued Part 3]
As I mentioned, the inverted Bell-curve of ¬†my parents’ dysfunction
continued on its’ predictable course of disaster. This was the
beginning of the rest of my life, of the things that shaped me and of
the things that did or did not happen. This could also be a lifetime
of discovery of who I am and why was I created; it has. It is much
like the journey to Mt Everest that I have always dreamed about. That
journey would take most of my life and my resources and I am not
really sure I want summit anyway because the torturous conditions may
kill me. But I still climb. I just want to get close and to feel the
experience.
This where I have failed. I have been afraid to feel Christmas fully.
I can be very negative about this season, and I have for many years. I
am fifty-five years old and I have always hated this time of year and
would shy away and became anxious about the perceived expectations and
the joy that was supposed to happen for me.
I have tried to finish this Christmas memo for the last two days, and
hoped to finish Christmas Eve. But then again I did not know where to
stop or start. So I have decided to reveal what I have discovered this
year. I read something or saw something which empowered me to lay this
down and see what happens.
I have learned that my brother Steve loves me; he told me so! That
meant so much to that he enjoyed my story and thanked me several
times!
I am still learning that Christmas is not about me. It is about Jesus.
Consider these lyrics from a song called, “Christmas Like a Child” by
a group called Third Day:
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Christmas Like A Child Lyrics
Artist(Band):Third Day
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I want to feel Christmas, how it used to be
With all of its wonder falling on me
This season has felt so empty, oh for quite a while
I want to feel Christmas like a child
I want to see snowflakes fall to the ground
My brothers and sisters all gathered around
Singing “Away In A Manager” as we sit by the fire
I want to feel Christmas like a child
It’s been so long now, I can’t say
Just when I lost my way
But I’m going back to how it was
When this day meant everything
And we spent our time remembering
The baby Child born for us
It’s all about Jesus, asleep in the straw
This infant, this King, this Savior for all
So I don’t need bells to be ringing
‘Cause I’ll join with angels singing
Gloria
And I can feel Christmas like a child
I want to feel Christmas like a child…
Thank you for being a part of my Christmas this year!
-M
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This post was written by keithblog on December 16, 2009
