I think I mentioned it before, but I don’t expect much from the holidays since my husband is a scrooge in the ‘it’s just another day’ sense, and I usually celebrate Yule lightly for my kids.
Since my daughter is living with me (temporarily!!) we got into the spirit, and I have loved having her here, doing the cookie thing, hanging lights, sending packages to people with the stuff we made. My husband has repeatedly reminded me he wasn’t getting excited about the holiday. I explained to him that when I was pregnant with my daughter (she is my youngest) I made a special wish for her; I wanted to enjoy it every day with every memory knowing that it was my last child so I would never get that ‘pang’ for another baby. I have always had “wishcraft” as part of my psychic makeup, so I went ahead and made a wish plan for her. My other two daughters had blue eyes and fair skin like their very german/dutch dad, so I wished for her to be dark eyed and olive skinned like my Syrian heritage. I wished for her to be my little peanut, my baby I could savor for a long time so I would never get the ‘need’ for another one.
She was born 6 weeks early due to decreased amniotic fluid, and they were concerned about intra-uterine growth retardation and dwarfism since she was so tiny compared to where she should be on the growth chart. They had to take her early, and were concerned about her lungs not being developed but didn’t have a choice because of the fluid issue.
When she was born (I stay awake and watch my cesarean sections) she was tiny, and the doctor said she was very tiny but perfect, no problems breathing at all, just super small and had the biggest brown eyes!! She was just under 5 pounds. When I picked her up my thumbs overlapped! I was so afraid of her!
It was before premie diapers, so we had to cut diapers down for a while. She was so gorgeous, her hands always looked just like miniature adult hands– never like ‘baby hands’. I enjoyed every day of her growing up as well as her sisters, and it was amazing to be able to purposefully store the memories of them and have the ability to do that.
She never crawled– she did this hand and foot thing where she got around before walking, but never crawled. When she found something interesting she would stop, put her head on the floor and play with it, so she was a tripod playing with the item upside down! It was hilarious and I did get a picture of it.
Back to my stocking. I share lots of stories with Ash, from my childhood. Lots of them are horrendous, and this holiday I have done my best to tell her about all the best memories I have regarding the holidays. That was the best part of the year. My mother was really outgoing, and went all out for Christmas/New Year’s.
In the mid to late 60’s it was a crazy time, I was 7-9 years old, and we went to LOTS of parties. One of my favorite parties was going to Milwaukee to spend time with my grandmother and uncle, and we would go to my uncle Gary’s party. He was a friend of my uncle. He had amazing parties! One year someone gave me a gift bag and there were mother of pearl sticky earrings in there, the kind that look like you have pierced ears. I thought they looked so cool! He worked for Burlington Northern railroad, and there was pads and pens in there too, and I loved anything having to do with writing and drawing, so that kept me busy for hours.
One of the snacks he had at the party were something very unusual– peanut fish. If you have never heard of this, peanut fish are the itty bitty tip of the inside of the peanut when you break it open, it is stuck to one side of the peanut and would be where the plant would grow if it were planted. It pops out when you separate a peanut.
He would have JARS of these! Can you imagine?? The taste was amazing! So different than peanuts themselves.
I told Ash about this, along with dozens of other stories.
When I got my stocking, she had taken the peanuts we were using for cookies and gone through them removing the ‘fish’, and put together a bag of them for my stocking.
Can you believe it??
What a kid.
And she still smells like baby powder we discovered the other day (which she always has) and her boyfriend and I were smelling her all over discovering where it was coming from, and it comes from right in front of her ears. Isn’t that cool??
What a kid. (she’s 24, but always my kid.)
