When this topic came up, I recall parts of scenes, bits of memories, flashes of insights and wonder what are memories and what are remembrances of what I’ve been told through the years of what really happened.
It’s as if Mom and my older brothers have gone to Midnight Mass. I am laying in bed with my three and two-year old sisters; dad is out on the couch holding the baby. We are in the semi-darkness. I think I’m sleeping and the next thing I know there is tearing and Christmas wrap and boxes and dresses and a big mess all over the bed. My two younger sisters are pulling things out of presents.
I don’t know how it ended that night. I know the next day early in the morning we opened up boxes that were not wrapped as pretty as they had been. Each of my sisters and I had navy and white matching plaid dresses to wear to church. My brothers had holiday looking shirts to wear to my aunt’s for Christmas celebrations. We have pictures as proof.
In early December that year, an aunt from Ontario mailed a parcel which was then hidden in the girl’s room. The day it had come the six oldest kids had seen shiny paper presents. It had been secreted away and stashed somewhere. We were all wondering what could be in those shiny presents.
While Mom was at midnight mass, I think that parcel was attacked. Someone had found what they were searching for.
December 19, 2016
ellensagh 