By Maylon Rice
A personal excerpt from my daily journal – Dec. 25, 2004 – now 20 years ago.
It is about a Christmas morning, now 60 years ago.
“This Christmas Day, a rather mild morning, reminded me on the first Christmas mom (now deceased almost four years), my brother, Iry and I had, in 1964, after our daddy died.
We had in late spring, moved back to Paw Paw and Granny Brown’s 80-acre farm along what was then State Highway 15, just south of the North Steel Bridge near Warren.
It was a tough summer and a sad fall, adjusting to our father’s sudden and tragic death.
And now, all of a sudden, it was Christmas.
We had gotten up and rushed into the little living room around the scrawny little live cedar tree we got off Mr. Lewis Halligan’s pasture, with permission, about a week ago. We had a hodgepodge of ornaments, but no lights, my mom, was so scared of a fire.
Santa has left us some gifts, but no sooner than we started unwrapping gifts driving up in our yard was Uncle Lonnie and Aunt Claudia Belle Brown, my mother’s brother and sister-in-law, in their pickup truck.
They entered our little house with their arms full of wrapped packages.
Uncle Lonnie had a very large box – which Iry and I didn’t waste any time finding out it was a small scale, battery-operated pinball machine.
It had steel ball-bearings that banged around and made lots of noise as the points tallied on the battery lighted scoreboard.
In all the excitement, me being just 9 at the time, I just blurted out: “Where did you find this!”
I was so excited. To my amazement Uncle Lonnie said he “didn’t know. You boys better ask your Aunt Claudia Belle.”
Today, as I look back on the Christmas morning, it wasn’t the all-fun-loving Uncle who made that Christmas – it was our childless Aunt.
She knew just the right gift to get all their nieces and nephews.
And she always did.
Each and every year, and more than a decade of seasons since, I see more and more of her loving fingerprints were imprinted on my life.
She gave me a pair of nice gloves that Christmas morning and I wore them for years thereafter.
Always an encourager, and a silent stickler for academics. I miss her so on this Christmas morning – a phone call is not possible, nor is a note or a lengthy letter.
She’s been gone 33 years, dying of a stroke, due to high blood pressure.
Uncle Lonnie, he’s now been gone 7 years.
I’ll find time tonight in my prayers to honor her memory……and those others like her in my family, who always looked after others ahead of themselves and made holidays like this Christmas and others so special.
Cling not to the gifts, the decorations or the food this holiday. Cling to the memories and the stories that define you and your family.
Those are the Pastimes that serve you all year – long after the fancy wrapping paper and Yule decorations are taken down and stored for another year.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Don’t be sad, the hot, wet tears of my happiness, just flow for her memory and the memories of her and a legion of other family members, all looking down and wishing everyone in Bradley County a very Merry Christmas in 2024.
