Sentimental time of year

This is from the home we sold- the empire fireplaces were gorgeous!

I just noticed it has been two weeks since I updated, which means it has also been two weeks since I visited my friends blogs. :-\

This is my very favorite time of year. I am a sap for all of the "made for t.v." Christmas movies, although granted, have less time this year to savor them as I have in years past. Instead I am savoring my moments with my family, and enjoying the little times of quiet and solitude as they become available.

Something has happened in my family that makes me sad. They have lost Christmas. Only one of my mothers sisters is "keeping Christmas" and its spirit of family and generosity. The others are all bogged down in family problems, health crises, and everyday mundane tasks and either can not or *will not* take the time to honor and appreciate what we have been blessed with- the family ties that we should be working to hold dear. By the same token, only one of Duanes sisters is keeping Christmas as well. Not to imply they aren't exchanging gifts. No! Everyone exchanged gifts and signs up for gift swaps, etc. I am not speaking about presents. I am speaking about the gathering together of loved ones to celebrate family and friendships. The warmth and cherishing the Christmas of yesteryear, while creating new memories for others to come to celebrate and remember fondly later on.

No one grasped this as much as my dear friend Eleanor Chapman.

Eleanor and her husband Gerald lived next door to my duplex apartment in the middle 90's. They were in their middle 80's, and she and I became friends when our dogs became friends. I began walking their small terrier, Lady, when I would walk my shihtzu Smitty, and afterwards she and her husband would invite me to dinner or to a long chat on her screened front porch. I was new to the town and the neighborhood, and appreciated being adopted by them as my surrogate family. I believe they appreciated my friendship in return, as I never tire of listening to an elderly persons stories of their youth, and enjoy looking at their photo albums and listening to them fondly relate about their children, grand children and great grandchildren.

Eleanor and I went to lunch usually about once a month. She had only learned to drive at the age of 80, and would joke that she was able to pass her drivers test because she made a promise to God to never exceed the speed limit. Nor did she! Cars passed us on the left and on the right, and she would smile and laugh and say "God told me 'Eleanor, you go one mile over the speed limit, and you are on your own!'" She took this warning to heart, and made sure to never come within 15 miles of the limit, incase she should accidentally pass it and be left without a co-pilot. After one of these loooong drives to lunch, we decided to get takeout and eat at her house with Gerald. When the order came through, she slapped my hand as I gave her the 2 cents over the dollar amount. She said "Thats alot of change!"

When we returned to her house, she showed me her jar of change. All year round, she would save every bit of quarters, dimes, nickels and even pennies left over from any expense and add it once a month to her Christmas Club at her bank. Having an entire 98 cents was alot of coin to add to her jar, and she forbade me to tell Gerald that I had offered her two cents instead.

She started wrapping her gifts in October. Everyone had multiple gifts in their large family, and all of them purchased on a senior citizens fixed income. She would ask me to come help her wrap and we would share stories about Christmas while she baked a cake or a pie in the kitchen. They had a forced air furnace that burned oil and her entire house smelled so delectably warm and toasty. My house never gets that warm!

But it wasn't her jar of change and her gifts that made me feel like she kept Christmas in her heart. It was the smile she would share with her husband pointing out the ornament their youngest son (then 45) had made as a child on their tree. Showing me the hand painted snowman their great granddaughter had made. Smiling at how beautiful her multi colored tree had "turned out" and expressing surprise that it was "even prettier than the year before!" and the fact that all of her grown sons and her daughter traveled across the globe to share Christmas with her and her husband. Every year. She cooked a huge feast in her small kitchen, and sons, daughter, grandchildren and great grandchildren smashed so close together you would think they were vying for a seat at a 5 star restaurant just to get a plate of Eleanors food and visit with family. I loved visiting her late in the afternoon on Christmas Day and seeing the reminents of the mornings festivities- tattered gift wraps and ribbon lying about (she hated the pre-fab gift bags), cups of coffee and cocoa steaming on the furniture (without coasters!), and everyone commenting on what a lovely day it had been thus far. Brianna would bang on the piano and everyone would beg Eleanor to play.

I wasn't living next door to the Chapmans when her son called me in 1997 to tell me she had terminal cancer. Her daughter had flown out from California and her son from Ohio to stay with her until the end. Eleanor wanted to make sure everything was taken care of and tended to her own funeral preparations. She worried over where Gerald would go. And two days after the last day I visited her, she passed on quietly at home.

A couple months later, Gerald called me and asked if I could come by their home on my way through town. He said Eleanor had left something for me. Not sure what, I stopped by that week. It was a couple weeks before Christmas. And there on the table was a CHRISTMAS PRESENT. Wrapped in Eleanors clumsy way of tying off the bow, in right festive paper.

Gerald confided that she had spent her first month after her diagnoses Christmas shopping so that everyone would have a present from her that year even if she were not there to celebrate.

I nervously unwrapped my present and burst into tears and laughter when I saw it was a bottle of "Forever Crystal" perfume from the middle 80's. I have no clue where she found it. Shopping for over a dozen people with only coins from a large jar stored at your bank doesn't afford a person with much capital. It was the funniest tackiest gift anyone has ever gave me. And also the most loving. Because she really did adopt me into her family, and at a time when she knew she had very limited days left on this earth, she wanted me to have a special Christmas to. If the "thought is what counts" then hers was worth millions.

The bottle sits in a medicine cabinet at my mothers. Next to it is her half empty bottle of "Emerald" perfume which I asked for. One I occasionally open to remember her, and one I like to pull out and giggle about when I am feeling sentimental and wanting to keep Christmas in my heart.