The other day, my husband asked me what my favorite Christmas gift was as a child - and I sat there for a minute and then I told him, “I don’t remember any gifts, because we didn’t really get any gifts.”
If you asked me about my childhood, I would tell you all the beautiful things and all of the extremely vivid memories that I have. We had 2 cherry trees in our backyard, and we would spend hours climbing it and shaking the tree, pretending that it was snowing. I learned how to ride a bike in my backyard, using my neighbors bicycle that was way too tall for me. We melted crayons in the sun and made playdough. My sisters and I took popsicle sticks and turned them into the most elaborate paper dolls. We designed clothing and shoes and accessories using paper. We would go into the kitchen and sneak fermented shrimp from the batch that my mom was making. And we spent hours and hours in the hammock, snuggled between two beautiful and gorgeous cherry trees.
My childhood was so beautiful and exciting and happy. I never felt inferior because were poor, even though we literally had 9 people living in a 3 bedroom house with a single bathroom. Or that there were barely any Christmas gifts under the tree, or that I didn’t go on field trips that required money. I always knew we didn’t have money - you never asked mom for money, ever - but it never made me feel any kind of way. We weren’t sad because we didn’t have money. We weren’t angry, or jealous, or bitter. Money was just something you either had or didn’t, and we just didn’t have it.
When my dad passed away in his 40’s — only 3 weeks after discovering he had lung cancer, I remember our entire family packing up to move from our 3 bedroom house to another house in the low-income side of town. And as devastating or as embarrassing as I’m sure it was, I only remember feeling excited that we were moving into a new home. I didn’t even realize that you had to qualify to live in these homes, that you literally had to be at poverty level. I was just happy to be in a new space, and to have a park right outside our backyard.
I don’t even know where I’m going with any of this, except to say, I don’t remember any gifts because we just didn’t get any. But, every single year, like clockwork, my mom would get all of us a box of Old Dutch chips and wrap them under the tree. It was a whole thing. We’d put the tree up, which only had lights and garland and candy canes because hello, what were ornaments, lol. And then she’d bring down a box of ‘gifts’ that she collected throughout the entire year from her ‘mall’ (mall = thrift store), and we would all sit down beside her, each one of us wrapping a gift or two. We did this every single year and it is one of my most vivid and favorite memories. And it was beautiful - these perfectly shaped boxes filled the Christmas tree, and no one but us knew that they were just chip boxes.
For as little as we had, my mom sure made us feel like we had everything. And all I can do is hope that I can share those same sentiments with Grey. Now to find a box of Old Dutch chips for our tree… ❤️