Warm Christmas Memories, Part 1

This month has always been my favorite time of year. I have so many warm memories of this festive season. So I decided that for the next four weeks I would do a series of reminiscences of Christmases past. Here's the first:

This isn't my actual childhood window,
but mine was just as frosty during the
winter. Ah, the joys of the single
pane window.

Outside the blankets, it's icy cold, but underneath them, so numerous it's difficult to move, it is toasty warm. My bedroom is a converted attic and our house's heat source is a floor furnace that does an admirable job of warming the downstairs but is basically meaningless up here. But I don't mind at all. The best sleep is cold room sleep.

I'm half awake; it's a half-hour before I have to get up for school. I could get up, but I have no intention of stirring before I'm called. This time is too delicious. Wafting up from downstairs are sounds and smells that my pre-teen mind has no idea will become so precious to me as an adult. Mom has been up for a bit, and during this time of year--the weeks before Christmas--that means two things: blasting Christmas music on the stereo and baking delectable Christmas treats too numerous to list.

It just wouldn't sound right to me
without the pops and hiss of vinyl,
but if you want to try it, go to Amazon.
It's only $5.99 for the whole album.

We have lots of Christmas music, all of which hid in the bottom of the stack of LPs until Thanksgiving. This is long before the days of iPods, CDs, or even cassette tapes. Dad, along with the rest of the country, hasn't yet given in to the commercial excess of starting Christmas in mid or even early November. But from the morning after Thanksgiving until early January, I am awakened by one of those records. I love every single one, but my favorite is The Star Carol by legendary country singer Tennessee Ernie Ford. His rich, silky baritone fills me with warmth on the frostiest morning.

Accompanying the music are the sounds and aromas of Mom working in the kitchen, splitting time between getting breakfast ready for the house, packing Dad's lunch, and baking the aforementioned Christmas goodies. Mom is famous in our circle of neighbors and family for her baking prowess. The list is seemingly endless: chocolate chip cookies, snicker doodles, Niemen Marcus cookies, fudge, toffee, snack mix, wedding cookies, sugar cookies--I could go on, but I'm getting fat just thinking about it.

I have no easily accessible pictures
from the time period. The
memories are still fresh, even if
the cookies aren't.

Mom annually bakes so much that most years we walk around the neighborhood, tins in hand, to share the bounty with older folks who don't have much Christmas to be cheerful about. Some years when I'm younger and frustrated about not getting to join my older siblings (I often joke I'm the fourth of three children because I came along unexpectedly almost five years after my brother Don, who Mom and Dad thought was going to be their last kid.), Mom soothes my tears by letting me join her in the kitchen. This is why I'll love cooking and baking as an adult--and why I'll have a sweet tooth until the day I die.  

Shortly before it's time to get up and get ready for school, I hear Mom come and slide back the door at the bottom of the stairs to let some warm air up. It's an accordion-style device that wasn't really designed for what Dad installed it for, but it works. The door opening only intensifies the sensory delights as whatever's in the oven just at the bottom of the stairs dances up and tickles my nose. I don't know how my brother can stay asleep through it, but he doesn't stir until a few minutes later when Mom yells up that breakfast is ready. I don't want to get up, not because I want to keep sleeping, but because where I am is just so perfect and part of me wishes that it can stay this way forever. But another part of me, even the me that's not yet old enough to understand why, knows that perfection doesn't last. So it's up into the frigid morning air to get dressed, trudge downstairs, and meet the day.



PS--I would be remiss if I didn't remind you one last time about my reading and signing event today from 4pm to 6pm. It's at Emmanuel Baptist Church, which is on the corner of 23rd and Liberty Streets. It's just up the hill from City Park, so when you're finished, you can go enjoy the lights. I know that's what I plan to do.

Preview of "Harry and the Redheaded Angel"

Thanksgiving through Christmas is my favorite time of year. I always thought as a writer that I would probably, at some point in time, do a collection of Christmas-themed stories. I haven't done that yet. And if you've read In the Shadow yet, you know that Christmas isn't exactly jolly in that story. So I was excited to get to tell a happier holiday tale in "Harry and the Redheaded Angel." It's not only a story of Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it's a story of great romance. As an added bonus, I wrote it during the hot summer months, so it took me temporarily to the chill air of November and December.

I thought this would be a good time to give you a little taste of the story. It's from the very beginning, when Harry meets his angel. Well, meets isn't completely accurate. He already knew her. He just didn't realize before that she was his angel. I'll let the story explain it. Here's the opening scene of "Harry and the Redheaded Angel."

I was running late—again. I was tempted to find a sparsely populated pew in the back after I shook hands with an usher who handed me a bulletin. The first strains of an old hymn, one I’d undoubtedly heard a thousand times before but the title of which I just couldn’t place, were filtering into the narthex as I swung the door open and stopped to get my bearings at the threshold to the sanctuary. Halfway through scanning the pews, I spotted my boss and only real friend in town flagging me down like one of those people who wave in an airplane after it’s landed. The ones wielding the flashlights with the long orange extensions on them. There’s probably a name for that job, but I’ll be darned if I know what it is. He was way down front and the service was just about to start. I found it uncomfortable walking all the way up the center aisle in front of the whole church. Especially since I’d only been here one time before. But Lucas McCain was not letting up, so just to get him to stop, I hurried to take a seat beside him.  

“Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” was the hymn. I really had heard it a thousand times. The pianist was really vamping it up, though, so I didn’t recognize it at first. I figured it out as she was finishing.  

“You barely made it,” whispered Lucas, scooting over to make room for me. “What happened?” 

“Guess,” I said, flipping through the bulletin without really looking at it.  

“Again?” 

“Again.” I glanced down the order of service, half paying attention. Something on the page caught my eye. “I wonder…” 

“Wonder what?” 

“Huh? Oh, nothing.” 

“What?” 

“It’s just the soloist. Same name as somebody I went to high school with.” 

“In West Virginia?” 

“No, the other place I went to high school.” 

He looked at me, his face deadpan. “Such disrespect. I just mean I doubt it’s her.” 

“Yeah,” I said. “Deanna Baxter’s probably a pretty common name.” 

“You know her well?” 

“No, she was a couple years behind me.” 

“But you remember her name?” 

“Dated my best friend for a while.” 

“Looker?” 

“I don’t know. She was only sixteen last I saw her. Redhead.” 

“You do like redheads.” 

“I do.” 

“Speaking of which, what are you going to do about J Lo?” 

“I don’t know. She’s getting really temperamental.” 

“I’d say. It’s not even that cold.” 

“Tell J Lo that.”  

It had become unseasonably cool early for Louisville, Kentucky, with the night before, November 1st, falling well below freezing.  

“You gotta do something about her,” he said. 

“Pay me a living wage and I’ll gladly move on.” 

He started to respond, no doubt with something to the effect that I was barely worth what he was paying me as it was. To which I would have said something to the effect of bite me, after which we both would have laughed too loudly for the setting. That was our relationship from the day we met. Never a serious word except when it came to work. And sometimes not even then. With some of the cases we worked, you couldn’t help but laugh. Others, it was laugh to keep from crying.  

But before he could speak, the heavens opened and my whole life changed.  I’d only been half listening to the pastor as he introduced the soloist. Lucas and I were busy gabbing. After a short piano introduction, she began singing. From that first note, I was captured, captivated, entranced. I was half afraid to look up, nearly convinced she was an angel and that her glory would blind me. As it turned out, I wasn’t far from right.  

Well, Shalan, I thought, better hope she’s beautiful because you’re going to marry her. Slowly, deliberately, I raised my eyes. Maybe it was coincidence or possibly divine intervention, but she looked right at me at precisely the same moment I focused on her. Probably mirroring mine, her eyes grew wide with recognition. It was Dee Baxter. My Dee Baxter. Well, to be fair, she was Otis’ Dee Baxter back in high school. She’s mine now, I thought.  


Want to read the rest? Well, you have two choices: wait until Thanksgiving week and get it on Smashwords or Amazon. Or join my mailing list and get the whole thing for free today! It's easy. Just put your email address in the box at the top of the page. You'll get a confirmation email and as soon as you confirm, you'll get a link to this whole novella absolutely free. And not just that. You'll get the first Shalan Adventure, Harsh Prey and a four-chapter preview of the third in my series, In the Shadow. All for the low cost of zippo.