This Christmas I am working on the standalone memoir currently titled Memories in Missouri. I like to share bits before publication so you may relish old senses of the season (see Easter Memories). I do not remember an earliest Christmas memory; the ones you may even recall may not seem to define Christmas today, but suppose we ought to reach back to these times in the spirit of truth. I also believe childhood often gave us the clearest vision.

I remember the glimmer of my first pair of diamond snowflake earrings came from my grandmother, Annie, after a concert by Greek pianist Dino Kartsonakis in Branson, Missouri, where women sang in big hair and fluffy coats. Annie's hair, gold and stiffly curled, smelled like Mom, who often lent me and my sister, Kelly Grace, to our grandparents to enjoy alone. Christmas offered many times to be apart from parents. These nights shaped us to think of the holidays as not a time to be always in the familiar, although the days were indeed shepherded.
A never-before recorded memory was when the four of us were once taken up to the hill of the shepherd. We flew an elevator up a tower, narrow and even more dark than the woods around us. At the point was a thousand miles of light deeply distant, sparkling lisps of stars. We brought that light home, as fiber optic wands glowed in our hands, thinking about the gift of our grandparents on the forty-five minutes back to Ozark.
Winter brought along relative quietness in our family cottage; stray cats and dogs, baking, learning to crochet. Missouri was gamble for snow, but when it came, it was usually a blizzard. Breathless, icicle magic.

On lazy mornings we curled up by the gas-lit fireplace in the kitchen. Just as we patted mud cakes in the summertime, the dark nights saw us rolling cinnamon dough or licking whisks of pumpkin batter. We made both loaf and muffins and the loaf was saved for breakfast. Oh, how much you tried to clean your spatula bare to enjoy every sliver of spice!
My own self-assigned task as an elementary-aged child was to plan a Christmas show complete with Trans-Siberian Orchestra audio and laser lights taped to the wooden edge of the basement stage. When you work with a cast of six-year-old cousins, you had to go into it wearing a director's hat. It wasn't a show without a drop-out kid in tears.
Christmas was truly the season for stage bows and velvet bows. The earliest shows were done standing in first position on the carpeted chorale hall where feet were stockinged and hands held a steady bow as a three-year old violinist. I loved the stage, but not for the music; I simply liked practice and performing, exhibition and celebration, and the frosted sugar cookies you got for 'doing a good job.'

Productions were essential to our family. I see me dressed as Princess Belle, itchy but poised, when we went to see world-class violinist Shoji Tabuchi performing at a Christmas show on the Branson strip. Music ran through the great oak hutch in the center of Annie and Papa's house with bands like Benny Goodman and voices like Frank Sinatra. Desserts were something Annie excelled in, though we all continue to ask for her sweet potatoes plopped with giant marshmallows and sweet cinnamon sugar, and her four cheese mashed potatoes. I still smell her pumpkin bread with white icing, homemade banana pudding, and pumpkin pie.
There were two main Christmas experiences, and we did not have to leave Missouri for either: Annie and Papa's home on the lake and Gigi and Poppy's home on the farm. It isn't surprising I didn't smile in either of the below photos (top: the lake house, bottom: the farm). I was the ironic combination of leader and clown, troublemaker and parent patrol. It helped being the oldest.

Christmas at the farm was like playing Clara from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker. You wore dresses and curls as you escalated up a grand staircase, overlooking a high-ceilinged foyer with a twelve-foot axe-chopped Christmas tree with a river of presents trickling underneath. So many children, babies, casseroles, and gifts that would be ripped open, assembled, and flown through the air until midnight when it was time to say goodbye to the horses and the uncles and put on your brown buttoned coat...
I could write on, but my own family Christmas awaits. Today we will wear pink and green velvets and bundle up for a cloudy ride to a candlelight Christmas service, all of us children now beyond the age of velvet bows and sparkly shoes. But I will still wear some stockings and place my feet in first position as I sing carols next to my sister, Kelly Grace.
The best thanks to the parents who combed these memories in the most careful, preserving manner, for letting us be children and cry on Christmas. Watching us eat too many sweets, warning us gently, with room to independently learn. Giving us time to get cold outside making a difficult Frosty only to come in and warm with apple cider. I think it nice Christmases, though they can be colorful and complete, do not have to be clean. Whatever Christmas you are having, may it be with all its messes, warm and golden, in remembrance this too shall become a memory someday. Merry Christmas!
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