Christmas With the Gingers'!

This is going to be kind of a strange Christmas for Miss Ginger- it will be the first time in her 29+++ years that she will awaken on Christmas morning alone in the house! Her entire childhood she was, of course, home with the family, and up until the day Momma Ginger died, Miss Ginger always managed to get home on Christmas Eve to wake up on Christmas morning with Momma. After Momma G passed, Blaineman was here, and the first year that he was ex facto, Bubba John made it in from NM. But he was recently here for TG, so he's not going to make it for Christmas. It's really no big deal, it's just kinda the thought of it that's weird.

Miss G's not going to be alone all day on Christmas.. no way! Actually, she and Bubba Brian were going to make Christmas Eve dinner together, but we decided that with only each other to mock, there would be no real sport in that. So we made reservations instead to a new, trendy restaurant in a very trendy neighborhood, which should have a crowd just prime for Holiday mocking! Then on Christmas Day his kids will be with him, so I'll go over for the day and eat, drink, and be Mary.... err, merry.

Today is Christmas Eve Eve, which was always a very special day for Little Boy Ginger, because it was the day Poppa Ginger always started his Christmas shopping. It typically started at Momma's favorite nursery in Lake Charles, and would typically end at Poppa's favorite liquor store. Poppa would select a nice camellia, or citrus tree, or shrub, which would be hidden in the storage room off the carport until Christmas morning. And the joke was always the same: "I'm giving you the tree, but the boys are giving you the hole!" Momma would pick the spot, and sometime that day we would dig the hole and plant the tree for her. I'm sure the citruses are all dead by now, but I'll bet if you drove past the old place in Lake Charles that Huge Professor Sargent Camellia on the southeast corner of the house is still there, covered with red blooms in the middle of winter.

Nobody loved Christmas more than Poppa, except maybe his Mother, Mammaw. Every year Mammaw would go to the drugstore and buy rolls of cotton (I don't think you can even buy those anymore) and then go in the yard to find a dried shrub or branch to make her tree. She would spend hours wrapping every branch to look like they were covered in snow, and then decorate it with strings of beads and lot of shiny ornaments. She didn't put lights on it, but she DID have one of those 50's rotating light that changed colors that she shined on it. She was always so proud of it, and Momma G always marveled at how much work she put into it and how beautiful her tradition was. And the whole way home in the station wagon we would laugh our asses off because we all thought the damn thing was so ugly!!! Poppa G would act like we were hurting his feelings by laughing at his Mother (and his childhood memories) which was lost on us, but he did admit it was pretty ugly, and he liked that we enjoyed the tradition, even if it was just to mock it!

In 1972, Christmas with the G's turned kinda grim when Miss G's maternal grandmother passed away on Christmas day. Zha-Zha (that's what Baby G named her- isn't that FABULOUS!) had taken ill on Thanksgiving that year, and was in the hospital for the entire holiday. She had been crippled with rheumetoid arthritis since her 40's, and back then there wasn't a lot to relieve her suffering except aspirin. She went through Bufferin (remember that stuff?!) the way an elephant goes through peanuts, and after 30 years I think it pretty much ate a hole through her stomach. She wouldn't let us kids see her in the hospital the whole time she was sick, because she didn't want us to remember her as a sick old lady in a hospital. I'm kind of glad, because I do remember her fondly, and only found out later that she and my mother had a very tumultuous relationship and a period of not speaking. But all of that was before Baby G came along, and Baby G was Zha-Zha's favorite, and Baby G loved her very, very much. Miss G likes to think that her closeness with Zha Zha brought Momma and her mother back together!

Anyway, that's enough G Family Robinson for tonight! Maybe Miss G will come up with some more tidbits for tomorrow!