CHRISTMAS MEMORIES

Posted on June 11, 2009 - Filed Under The Marina Experiment | 3 Comments

I remember asking for a doll named Tiny Tiny Tears. I liked her because she cried “real tears,” the ad said. Santa told me that if I was very very good, and obeyed my father and my mother, I would get Tiny Tiny Tears next week. I never got Tiny Tiny Tears.

I remember wanting to take my presents into my room, and year after year being told I had to keep them under the tree until my father could pose me with them and take a picture. My father was a relentless cold draft.

I remember spending months constructing an elaborate village out of cardboard (under my father’s strict direction) and he set it up under the tree filled with tiny lights and my mother’s friends’ children trampled the village and then broke a fire truck on my head and I got stitches.

I remember asking for a guitar and my father said I wasn’t good enough to play.

I remember my parents had a Christmas eve open house and there were days and days of preparation and mother and I laid everything out on the fancy English china on the Portuguese tablecloth with the Italian glassware and the slide projector and screen were set up to show our European travel so my father could brag. Nobody came. It was impossibly sad and my father made jokes about it and blamed it on the weather. My mother must have been crushed, but I saw no emotion.

Comments

3 Responses to “CHRISTMAS MEMORIES”

  1. Chandler on June 28th, 2009 7:52 pm

    I never got that cruel note, but I had stuff like that hanging over my head throughout my life. From elements like this, I relate. I do think you are a “bad girl,” as I am a “bad boy,” in a good way.
    Some Santa, huh? Coal in your stocking.

    ox Chandler

  2. marina on June 28th, 2009 8:10 pm

    according to a palm reader i saw many years ago, I am a “very, very very, very bad girl.”

  3. John on December 29th, 2009 10:15 pm

    My mother told me there was no such thing as Santa Claus when I was 6.

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