Hey, Dad is eating Santa's cookies! (Innocence Lost-Circa 1968)

So, dear reader; Yes this is ANCIENT history.  I'm that old.  Most of you are too.  But I call your attention to the photo.   That's me in the too small pink dress, my little sister all smiles with the curly hair.   I am eight and a half years old, my future husband to be has just  received his draft card and will be in the U. S. Army in three months. Nixon was just elected President, and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated earlier that year, and the Democratic Convention in Chicago had riots in the street.  Yeah, that 1968.

So a year or so prior, we had moved to our new home on the south side of our town, and it was everything my Mom and Dad could hope for. Probably a bigger mortgage than they had bargained for, and with inflation and growing daughters with bad eyes and crooked teeth, expenses they didn't really plan for. Hence, my belief that maybe new Christmas dresses weren't in the budget  that year, so my dress I wore in first grade I was still wearing in third grade. Proof; right there in that picture.  But no, there too... are lots of gifts. I think I was having a bad day, and just insisted on wearing the too small dress, because truthfully-- there's a bit of this here too; being eight and a half was not too much fun. I was dorky, wore glasses, with coltish legs that grew three inches that year, and a dumb haircut and big huge molars growing in. Weird and dorky. Right there, that phase lasted about five years.  Ugh. I really wanted to be little and cute like my sister, and play with baby dolls and get all excited about Christmas. But there was this lingering doubt?

Days before, I went with my sister to the big department store downtown, where Santa Claus would have you sit on his lap, and you could tell him what you wanted.  I don't think I was an overly big child but Santa groaned when he picked me up, "Wow, you're a big girl!"  He smelled funny.  Not like the Santa I imagined the year before.  Strange shopping trips with my mom,  looking at things that we wanted Santa to bring us. Curious and strange.  Just this sense of doubt. You know?   Between third and fourth grade, little whispers from your classmates.  Not really knowing, not really sure.

So our family had this Christmas Eve tradition, just like many other families across the country. But ours was to celebrate Christmas Eve by going out to dinner at my parents favorite Supper Club, and then drive around for about an hour looking at lights at the Smelter Hill and all around town. The thinking behind this, our Dad told us, was to give Santa enough time to come to our house while we were at dinner and driving around.  Naturally, this was TORTURE for my sister and I.

So why were we not at Church? Well, our deaf parents had a "Deaf" church  that had their Christmas service the Sunday before Christmas. We weren't secular by any means, but going to a "hearing" church or Mass wasn't something we ever did.   We had the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph and a Christmas tree, Angels and a Star at home. So we did our thing on Christmas Eve at our home.

So, Christmas Eve 1968, Mom had ordered my sister and me to the car where Dad is waiting for us and has warmed up the Chevy Impala.   "You go wait in car with Dad.We go eat soon." So we two girls bounce into the back seat. I reach over the front seat  for the radio and turn it up loud.  The AM station is airing the "SANTA CLAUS WATCH broadcast - LIVE FROM NORAD at the NORTH POLE".  It must be true. It's on the radio. The announcer says, we have a sighting of a red light and an UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT on the radar screen heading over North America."  Wow! That was impressive to me.    Then Mom opens the car door, and Dad signs...."Oh. I forgot something". The checkbook or something like that.  He leaves. My moms orders us again. "Stay here, Dad will be back soon, then we go."   We buy it.  But then, my sister looks at me with alarm and says, "WAIT! I forgot the carrot for the reindeer!"  She tears out of the car, and my mom looks at me with panic and signs "WHAT? WHY FOR??? Why is she gone?" I sign "she forgot the Carrot."  My mom signs "NO!! Go get her, Dad is putting presents under the tree!"

Um? what?   I walk into the house, and there's my sister, whimpering and crying that Dad was eating the cookies we left for Santa.  Dad signs.. "oh, sorry. I was hungry".  My sister grabs another cookie and puts it on the plate, and Dad signs "please go wait in car."  I think my sister was so upset about the carrot and the cookies she didn't see all the presents now under the tree that weren't there earlier.   But I saw them, hey there was a bunk bed crib thing unwrapped, and a bunch of big boxes with Santa paper that weren't there an hour ago. So...what's the deal?

I fidgeted all through dinner. If my sister knew anything she was oblivious 15 minutes later, happily playing with her milkshake and pickles at dinner.  I couldn't figure it out. Later in the car ride, I was annoyed by the radio announcer broadcast about Santa Claus sightings over Argentina, and how he was en-route to Mexico.  I was bored, and the driving around Smelter Hill and the neighborhood made me sleepy.  We finally got home, and opened the door, and my sister screamed with delight!  The bunk bed baby crib! The presents.   But for me, I saw them all three hours earlier, and there wasn't anything different. For me, Santa didn't come.

So the photo tells a lot.  Taken moments before we could open  our presents. I looked at it recently and tried to remember why the face? Why the pinched look and crossed arms? A too small dress that was for Easter, a Spring dress on a cold winters night. Cold probably.  A little lost look perhaps?   So when you see an eight, nine even a ten year old during this holiday season, know this.  They try. They really do.  They hopefully wish, they usually get things they ask for in our over commercialized-retail season.  But I look back at this picture, some xxx years ago, and I remember that feeling. Innocence lost.  I think It's interesting to remember that year in our nations' history too. Weren't we all a little lost, dazed and confused?

But I don't want leave you with an impression that it was a unfortunate circumstance. It wasn't. It's a story my sister and I share and laugh about, and we treasure those Christmas memories.  We have lots of them, and hey, that night I got the coolest Barbie doll ever.  Francie.  Her ponytail grew out of her head.