I completed the Christmas gift for my mom. A handmade photo album with labeled copies of photos. It’s nothing spectacular, but hopefully it’ll do the trick. Selfishly, I want her to stop stealing other people’s family photos. Stick with our family! We’re good looking, photogenic and interesting! Also, I want to give her some shot of remembering our names. I’ve tried to make it almost interactive.
It’s a pretty fancy plain white three ring binder I purchased at Staples, and I’ve got photo pages from years ago when I was doing more of my own photography and worked at a McAlister Camera. Since I have about 10 photo albums in my grandmother’s hope chest in my living room, I thought I’d just flip through and pick out about 40 photos to copy. The photos range from her in high school homecoming to my high school graduation. Granted, giving her a book of pictures from when we were all much younger may not help much, but if she can at least recognize names and faces she used to know, maybe that’s something?
Here’s one page:
I figure since I’m the daughter, I get to put a lot of photos of me in there. Some labels just say “Burg Age 2” and some actually say, “Daughter: Burgundie”.
Photos of other family members have their relationship to her and then the person’s name.
Father: Stan. Mother: Carolyn. Parents: Stan and Carolyn. Brother: Stan. Nephew: Stan. Yeah, in our family, if you forget someone’s name, try calling him Stan, and you’ll have a good shot of getting it right. That was truer when my grandfather was alive, of course. So, as much as I might tease my ex-in-laws with Nicholases out the wazoo, we’ve got Stans out the wazoo.
Putting the pictures in a three ring binder, I figured she could open it up, take them out, and investigate them closer. She will more than likely try to take the pictures out of their little sleeves. They’re only printed on regular copy paper, so there is a risk of them getting torn, but she seems to still understand the concept of being gentle. She picked up the bunnies very carefully the other day, and she’s very careful with some of the vases and things in her room. Just because she doesn’t understand words doesn’t mean she has lost all ability to be a human. And thank goodness for that. With all the regression she’s going through, thankfully she’s not getting the energy and rambunctiousness of a 6 year old. Oh. That would be terrible.
In the photo album, I did try to load up on photos from different Christmases. Maybe she can still understand Christmas visually. It was, and still is, a big holiday in our family. Some of the folks in my family are religious, so there is a bit of Jesus involved but, for the most part, Christmas is an evening of celebrating each other as family. In years past, it has been a big fest of opening presents and eating. This year we’ve put a cap of $20 on any gift, and we each drew one name out of a basket. So instead of spending gobs of money on 12 presents purchased in a panic (I’m speaking for myself), we will be bringing just a few presents purchased with a lot of thought and good intention. This has lifted a huge weight off my shoulders this year as I am terrible at buying gifts.
This year, I’ve felt a bit like I was 20 something again, broke and hand-making gifts. Hopefully with the addition of 20 more years of experience my hand-made gifts are of higher quality. I can’t go into detail here because I don’t know if the person whose name I drew reads my blog! Super secret! Being able to focus on just a few key people has made my gifts much more thoughtful. I’ve been able to spend time creating and even more time wrapping. This is what Christmas is supposed to feel like, in my mind.
When I think of Christmas, there are a few movies that really epitomize it for me.
1) A Christmas Carol. I love Victorian England, and have loved it even before I knew about all things Steampunk. I love the cobblestone and shop fronts. I love Dickens’ humor; “There’s more gravy than grave about you.” And, I’m slightly smitten with Scrooge himself. He starts out as a closed off, cold hearted man who clings so closely to money even though he doesn’t spend it. At the end, he learns how to be a friend, how to love, how to feel, and he becomes a warmer man for it.
2) It’s a Wonderful Life. A long time ago the feeling of Christmas was found in my best friend at the time. She’s a beautiful person, an artist, a dancer, and extremely funny. We were driving around Columbus Christmas morning mis-quoting Jimmy Stewart. Everything we saw, we’d point at it and say in our worst Jimmy voice, “Merry Christmas you old stop sign. Merry Christmas you old Kroger. Merry Christmas you old dog peeing on a fire hydrant.” We got hysterical. Every Christmas morning, I do that very thing throughout the house. “Merry Christmas you old boyfriend. Merry Christmas you old buckwheat pancake.”
3) The Ref. Well, because I love holiday movies that involve dysfunctional families. I identify.
4) Polar Express. Because I still believe in Santa Claus and I love trains. My feeling on this whole thing is if a mysterious and awesome train rolls up in front of your house at midnight Christmas morning, GET ON IT!
I’m sure there are other Christmas movies that I could add to this list like Nightmare Before Christmas and The Grinch. Those movies are required viewing the day of Christmas, but I don’t watch them repeatedly throughout the season in order to get me into the Christmas spirit. I just love the music in those movies Christmas morning.
When it comes to music, though, my favorite is due to my mother. The Vienna Choir Boys. I have a Pandora station dedicated to the Vienna Choir Boys Christmas music. Listening to this music takes me back to our Christmases in our little apartment over my grandfather’s law office. She’s crank up The Boys and we’d decorate the tree.
Mom also had one of these:
I don’t know what you call this. A decoration? A candle holder?
This thing was magic to me as a kid. The heat moves the little cherubs around in a circle. It was so special to get that set up, turn off the lights, and then watch it spin in its own candlelight.
Overall, my mother just made Christmas so magical for me. The way she magically got things into my stocking for 12 days prior to Christmas, the angels and candles thing, and just the overall feeling she was able to create. Clearly it has made a huge impression on me and has stuck with me all these years. I suppose that’s what makes me so sad about the fact that my mother doesn’t understand Christmas anymore. Maybe she just doesn’t understand the word. Maybe if she sees Christmas lights, if she sees a decorated tree, if she sees a present, it will all make sense.
But, if she doesn’t understand, that’s ok. Christmas is really just about being with family, right? So by being together on Christmas, we’re making Christmas, as Jack Skellington says.
My Mother, Her Dementia and Where I Fit 