Theme 3

Every Christmas Eve my mom's half of the family holds a get together. We all travel the decrepit back roads into the woods to find my Grandmother's house in the tiny town of Medford. Grams house is set out in a blanket of trees at the end of a dead end road. Her little house use to be a fishing cabin back in the 70's for its easy access to the river. She has not done much with the house since she bought it in the early 80's so it's falling down around the edges. Also it is very small!

My mom, my brother Derek, and I are almost always the first to arrive with our gifts and food to pass around. We always bring a cheese and cracker plate with summer sausage. We pile into Grammy's house with her usuall greeting, "Hi! Don't let the cats out!" Derek immediantly vacates to the darkest corner out of the way behind the yellow table. It's usually safer behing the table once eveyone else gets there. While he does that, Mom and I enter our usuall christmas-present-stacking-jig. Mom grabbs a bag of presents to place somewhere near the sparse christmas tree with me right behind her. We usually get trapped between the coffee table, T.V., and couch on our retreat from the tree which makes us lose our balance and step on each others toes. This jig is repeated everytime someone new shows up, but the pace gets faster as the floor space decresses.

I always join my brother in the corner behind Grammy's kitchen table. It's a tight squeeze between the wall and the table, but it is better than sitting on the other end in the middle of traffic. Gram's house is so small that there is only a two foot wide path in between all the furniture. Tht makes it hard to move around, but what makes it even worse is that all the rooms are extra small. Derek and I always get the best seats to save our toes, or knee caps.

The next person to arrive at our christmas eve party is always a toss up between my Aunt Dawn and her gang, and my Aunt Carol and her husband. Both my aunts like to take their own sweet time about showing up. The usuall wait time for either one of them is as short as an hour. "When can we eat?" my brother always complains. "We have to wait for Dawn and Carol," is my Mom's response.

When my Aunt's decide to grace us with their presences is when the party starts. Everyone gathers around the kitchen table with their trays of food. Aunt Dawn, her boyfriend Randy, and Randy's son Cody always bring left overs from their other christmas party. The usual contents are sandwhiches and left over pie wrapped in aluminum foil. Aunt Carol and Uncle Johnny usually bring nothing for food and eat everyone elses, but last year she decided to bring baked scallops wrapped in bacon with bar-b-q sauce. It would have been nice is she hadn't brought anything because she gave us all food poisoning from under cooked seafood. Grammy always makes a small container of dip to pass around with chips.

The food never lasts long, and the talk of the old days begin. Derek and I sit in our little corner chewing the left overs while we listen to the same stories about our Mom, aunts, and uncle Ty's childhood.

"I can remember that time I went snowmobiling with Debbie, and lost her off the back," my Aunt Dawn roars across the room. "I got that snowmobile off that ice and headed down the path, went through this small space between the trees, and heard a 'poof'. I looked back and there was Debbie sitting in the snow between the trees!"

"Yeah, and she didn't come back and get me!" my Mom roared back with a smile on her face.

"Of course I wasn't! I knew you were going to hit me!" Aunt Dawn laughed back.

"Daddy had to take the snowmobile to come get me, and then beat me bloddy black and blue for it!" Mom retorted.

Story such as these are shot back and forth between the living room and kitchen for atleast an hour. Then comes Derek and mine favorite part, gifts! Passing out presents takes a while in my family because as soon as one person has a gift we all must stop what we are doing to see what that person gets. This process builds the excitment for our own presents.

Once everyone has their gifts open and have evaluated everything, the trading begins. Yeah, I said trading. My family is cheap this way. If they see something they like that someone else has they get the oppurtunity to trade.

"Hey," Aunt Dawns says to my mother, "you want to trade this orange ginger body lotion set for your lavendar set?"

"Sure," Mom replies, "I'm allergic to lavendar."

"Dawn?" Carol calls, "Do you want to trade this rooster towel set for that chickadee set?"

"Yep, the rooster towels go better with my kitchen."

Once all is settled, we pack up our stuff to head home. We usually leave in the order we came in in reverse. Aunt Carol and Aunt Dawn leave first and second, then my Mom, brother, and me. Uncle Ty lives with Grammy so he doesn't leave. We all tell each other to have a good night, to drive safe, and to not get to drunk later that evening. Then we all go back to hateing each other in a few days.