I Remember December
by Lawrence Thomas
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Lawrence Thomas
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I Remember December
Based on true events from my childhood, as I remember them.
I don’t remember night time. I must have been asleep when we arrived at their home.
Morning. I remember morning. It was a beautiful sunlit day. The Foster’s lived on the outskirts of the steel city, on a quiet country road. Space enough for another home between them on either side. The daylight beamed in through the windows that covered much of the south wall of their living room. It was cold outside, mid December, but the brightness in the room seemed to give that moment a summer’s warmth.
The room turned cold the moment I saw my mother’s tired face, her eyes swollen and red from crying. She took my hand, and led me over to the couch on the north wall, opposite the window that now seemed dark.
“Your grandma is gone,” my mother sobbed uncontrollably. She pulled me close, and wrapped her arms around me. We cried there for an hour. I was nine.
The year was 1982 - our first Christmas without my grandparents in our lives.
We had hardly laid my grandmother to rest, when the clock above the old East Hamilton Radio on Barton Street struck morning on Christmas Day.
It was the one night of the year that children the world over, willingly jumped under the covers (their curious little eyes peaking out from the comforter tucked up under their noses), and fought hard through all the excitement to fade off into dreamland. Santa would surely arrive sooner if the sugar rush from all the baked holiday goodies would just wear off.
While visions of Tyco electric race tracks, and Star Wars figurines danced through other little boys’ heads, I dreamt of the commotion of the entire family, aunts, uncles and cousins, stuffed into the basement of our Queen Victoria town-home for Christmas dinner, the smell of my great-grandfather’s pipe, playing walky-talkies with my grandfather, or the comforting sound of my grandmother’s voice.
I don’t recall much of that Christmas, but I remember the night my grandmother died as if it happened only yesterday.
My father was working the night shift – it was just my mother, my little sister, and me. My grandmother had called our house earlier that evening, to say that she wasn’t feeling very well. I guess being nine, I didn’t think much of her call at the time.
My mom however, knew better. My grandmother didn’t complain. She didn’t go to the doctor. Something was wrong.
I usually jumped at the chance to go to my grandmother’s, but the one place I loved visiting equally as much, was my Aunt’s house. I asked if I could go and hang out with my cousins instead of going with my mother that evening, and I was granted my wish. It is a choice I regretted for many years.
We played Activision, Ants in Pants and Planet of the Apes. I cherished hanging out with my cousins, so time spent in their Berko Avenue play space, are moments I still remember fondly.
At some point during that night, my best friend’s dad picked me up on his way home from work, and took me to their house. I only vaguely recall those preceding hours, but the images of playing in my friend’s basement the following morning when my friend’s mom called down for me, are still clear in my mind.
“Larry. Can you come upstairs please?”
The past thirteen hours had seemed like a mini play vacation. Hanging out with my cousins, my best friend, and a sleepover. It didn’t get much better than that. If only I knew how my life was changing as the hands of that old Barton Street clock passed the night hours.
“Larry,” a voice called a second time.
I ran up the stairs, through the kitchen and into the living room. As soon as I looked into my mothers eyes, I knew something was very wrong. I went over to the couch, sat down nervously beside her, and awaited her news. It couldn’t be as bad as when she called me in from play just two months prior (right in the middle of dinky car road construction atop the mound of dirt that was my childhood playground), and told me my grandfather had passed away.
“Your grandma died last night, Honey,” my mother whispered softly. I had never known her to look so despondent. I glanced around the room at the commiserative expressions of my family and friends lined up against the east wall of the living room. I was searching for a smile. I was looking for some indication that this news wasn’t true, but in every eye that met mine, tears had started to gather. I looked back at my mother - at the heartbreak in her eyes, and suddenly I began to cry from the bottom of my little heart.
In unison, my mother and I cried for what seemed hours. How could this be happening? First, cancer took my grandfather that October past, and just a week prior to my grandmothers untimely death, her father passed away. Now, with Christmas a little over a week away, my grandmother was gone too. She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t yellow like my grandfather had been when he was dying. We hadn’t gone to visit my grandmother in the hospital like she had taken me to see grandpa. It wasn’t fair; it just wasn’t fair.
I would never again lie on my grandparent’s floor in their little cottage on Bayfield Avenue, and laugh at the games her dog, Yo-Yo, and her budgie, Joey, would play. I wouldn’t wake up in Grandma’s bed, the room dark but for the soothing glow of the kitchen light through the gap at the bottom of her bedroom shutter doors. Yo-Yo curled at my feet. The sounds of Grandma and Joey having their morning chat over coffee, while the white transistor radio that sat atop the fridge would play ever so softly in the background.
I would reach down and pet Yo-Yo, and tell him how much I loved him. I would just lay there for awhile, and soak those moments in, before joining them for Cheerios and chocolate milk.
The trains passing by or the big roll trucks down the road at the steel mill, were all part of the sounds that made up my memories of the nights I spent at my grandparents’. Even today the smells of manufactured steel in the morning air, take me back to those precious moments.
I remember sitting on the bed in the spare bedroom, as my grandfather sang “How Much is that Doggie in the Window” to me, or watching him at the kitchen table rolling his own cigarettes. I can picture myself sitting at the same kitchen table, making little crafts out of my grandma’s empty Craven Menthol cigarette packages.
During many visits, my grandmother would give me a dollar and I would walk all by myself to the variety store on McNaulty and Kenilworth, to buy a few packs of ET trading cards, or some caps for my cap-rocket. I can remember checking off which trading cards I had on the index that came with each pack, and spending hours on the sidewalk outside my grandparent’s place throwing that cap-rocket up in the air, and watching excitedly as it ‘snapped’ to the ground. I still have all those ET Trading cards packed away, along with a pink 1957 Chevy dinky car my grandmother had bought me.
Grandma, Yo-Yo, Joey, and I, spent many a day on my grandparents front porch. They would continue their conversation from the morning, and I would play with my dinky cars, or hang out with the kids across the street when they were visiting their own grandmother.