My parents were always socializing, but something changed when Kelli and I became teenagers. We found they were staying at home, watching TV and eating popcorn almost every night. Our friends noticed the same problem with their parents. It was like some sort of neighborhood watch turned against us kids --- a teenager watch.
But my Mom’s not they type to sit still for long. She scheduled a weekly ceramics class (only a block or so from home) and returned home with boxes of ceramic molds in various stages of metamorphosis.
And night-by-night she evened the edges, scraped, molded, defined and colored her creations.
A couple of years before we left the country she gave me her handmade Christmas village. Our last Christmas in the US, Alexandria was three and she helped me set each piece onto snowy cotton on our mantel. I showed her how my mom marked the bottom of all of her pieces with her initials DE and a smiley face. I’ll never forget Alexandria’s amazed face when I told her, “Your Grandma Donna made this village. Every piece!”
That year my parents and my aunt and uncle traveled to our home to spend Christmas. Alexandria zoomed out of the house to greet Grandma and shouting, “Our firesill! Our firesill! We have it! The village! On our firesill!” (She didn’t know the word mantle, but knew it wasn’t a windowsill!)
The home I grew up in had a large raised hearth around the fireplace where my mother displayed the Christmas village. Our mantle was narrow in comparison, but the village was still beautiful with a church in the center, Christmas tress, Santa, a small group of carolers, a toy store… she had even made a tiny black dog who looked like our family’s dog, Vicki.
My sister told me not to sweat the small stuff and that “the things you lose come back to you.” I can be optimistic at times. I looked on e-bay and did an Internet search, but I couldn’t find a Christmas village as beautiful as hers.
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