Our First (Blue) Christmas

For our daughters...

I realized this week that your Mom and I will be spending our 30th Christmas as married people (to each other, even) this year. I'll be honest - these kinds of anniversaries are difficult for me mathematically - I actually had to count the number of Christmases we've spent together on my hands! And it's reminded me of some of the funny stories from that Christmas of 1990.

Mom and I were married on August 4, 1990, on a sweltering hot day in Sonora. About a month after we returned from honeymooning along the Oregon Coast, we moved from our little apartment in Sonora to another little apartment in the foothill town of Plymouth. Mom started vet school at UC Davis; I continued to work in my family's auction business in Sonora. We figured we'd split the difference - Mom had a commute of about 80 minutes; mine was about 75. We lasted a month in Plymouth.

Fortunately, we found a cute duplex in the Victorian section of Woodland (even in 1990, graduate students and itinerant auctioneers couldn't afford to live in Davis). The duplex had been converted from a carriage house that was part of the property owned by our landlords, Del and Paula Agostini - they lived in the big Victorian on the corner. Our apartment was two stories - a living room and tiny kitchen downstairs, two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. It had hardwood floors, old sash windows, and (to the best of our memory) no heat. Mom and I both distinctly remember moving space heaters from room to room that first winter together. We also remember, sometime in that first winter, that we were awakened by our cat, Symen, who had carried a potato from the pantry to the top of the staircase so he could roll it back down. In the middle of the night.

I should say a bit more about the bathroom (the most important room in the house, right?!). When we moved in, we only had a bathtub. I've always been a little troubled about taking a bath - soaking in water that... well, I'll let you fill in the rest. At some point in that first year, our landlords let us make a hillbilly shower - we lined the walls with clear plastic and attached a shower head to the spout. But that first Christmas, all we had was a bathtub.

For someone who prefers living in the country, I found that I enjoyed living in Woodland. On Wednesday nights, the Mexican restaurant on First Street featured $1 tacos and $2 beers. Dead Cat Alley on Main Street had great barbecue and good beer. Woodland was still a farming town - you could shop at a real hardware store or a work boot store right on Main Street.

That first married Christmas, Mom and I decided we'd stay in our new home. We cut a Christmas tree at a local tree farm and ordered a Brannigan's turkey (which was just as good as the Diestel turkeys I'd grown up eating in Sonora). And since our house was nearly always cold, Mom asked for flannel sheets for Christmas (and yes, she's always asked for practical gifts).

I found these really cool blue Christmas-themed flannel sheets at Target (Woodland was the first place I'd ever shopped in a Target - a store Lara would later call O-Mart). Mom was excited about the gift (at least she claimed she was) and put them on the bed that night. Straight out of the package.

We awoke on the 26th to a typically cold bedroom. I can remember looking at Mom and thinking, "Wow - it must be cold. You look kinda blue." She later said she thought the same thing about me. One of us (we can't remember who was first) took a bath - mostly to warm up. And after the bath water drained, we realized that the blue from the sheets had rubbed off on both of us! There was a blue ring around the tub. We should have washed them first.

Sometimes I feel like those first married years were just yesterday; other times they feel like ancient history. Someone more articulate than I once said that when you're young, the days are short and the years are long. When you're older, the days are long and the years are short. I've certainly found this to be true. And yet the accumulation of these memories make me enjoy Christmas even more. For some reason, this memory recalls the O'Henry story, "The Gift of the Magi" (you should read it). Writing this makes me recall the year we cooked part of our Christmas dinner in a Dutch oven because the cooking range broke. Or the year when I was a kid that we cooked our turkey in an out-of-town neighbor's gas oven because the snow had knocked out the electricity at our house. I hope that you will laugh about your Christmas experiences someday! Merry Christmas!