1974.
Our first Christmas together – the tree put up the day
following Thanksgiving.
Denim was my fabric of choice … for
e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. Blue was my color of choice – eye shadow, mascara,
fingernail polish, clothing, shoes: even my Christmas theme.
I was around 87 days pregnant – HUGELY pregnant: I
blew up all at once; Avalon said he heard 2 heartbeats. Bob was excited. I
was scared – I didn’t have a good mother example to pull on; I worried
about impending motherhood. Bob & Doug were doing everything they could to
cheer me up.
That Christmas was a very tight one and I had
frugally bought tree decorations, and gifts for Bob's son.
Bob and Doug were sitting around drinking beers,
listening to me chatter about my ‘dream Christmas tree’, when they suddenly
grinned at each other and took me shopping on the cheap for a Blue Spruce
Christmas tree: while Doug threw a shovel in the back bed of Bob’s old
red/white Ford, Bob bundled me up and placed my plump little body on the bench
seat between him and Doug. Off we went – those 2 treated me like precious cargo
every time we hit a rough patch of road and the truck lurched, there were 2 big
hands immediately on my bulging stomach; Bob’s right hand, and Doug’s left hand
– driving all over the back roads until Bob spotted a Blue Spruce – up Abe
Creek (it was accessible then), “just the right size for his little wife”: the tip of its top barely
reached his collar bone ;-) Bob &
Doug jumped out of the truck and got busy getting that tree out of the forest
and into the truck bed. By 9 p.m., the tree was home, standing up in its stand,
and decorated: I went heavy with the silver tinsel on the tree branches … one
strand at a time until the tree was covered like a flapper’s fringed dress (this
took the longest in tree decorating time) and the guys teased me
unmercifully about my 1-strand pickiness; then, the tree was decked out in
hefty blue lights (the old fashioned ones – that was what I wanted),
fragile blue glass balls (2 were casualties): it even had one of those cheesy
towering blue spires on top; but it tickled my teenage soul to place that thing
on top of the tree. LOL.
It was a very blue Christmas, in a very good way
:-D
Over the following years, the paychecks stretched
further as life balanced out and we bought our trees; Doug flowed in and out of our lives for decades, our
tree of choice became Noble Firs, and were decorated more elaborately – with
varied colorful hanging ornaments & updated twinkle lights, shooter lights,
and multi-colored lights.
And we all laughed about that first Christmas tree; for years.
Good times … good memories.
Doug Moss, my
junior-high/high school on-again-off-again boyfriend remained a lifelong friend
of ours; oftentimes rushing me to the hospital ER with Stacey (she had a
flawed immune system and every time she got her booster shots, she ended up in
the hospital) when Bob was working and I needed a ride into Longview. It
was Bob, after work one night that brought the news home to me of Doug's death about
22 years ago (our granddaughter, living with us at the time was 18 months
old; she’s 24 now) - he didn't want me to hear about it from anyone else.
That was the kind of man
Bob was.
Bob & I celebrated 43
Christmas’ together, before they came to an end last December; but my favorite was always our first one ... because we were young, in love, just starting our life together; and beginning a family.
