Surprisingly, this never occurred to me when our youngest child moved out this past June. I was a bit worried about the empty nest thing, sure. But Christmas never crossed my mind at that time.
When Jesse was a teenager, I purchased an elf hat, which he was to wear every Christmas morning when he handed out the gifts. He was our official Santa's helper. He wore it willingly, and played along. It just hit me yesterday, as Hubs and I were shopping, that he won't be here this year.
There are so many stories from holidays past. One of my favorites? You know how kids always try to get their parents up really early on Christmas morning? Well, one year when Jess was a teenager, we decided to get him back, and we woke him up at 5:30 am. We ran in his room, turned on his lights, and stood there shaking him, yelling, "It's Christmas, it's Christmas! Get up, get up!" Of course he got up, and we had a good laugh. He was very understanding of our insanity.
But he did say that we had better not wake him up at 5:30 again, ever. So when Christmas rolled around again, we woke him at 5 instead. He was not amused, but we were!
Then there was the whole moose thing. When he was little, Jess loved moose. I know that he'll say it was all us, but he did love them. One year, Hubs sent all the way to Alaska, I think, for a lucite paperweight that had real, genuine, moose poop in it. You should have seen his face when he opened that gift! It was hysterical, and to this day, I've yet to see him laugh that hard again.
Aaah, the memories. I'll always have those, won't I? And the elf hat won't go to waste. I thought I'd wear to to work this coming weekend, as it's the weekend before Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment