My Stocking

It's one o'clock on Sunday the 19th of December, 2010. It could be any time at all because it is raining cats and dogs and there is no telling where the sun is. In my book , this is Christmas weather and for the first time I am feeling a bit of the season. Unfortunately, since insanity follows where ever I go, my hypochondria is the only thing that mars this afternoon. I have a headache that I feel behind my eye so of course, I have a tumor - but anyway...

I'm looking around the lovely living room (I do have a nice living room) - the tree is up and lit, gifts are wrapped and under the tree. This is the second year in a row where Christmas is smallish on gifts and I am very comfortable with that. I am listening to the Windham Hill Christmas II CD - selection # 10 Bring a Torch Jeanette Isabella and looking around until I spot my Christmas stocking. And among the seasonal items that have become rote over the years, this is one thing that matters. It is magical and it holds all of my Christmases within it.

My Aunt Barbara made it for me, along with one for my sister Linda and my mom before I have memory. I imagine I was about 2 when I got it. I remember every Christmas getting lost in the details of it: the sequins and beads and felt toys and trees. The braided hanger, the stars and the moon and the angels. The star emitting Heaven's light. And the jingle bells along the bottom, under my name "Val", which my aunt always called me. It was so exciting to see it every December - I wanted to wear it - and occasionally did only to hear my mom: "Take those off right now! You're going to ruin them!" But somehow we didn't. It is about one and a half feet tall and it used to go up to my hip. I remember that well.

Christmas morning it was always stuffed - mostly with apples, oranges and nuts - but it had wonderful little things too - nail polish, and those "books" of "Life Savers". A transistor radio when I was about 10 back in the 60's when transistor radios were the equivalent to an iPhone. It bore a note on it that said "For Your Room" as my mom wouldn't tolerate seeing her daughters walking down the street with one glued to their ears - the same objection I have to seeing my kids with their phones. I got my first deodorant (Tussy brand) in my Christmas stocking. That was maybe one of my most exciting gifts as it was a validation that I was growing up. (First deodorants in the Christmas stockings became a tradition I carried down - always to the same delighted reaction).

So I figure that my stocking has been with me for about 51 Christmases. It has seen me through the thrill and joy of childhood Christmases - the smells, sights, and sounds of which still live vividly in my heart and mind as if there were only days and not decades old. It saw me through my teenage years, including the Christmas when at 14, my first boyfriend broke up with me to date the girl across the street. It was hanging there as I looked out the window to see him walking to her house and not mine on Christmas Eve. It was there for my first Christmas on my own in Los Angeles, hanging from a push pin in the wall next to a scrawny tree my roommate and I bought and pathetically decorated with ribbon. It was there all during my brief and incompatible first marriage to a very nice, dear, kind, and good man who, it turned out, was gay. It was there for my first Christmas without my mother. It was there for Christmases when I was single and living on my own and for my first Christmas married to Bob with my new children. And as they grew over the years I watched as they would get lost in the details of my stocking. It was there for Christmases of prosperity and of difficulty. It has been hung every single Christmas since 1959 and has seen everything that each decade had to offer friends and family and song and laughter and even tears. It has worn a bit over the years: some of the beading is loose, a few of the jingle bells have come off and are now held inside. But I have taken good care of it - and it of me.

I am not talented as a seamstress. I could not make one of these if I tried. The rest of my family has nice, store bought stockings. Mine is different from all the rest. When my little sister was born, my mother took the stitching that spelled her name "Carol" off of her own and re-stitched "Elisa" at the bottom. I cannot do the same. I cannot take my name off of mine - even for the benefit of my own children. Because it is not just a stocking. It is a history. It is representative of a whole lifetime of Christmases - mine, specifically. And years from now, when I am gone, it will be viewed by unknown grandchildren as a reminder of a piece of them they do not know - and while they may never know the stories, when they hold it (if they do) they will have a physical evidence of a life of Christmas secrets from someone they have a born connection to. I will be at every Christmas this stocking is brought out for. And I hope it still feels magical. And it is my greatest Christmas wish that it will be as loved as much in 50 years as I love it now.

And thank you Auntie Barbara - I hope you can look down from above and know what this gift has meant to me.