By Nadine Lawmaster
Christmas of 1980 was going to be a different one for our family, but one I was looking forward to. In 1976, my Aunt Wilma had married an older man who had six daughters and a stepson. Most of the girls nearby our hometown of Jay, Oklahoma, and all but one of them had children at the time.
Several of the grandchildren had gone with our family periodically, and though I was attending OU at the time, it kind of felt like I had distant younger sisters and brothers -- I think the oldest was twelve. Having grown up as an only child in a non-nuclear family (my mother, who had divorced my dad many years before, her sister, my Aunt Wilma, and my maternal grandfather, who had passed away two years before), I embraced the idea of this big family Christmas, especially with all the children involved. Plus, Aunt Wilma was hinting around about a magnificent present she would be giving me, dropping hints like, "it's in the bag," "I don't know if it will even fit in your car" and the most curious of all: "It really didn't cost anything"!!
Christmas morning dawned bright and though my mother and Aunt Wilma had cooked almost all night, they too were excited about the day ahead. They both made stuffing in their individual kitchens, not knowing either was making stuffing. After they combined their respective batches of stuffing, they would later discuss that this was the best we ever had.
I was as excited as the kids, I think, as the families started arriving. One of my cousins had received a "Simon" game, one of the hot toys that year, and they let me play with them. After the present unwrapping, and having lunch, the crowd started to dwindle. It was late afternoon before I remembered to ask about the mysterious gift. Aunt Wilma smiled, took me outside to her car. She unlocked the trunk and took out a large trash bag -- it was full of dead leaves! She knew how much I enjoyed stomping in the leaves in the fall.
"This way, you can walk around in the leaves any time you want spring summer or fall, and if you want to, you can rake them up and save them for another day!" That was nearly 29 years ago, however it remains one of the most fun gifts I've ever received, paired with one of my favorite Christmas memories ever.
