Memories of Christmas With Grandma and My Girls

The Christmas Sing-A-Long

The parking lot packed. Gymnasium overflowing. Out of place parents holding their winter coats under their arms. They stood scanning the hard floor for an open, dry space big enough to attempt to sit cross-legged. The Christmas carol family day had come again, but the school hadn’t thought to put out any chairs.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to get back up,” grandma muttered, half in jest, half in genuine concern as she considered how she was going to sit down.

She was grandma to my kids, just ma to me. I eyed the floor skeptically and tried to remember what pants I’d put on. With some pairs of trousers, there was a chance of going down there and coming back up again with a shred of dignity preserved — with others…

It’s hard to walk into a school and not remember your child self. Recollections of diving onto the ground and springing back up without concern that you might pop a button or rip a seam, or worse, tear a ligament.

If you say the words “muscle strain” to a six-year-old, they tilt their heads sideways like a confused dog. Good for them.

The background hum of adult voices talking to one another was suddenly complimented by the shrill roar of approaching children. They were in the midst of that frenzy that settles into kids just before Christmas. Every one of them tried their best to be good.

But with energy and excitement bubbling out of them like geyser steam and launching them every which way, you could expect to have to forgive a misstep or two.

I caught the faces of a few familiar teachers leading the charge, but at this late stage of the game, chaos couldn’t be held back. The kids smelled winter break now. The tethers that kept order were frayed and strained. Children move without inertia, stopping instantly at the sight of a shiny object, then accelerating to the speed of light in pursuit of the next flight of fancy.

All the while, they giggle in joy at the wonder of it all. How could that be anything but good?

“Now we’re expected to find them?” Grandma asked, deducing that we were to meet my daughters somehow.

I didn’t answer. I just scanned the crowd, looking for those flashing hazel and brown orbs that used to peer out from beneath their baby bonnets.

At 8 and 6, my daughters’ young eyes were better than my old ones, and when the children poured into the gym, mixing as fine sand poured into the space that remained in a jar full of shells, all at once, I found my girls standing miraculously before me.

“Daddy!” they yelled in perfect harmony, and then “Grandma!”

Everybody received hugs, natural, normal hugs that you never get from anyone by children.

The girls dropped instantly to their knees and waved us down like it was no big request. So we bent our stiff limbs, disengaged the draglines, and dropped down with respective thuds.

“Isn’t this fun?”

Grandma smiled.

The principal came out for an announcement, but you couldn’t hear a word over the din of humming parents and excited kids. Finally, the lights darkened, the music began, and the lyrics of the songs were projected onto the gymnasium wall.

“Jingle bells!” my girls declared in unison at the first title, looking at each other in joyous shock and clapping their hands.

“Batman smells,” I couldn’t help but say.

The school setting prompting a memory of the song from my school days. My agility was gone, so I had to make up for it with mischief. “Robin laid an egg, the Batmobile lost its wheel, and the Joker got away.”

“Hey!” went my girls. Then, “Daddy! Those aren’t the words!”

My eyes twinkled at them. Next up was the ‘12 Days of Christmas.’ Soon enough I was signing, “three French toast, two turtle necks…”

“Daddy!”

More eye twinkling.

During ‘Rudolph’ all the kids shouted the call outs. ‘Like Pinocchio! Like Monopoly!’

“You know, when we used to sing the call outs, our parents and teachers would beat us.”

“Daddy!”

“I’m serious, dad used to pull off his belt and…”

“Is that true grandma?”

Grandma giggled, nodding her head in a way that was both affirmative and negative. That was a grandma trick, I hadn’t learned that trick yet.

“Hey girls, after this, should we go home and watch ‘Die Hard?’”

“Daddy! That’s not a Christmas movie!”

“Okay, how about ‘Conan the Barbarian?’” More eye twinkles.

“Daddy!”

Our legs went numb, the Christmas songs ended, and the principal came out to make an announcement. But years of conditioning kept me from being able to listen to her.

Try as I might, I couldn’t even look in her direction as she spoke. The room was too full of people shuffling and coughing and jabbering, anyway.

“What do you think she said?” Grandma asked.

“Probably that we can’t leave with our kids without singing for them.”

My girls spun to face me and nodded with sincerity. “Yes, that’s what she said, you have to come, collect us in our classrooms! Bye!”

Then they disappeared like Tinker bell into the foliage of Neverland leaving ma and me to scramble back to our feet. The other parents had already begun to shuffle away, and there was a moment of silence.

“It brings back some memories doesn’t it?” I asked ma.

“Yes it does,” she said.

“Were you thinking about your childhood?”

“No,” she said, “I was thinking about yours.”

And as I glanced at her I noticed, her eyes twinkled just like mine.

Thank you for reading.

If you are interested to read more of my writings, you may read the following one published in The Masterpiece.