My Dad passed away in 2018, and my Mom followed him just 19 months later. So many of my Christmas traditions were initiated by them, and I think of them often during the holiday season. In the few minutes just after I awoke this morning, I was thinking about Christmas 1969.
I was lucky enough to be born into a happy home. We were a typical middle-class home, back when there really was a middle class. If you had to compare us to a sitcom, the Dick Van Dyke Show might come the closest. I was an only child, and my parents were loving and hilarious. Laughter was the most common sound in our home.
We moved to New Jersey when I was four, but my father was transferred to Houston just a few days after my 14th birthday. We had been in our new home just a couple of weeks when I became very ill. Following exploratory surgery, my parents were informed that I had a bad case of peritonitis and most likely would not survive.
Two months and two more surgeries later, I left the hospital on the morning of Christmas Eve. I was pretty weak, but I wanted to do something for Christmas. My father bundled me up, and we drove to Memorial City Mall, which was little more than a Sears store. I don’t remember what I did for money, but I remember that my father would shop for a gift that I specified and bring it to the car for my approval. The only gift I can readily recall was a red wallet for my mother.
For dinner, we had our traditional meal of tacos, which our New Jersey friends had considered unusual, but was standard fare in Houston. I remember that I wasn’t able to eat much of it, but it was the most memorable meal ever.