I love the months leading up and after this month. My mother instilled in me a happy feeling of bountifulness, thankfulness, family, and holiday. She also was a superb decorator who loved the Fall/Winter Holidays. October was all about pumpkins, scarecrows, hay bales, and sunflowers. Each Halloween we kids thrilled as she brought out the decorations and the scary music! In particular she would play Disney’s Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted Mansion. She loved to have trick-o-treaters come to the house, which was at the end of a dark dead-end street in unincorporated Los Altos Hills. We had no street light you see, so younger families avoided it. She would put a speaker into the window and play the record over and over. She also dressed up like a witch with a very tall pointy black hat. I remember some kids running away when she would creep outside with her black cauldron of treats.

Whilst she was handing out the candy at home us kids would be off about the neighborhood with Dad in tow. Dad wore a long navy pea coat and wore a hideous scary zombie rubber full head mask and as we would run up the walkway to folks homes, he would hide himself in the bushes or trees to scare us on our way back from the porch. We would forget in our hurry to get the candy only to look around for him before he would jump out! It was great fun.

After Halloween, there was Thanksgiving and Mom’s birthday. This year she would have been 82. She loved having a huge family Thanksgiving Dinner and would prepare food days before the event. Ton’s of stuffing, yams, green bean casserole, rolls, pies, and deviled eggs would be around for all of us to sample. I believe she made enough stuffing to stuff at least 10 turkeys. All kinds too, oyster and bacon, chestnut, walnut, cranberry, too many to name. These huge School-kitchen size metal bowls would overflow with the bounty of it. Just smelling the butter, onion, and celery melting to cover all the bread croutons was enough to make one salivate. By the time the dinner was actually served (always timing around some American Football game) you were so hungry that one overate and then felt terrible.

My parents were serious wine enthusiasts and good wine always flowed freely during the meal. Something I appreciate and the fact that there were always people at our table who had no where else to go for the holiday. Both of my parents were from small families, there were not a lot of extended family like aunts, uncles, or cousins. So my mother who always saw herself as a woman without a big family created one. She invited business associates, clients, and friends to join our family. One family in particular was always at our table. They were our cousins. I miss those times and am sorry the relations fell apart long ago.

On to December! My mother’s finest hour came at Christmas time. This was her creme de la creme as far as decorating went. She would ”start” before Thanksgiving and would ”finish” decorating when the tree was trimmed. She would start playing Christmas music weeks before Thanksgiving which drove my father crazy. He would say ”It starts earlier every year”!. He was all in jest though and really loved how my mother celebrated. His father chose to leave him when he was 10 years old on Christmas day and he never really liked the holiday very much. I believe God seriously has a sense of humor since he put him together with my mother who celebrated the holidays like there was no tomorrow. Each December weekend was filled with parties, Church activities, Handle’s Messiah Sing, shopping, tea parties, and the all disappointing family tradition of Kris Kringle. The only person who liked this was the one whom my mother chose. The tradition was to pick one of the family name out of a hat and you were their Kris Kringle, supposed to do secret nice things and give gifts to that person. Over the years it became quite the familiar sighs and eye rolling when it was time to guess who was your Kris Kringle. It was always obvious. My mother was the best one.

It is very hard to continue all the many traditions when one is still grieving for a person. It’s been 3 years since my mother passed on her birthday which is right after Thanksgiving. It is a process and I don’t seem to be any closer to reconciling to the fact that she is gone. She was taken way too early as far as I am concerned. I don’t have the motivation to celebrate and I know it is selfish, but all I want to do is hide under the covers. Or run away……