Making Christmas Memories

By John Addyman  |  john.addyman@yahoo.com

 

At some point every Christmas, I think about my father.

He was pretty much raised by an aunt after his mother died and his dad’s new wife didn’t want a little boy in the house.

My dad was a traveling salesman and I didn’t see a whole lot of him growing up. A former Army Air Corps top sergeant, he had a very direct way of approaching a lot of things. Like Christmas.

When I was 12 years old, I was annoyed for most of Christmas Eve because my dad made me and my sisters go to bed early. He didn’t want us anywhere near the living room, where our neighbor Mr. Schendel had arrived to help my dad with something.

That something was a mystery.

Upstairs in bed reading a science fiction magazine, I couldn’t figure out why I kept hearing beer bottles being opened and lots of laughter coming from downstairs. Things got louder as the hours passed and the beer bottles were emptied and the language shifted to introduce some words that I had seldom heard before in upstate Pennsylvania.

“Dad must have learned them in the Army,” I thought to myself. “He must be teaching those to Mr. Schendel.” It was past 2 a.m. and I finally turned off my light and went to sleep.

On Christmas morning bright and early, I discovered the result of all the activity from the previous night in the living room.

There was a brand-new Schwinn boy’s bike sitting alongside our Christmas tree, which was in the sunroom, adjacent to the living room. My dad made me stand way back from the sunroom while he lit the tree and started the Lionel train set going around the green platform he’d spent all summer building.

When the train came out from behind the tree, I got my first look at the bike. Wow, was I excited. I didn’t care what else I got for Christmas, the bike was super.

But there was a problem: I had never ridden a two-wheeler.

My dad knew that. “I’ll teach you how to ride it this morning,” he promised.

And thus began the day my father almost killed me.

I was a very little kid, and pretty sickly. I had missed a lot of school. Those nasty things they have vaccines for today — whooping cough, measles — I had them both. I had pneumonia and chicken pox. I was hospitalized after our house was renovated, the dust bringing on a major asthma attack. At 12 years old, I probably weighed 80 pounds.

But now I had a bike and manhood was just a couple of steps away. The two boys across the street both had “English” bikes with 10 speeds and front and rear brakes. Pansies. My new Schwinn had one speed and was built like a truck.

Around lunchtime, my dad took me and the bike for the first lesson. There was an asphalt basketball court maybe 200 feet from our house. It had basketball poles on each side, and a cyclone fence along the length of the court, because just beyond it was a steep hill down to the football field.

I got on the bike right next to one basketball pole, gripped the handlebars, put my feet on the pedals (my dad was holding onto me) and was ready to go.

“All set?” my dad asked. I certainly was. I nodded.

“Go!” he said, pushing me so hard I almost fell backwards off the bike.

And there I was…wind in my buzz-cut hair, pedaling, trying to keep the bike going as straight as I could while I tried to smooth out my steering wobbles on the handlebars. This was fun.

Until it wasn’t.

I had a good grip on the handlebars. My feet were smoothly driving the pedals. And I was going perfectly straight. But dad hadn’t gotten to Chapter 2 in the bike-riding manual.

“Steer!” he shouted.

Too late.

DOINK!!!

Oh, lord! I was looking up at the basketball backboard shaking and the net swirling — a result of my collision with the pole at the far end of the court. I had a bump on the back of my head and I got a scratch on one hand.

My dad picked me up, checked the bike out to make sure everything was still unbent and told me, “The bike’s fine. Ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“To do it again. We’re just getting started.” And he put me back on the bike and again I was looking down the court toward the other pole. “Ready? This time steer your way around the pole…”

And off he pushed me. I was just a little steadier this time around and managed to avoid the pole and steer around it. I headed the bike back to where my dad was jumping up and down and yelling: “Great! Great! You’re doing it!”

I was pretty excited but realized there was something we hadn’t covered yet. I was pedaling pretty hard and I wasn’t sure I could make the turn at the other end of the court. There was one thing he hadn’t mentioned at all…

“BRAKES!!!” He yelled as I went sailing past him. I didn’t know what the brakes were or how to use them. So, I want zipping past my dad — who tried to grab me and slow me down — luckily, my trajectory took me past the pole.

Did I mention there was a long bike rack on the other side of the pole, with the wall of the high school building just beyond it? I parked that bike in the bike rack at about 20 miles an hour. I parked myself up against the brick building after getting flipped off the bike.

Oh, I hurt.

My dad came running over to me with a message of support.

“The bike seems fine,” he said.

He picked me up and told me, “I think that’s enough bike-riding for the day. Let’s go home…and don’t tell your mother.”

For a long, long time, that was the most remarkable thing that happened to me at Christmas.

But then I had four children, each with their own uniqueness and gifts. In the roulette of chance in the universe, surely one of our kids would come up with something unforgettable at Christmas.

My wife and I didn’t have to wait long.

One child in particular gave all of us in the family a moment none of us will ever forget.

Elisabeth was 3, our middle daughter. Like my dad, she always got right down to things and approached them with single-minded enthusiasm.

On Christmas morning, she was the first child to get to the presents under the tree. On a couch at one end of the room, her grandmothers were watching and one of them had a camera working to capture the joy.

Elisabeth got so excited seeing all her presents — clothes and dolls and toys — that she threw off all her clothes so she could try everything on right away. We had an instant present-opening followed in seconds by a mostly nude fashion show. It was magic.

Christmas should be like that — full of surprises and happiness. When I think of Christmas mornings, I think about my family and all the crazy things that happen. I hope you have similar memories.