Christmas at Grandma Pharoahs
As we enter this wonderful time of the year I have the fondest memories of gathering with my family at Grandma Pharoahs. Family consisted of Grandma 5 aunts and 4 uncles ,until my youngest Aunt was married after I had already married. 16 cousins of all ages.A 17th to be added years later.
There was the adult table in the kitchen and if you were ever fortunate enough to be seated there life was heaven. My fathers family got along famously, with the normal she or he drives me crazy once in a great while. But, as children we would not have known this. Only as an adult does this become apparent to you. The children never knew of this.We rana dn we played and made more noise I am sure then a room full of monkeys. Funny I don't ever recall being reprimanded there for all the noise and chaos. It just all seemed so idilic to me as a child. My Grandmother had been a widow very young and we all knew she worked very hard to support her and "Aunt Barbie" as we called her. One gift would come our way each year from Grandma. I beleive I can remeber almost every gift she gave us. From McDonalds $1.oo dollar certificates (yes money back from you dollar) to the best address labels and stamps with our very own name on them (WOW) ther must have been a thousand address labels Debbie Pharoah Route #4 Canton, New York 13617. That was me and everyone would know how important I was when they received a letter know. I had address labels. There were half moon rugs for beside our beds, towel sets for our hope chest as we got older. Christmas ornaments, the list goes on. all the girls got the same thing and all the boys the same thing. Our Granmother was incredible.
I loved my other grandparents also,but they belonged to a religion that did not believe in celebrating Christmas. My Grandmother there was equally as wonderful but in many other ways. So at Christmas time I don't remember much of what went on in there lives.
Of course Christmas really began at our own homes at the wee hours of the morning with the 3 of us kids, myself and 2 brothers sitting on the stairs begging our parents to get up. This started many Christmas mornings as early as 3am. 3am was a no go at our house, so my brothers and I would all gather in one bedroom and laugh and share what we thought would be waiting downstairs for us. Had Santa come yet ??? The excitement was more than we could stand. Every few minutes we would yell to one of our parents if it was time yet and were told to go back to sleep which was totally impossible for us. My brothers and I are all close in age. Each being 15 months apart from the next. We loved each other very much. Don't get me wrong we did the normal sibling fighting, but don't let anyone else mess with my little brothers or my wrath was great.
Getting back to Christmas and the times I remember. I think it was my 13th or so Christmas and I wanted a new guitar. As the one I had been using had been given to my brother for a previous Christmas and he had handed on to me. When I came down that morning much to my dismay there was nothing under the tree big enough to be the coveted guitar. There was no way I would have let my parents know of my immediate disappointment and opened the rest of my gifts with a forced smile, even though they were great gifts. All the gifts had been opened and it seemed like the excitement was over. Then with the most mischievous smile I have ever seen my mother have she said Debbi there is a card on the tree addressed to you. This had never happened before. Had the card been there all morning, I will never know. My mother handed it to me and with the most confused emotions I remember having I read the riddle inside. Please go to where you eat breakfast... I ran quickly which lead from one part of the house to another ( For those of you who don't know I grew up in a very old Victorian style house). Finally in a room we called the cold room (soon to become the den) I found the most beautiful guitar I had ever seen. Sitting on the piano bench. Yes the piano was also in the cold room. Oh life was good and how I loved my parents for I knew what a sacrifice it had been to buy the $150 guitar for them.
We as children had the greatest Christmases. My mother would make the greatest homemade chocolates that would sit on "the porch" (enclosed) in white Schawn ice cream buckets labeled according to what flavor lay inside. My mother would bake and cook breads, cookies, fudge and every other divinity you can imagine. But I think my favorite is when she would make ice cream balls. She would take the ice cream (strawberry being my favorite) and roll it into balls that seemed the size of baseballs and then roll them in sprinkles of all different colors. She would place them on a cookie sheet with waxed paper underneath and put them in the large freezer out back to freeze back up. It seemed to me at the time that these were the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
Story to be continued...
There was the adult table in the kitchen and if you were ever fortunate enough to be seated there life was heaven. My fathers family got along famously, with the normal she or he drives me crazy once in a great while. But, as children we would not have known this. Only as an adult does this become apparent to you. The children never knew of this.We rana dn we played and made more noise I am sure then a room full of monkeys. Funny I don't ever recall being reprimanded there for all the noise and chaos. It just all seemed so idilic to me as a child. My Grandmother had been a widow very young and we all knew she worked very hard to support her and "Aunt Barbie" as we called her. One gift would come our way each year from Grandma. I beleive I can remeber almost every gift she gave us. From McDonalds $1.oo dollar certificates (yes money back from you dollar) to the best address labels and stamps with our very own name on them (WOW) ther must have been a thousand address labels Debbie Pharoah Route #4 Canton, New York 13617. That was me and everyone would know how important I was when they received a letter know. I had address labels. There were half moon rugs for beside our beds, towel sets for our hope chest as we got older. Christmas ornaments, the list goes on. all the girls got the same thing and all the boys the same thing. Our Granmother was incredible.
I loved my other grandparents also,but they belonged to a religion that did not believe in celebrating Christmas. My Grandmother there was equally as wonderful but in many other ways. So at Christmas time I don't remember much of what went on in there lives.
Of course Christmas really began at our own homes at the wee hours of the morning with the 3 of us kids, myself and 2 brothers sitting on the stairs begging our parents to get up. This started many Christmas mornings as early as 3am. 3am was a no go at our house, so my brothers and I would all gather in one bedroom and laugh and share what we thought would be waiting downstairs for us. Had Santa come yet ??? The excitement was more than we could stand. Every few minutes we would yell to one of our parents if it was time yet and were told to go back to sleep which was totally impossible for us. My brothers and I are all close in age. Each being 15 months apart from the next. We loved each other very much. Don't get me wrong we did the normal sibling fighting, but don't let anyone else mess with my little brothers or my wrath was great.
Getting back to Christmas and the times I remember. I think it was my 13th or so Christmas and I wanted a new guitar. As the one I had been using had been given to my brother for a previous Christmas and he had handed on to me. When I came down that morning much to my dismay there was nothing under the tree big enough to be the coveted guitar. There was no way I would have let my parents know of my immediate disappointment and opened the rest of my gifts with a forced smile, even though they were great gifts. All the gifts had been opened and it seemed like the excitement was over. Then with the most mischievous smile I have ever seen my mother have she said Debbi there is a card on the tree addressed to you. This had never happened before. Had the card been there all morning, I will never know. My mother handed it to me and with the most confused emotions I remember having I read the riddle inside. Please go to where you eat breakfast... I ran quickly which lead from one part of the house to another ( For those of you who don't know I grew up in a very old Victorian style house). Finally in a room we called the cold room (soon to become the den) I found the most beautiful guitar I had ever seen. Sitting on the piano bench. Yes the piano was also in the cold room. Oh life was good and how I loved my parents for I knew what a sacrifice it had been to buy the $150 guitar for them.
We as children had the greatest Christmases. My mother would make the greatest homemade chocolates that would sit on "the porch" (enclosed) in white Schawn ice cream buckets labeled according to what flavor lay inside. My mother would bake and cook breads, cookies, fudge and every other divinity you can imagine. But I think my favorite is when she would make ice cream balls. She would take the ice cream (strawberry being my favorite) and roll it into balls that seemed the size of baseballs and then roll them in sprinkles of all different colors. She would place them on a cookie sheet with waxed paper underneath and put them in the large freezer out back to freeze back up. It seemed to me at the time that these were the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
Story to be continued...
posted by Debbi's Place @ 7:24 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home