'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house nothing was stirring, not even a...crab?
I'm writing this from the den of Greg's family home in Ohio. Flat snowy farmland spreads out for miles outside the windows. Greg is playing Wii in the basement with his younger brother Matt (and Veronica), a few of the other siblings have gone off to do errands in town with their kids in tow, and I can hear Greg's parents chatting idly in the kitchen.
There are stockings hung by the fireplace, gifts are piled knee-high under the Christmas tree, the house is warm and cozy...and I'm trying to determine if it feels like Christmas eve. How could it not, you ask? Well, I never had the typical Christmas eve with cozy fireplaces and sweaters and snow. Actually, I experienced quite the opposite.
When I was growing up we spent every Christmas in Grand Cayman. It was a tradition my parents started before I was born and something they kept up for close to 20 years. Let me state that my father was quite wealthy when I was a kid, but don't worry, he lost all his money in the late 80s when the stock market crashed so there's nothing to be jealous of.
We stayed in the same place every year, an old hotel called The Victoria House. It's gone now, practically swept away with Hurricane Ivan. It was less a hotel and more a series of condominiums on the beach. We stayed for two weeks in the same unit every year, on the ground floor, just steps from the water. The condo was filled with that wonderful furniture that you only find at the beach (I hope): rattan couches and rope-framed water-color paintings, big conch shells and sand dollars. There was a tub of water outside the door, warmed from the sun, to dip your feet into before coming in, rinsing them of sand.
We kept a fake Christmas tree and ornaments in a storage unit and each year upon arrival, after an obligatory trip to the grocery store to stock up on meat patties and plantains, we set up the tree, a tacky-looking thing that my mother never would have allowed in our home in Atlanta, but which suited us perfectly for those two weeks in the Caribbean. We opened our presents with the doors open wide to the warm, ocean air and my mother told me that Santa had a special team of dolphins that he used to deliver all his of gifts to the island children.
Every morning early my mother and I would take a bag of bread from the kitchen and go down to the beach. There was never anyone out that early and the water was flat and still like glass. We would wade out into the warm, clear water, the white sandy bottom spreading out before us in every direction, and then we would wait. Before long the turtles would arrive. Usually just one or two, and it was only ever in the mornings that they would come in so close to shore like that. They were big, beautiful sea turtles with slick, shiny shells and kind eyes like old men, like my father. My mother taught me how to hold out a little piece of soggy bread under the water, the turtles orbiting us carefully before one of them hesitantly came forward to take the piece of bread in its mouth.
I'll never forget those mornings. The feeling of the sand beneath my feet, the warm salt water swirling under my arms, and the sun just beginning to peak over the tops of the tops of the palm trees that lined the beach. My mother was always so patient with the turtles, holding herself as still as possible as one of them approached, teaching me to do the same, to respect all living things.
She loved the water, and loved all the creatures that lived in it. She was always overturning a rock to show me a tiny neon blue lobster or gently placing a living sand dollar in my hand, its little spines moving across my palm as I struggled to hold still. She would take me out snorkeling for long hours or on walks far down the beach, past the homes and hotels to where the rocks were filled with dozens of spiny sea urchins and jutted into the sea. I can remember the feeling of salt water dried across my shoulders, the tinkling sound the shells at the edge of the shore made with each wave.
When I was fourteen I became a certified scuba-diver and was able to join my mother on her daily expeditions. We were always dive buddies, swimming side by side along the reef, pointing out anemones and snoozing nurse sharks, our eyes wide in our masks. Yes, this is an actual picture of us and yes, yes I did have a pink wetsuit and matching mask.
But besides all the swimming and long walks on the beach, this was also where my little family celebrated Christmas each year. We still put up a tree in Atlanta and rushed about through the cold, December days shopping for gifts and finishing up school projects like the rest of the world, but each year on December 15th we got on a plane and left all of that behind for warm Caribbean sea, for turtles and conch shells and gently fluttering palm fronds. And funnily enough, those are the things that will always feel the most like Christmas to me.
What makes you feel like it's really the holidays? Did you have a family tradition that forever cemented your expectations for how a certain holiday is supposed to feel?
