We spent Christmas in my memory in a familiar pattern. Dad would get the live Christmas tree  in Somerville and put it on the patio until Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve the tree came into the sunken living room and we decorated it usually to the sound of carols on the Motorola record player. Christmas morning there was bacon and eggs plus for bread we had German stollen that my father made. We opened our gifts and I played awhile then lunch was at one of the Aunt’s houses or at our home. Aunt Ella was in Mt Vernon, Laura and Mille were in Yonkers. Since we lived on a hill that faced a valley of hills you could look across. I used to imagine I could see my aunt Mille and uncle Henry’s home. My grandmother would be there at Christmas often staying with my Aunt Laura and uncle Joe. We never went to my aunt Valerie’s home. I didn’t know where she lived. The Pennsylvannia branch of the family we saw in the summer not really during the fall to winter holidays. 

Mom and Ella would cook turkey and Mille would have cold cuts. At Ella's we would often go down into her finished basement to eat as her kitchen was too small. Mille and Henry also had separate areas to congregate. At my house we were all over—-living room, dining room, kitchen and the kids were down in the basement or in my room to play. When guests came to our house we all would work together to entertain our guests.

We drank apple cider at my house and we had figs on a string plus nuts to crack. My father always had pfferneuse cookies as well being he was a baker.

My mother was a big walker and even into her golden years she could out-walk me. I remember as a child walking with her in downtown Yonkers , trying desperately to keep up with my hand clenched to her dress. She had on her watermelon dress and went from store to store including Woolworth’s. I was trying to keep up.

Then fast forward I am in my 50’s and I want to walk around Newburyport where she now lives so I proposed taking a morning walk before everyone is up and about. So she takes me on her familiar route down Purchase around the library to the playground and we’re clear to Newbury and back and I am able to do the walk but her pace, well I still can’t keep up!