Losing A Piece of My Childhood...

  Now that the Little Bayou House is devoid of all house guests, I decided it was as good of a time as any to sort through all of the Christmas decorations.  Although the things have all been down since two days after the holiday, they still were piled in huge mounds in the kiddos' play room.  With no grandlittles running about the place, it seemed to be an out of the way place to stash the junk...err...decorations until I had time to sort through them.  The packing and storing would be delayed a bit longer as I needed that sorting to be done.  While I am discarding a good many things, the sorting is more of a search for things.  On Christmas Eve, all of the antique stockings were hung on the mantel with care but, when time came to replace the vintage socks back in their nice box, care was thrown out the window.  Or perhaps a few of the stockings were tossed out that proverbial window.  When I finally gathered the stockings, three were missing.  THREE!  Three of the stockings had somehow become misplaced.  I searched the house to no avail and finally resorted to going through the bags of wrapping paper and boxes that were designated as trash. These had been stowed in the shed until we could haul them to the roadside. Thank goodness! Yay!  I found one wadded up with some old paper in a garbage bag.  Now, there were just two missing.  Thinking the trash was all sorted, I returned to the house only to hear Son tell me that he had already taken six bags of the trash to the road....the day after Christmas! Oh, no.  I had a sinking feeling that my stockings had already made their way to the dump.

  Today's search was no help.  Nary an antique stocking was to be found packed in with the decorations.  I know most folks will shrug their shoulders and say that the things were old anyway but that is not how I feel.  These were part of my childhood.  Of the two that are still missing, one was an extra one and the other just happened to be my very own stocking as a child.  It is gone and another piece...another memory cannot be replaced.  I was so happy to have the stockings as most everything from my childhood had burned in the fire that ravaged our first home here on the Bayou.  When Mom handed me the stocking, it was not merely a piece of cloth, it was a tie to my memories of long ago.  At least, I still have my brothers' stockings as they asked if I would keep them all together.  "It is like it used to be." they both said. "It is like when we were all together as a family. Hang the stockings for us."  Now...little sister has no stocking.  It makes me sad.  It also makes me sad that no one really cares.....                

"The Lonely Little Stocking"

It is making up to be a wild night on the Bayou! The wind is whipping around the house and rain is pelting the rooftop. It is the perfect night for a little reminiscing! One of my favorite Christmas treasures is a little paper booklet in the shape of a Christmas stocking.. "The Lonely Little Stocking". I have no clue exactly where this darling little booklet came from nor when exactly it came into the family. It is a promotional pamphlet for Kerotest Manufacturing Company and I imagine made its way into our family in the late 1950's or early 1960's..I have no way of knowing. I remember hearing this story as far back as memory serves..and that is a long, long time. The story relates the thoughts of a little stocking that was kept in the bottom of a dusty old trunk until one Christmas Eve, a little girl pulled it out. She shook out all of the dust and told her mother that since Santa always left toys for all of the children, she was going to leave him a gift. She would put it in the stocking near the fireplace so Santa would be sure to find it. When Santa came, the little stocking (even though most socks usually have difficulty vocalizing their thoughts) spoke to him, telling him of the little girl's gift. Santa being the magical dude he is, clearly and unarguably can communicate with inanimate objects such as dusty old socks. Santa was impressed with the girl's generosity and left her a very special gift in the stocking thus starting the custom of hanging stockings on Christmas Eve! This little booklet is taken out every year and if by chance any little ones visit the Bayou House, it is read to them. I am not sure if they are enchanted by this little paper book when they are bombarded with movies, computer graphics and television shows for an entire month before Christmas, but I still love the story.

My children's Christmas stockings with one from my childhood on top!

Speaking of stockings, I pulled out my children's Christmas Stockings today. The stockings will surely be hung from the mantel on Christmas Eve even if they cannot be on the Bayou. These are the "old style" stockings..not those knitted or fleece gigantic monsters of stockings that hang from many mantels. Those are beautiful, true..but for some reason I am clinging fast to so many memories from the past. When my first child was born, I found the same type stocking that I had as a child. Then and there I had the foresight to buy several..just in case other babies would eventually join the first..two others did..all had neat "old style" stockings! For some strange reason..I now have about a dozen or so of these. When we were children, my siblings and I would awake on Christmas morn and run to the mantel to get our goodies. Almost invariably, there would be some tin windup toy (I always seemed to get a duck! Why a tin duck? Quack, quack..wobble, wobble..fall over.), an orange (remember..the satsuma?) and a bright shiny penny with the current year's date! (Wow! Santa was amazing!) This tradition was carried over to Santa's visits to our house. The orange would make a huge bulge in the bottom of the stocking and cause it to stretch into the most unattractive shape ever imaginable. (The stocking would be nearly double in length by morning with a grotesque bulge at the toe.) It became extremely difficult to find tin windup toys as everything was being made from plastics (and I could never find a duck!). The shiny penny..I still have that one under control! I am not sure what the penny was for but it was always there in the bottom of the stocking..way down under the orange! Ahh, memories! What better way to spend a wild, wintry night on the Bayou....