December 19, 2001

Six days until Christmas. The 10cm of snow that fell last Friday are a distant memory, swept away by the rain and warm temperatures that have prevailed in the days since. It's looking more and more like a Brown Christmas after all, despite a long range forecast of flurries here and there. The noise making self-centred inconsiderate college girls who live above us seem to be giving us an early present, simply by being quiet the last two days. We had thought at first they had left to go home for the holidays, but we heard one of them moving about up there last night. (As I type that, I remember that when we left for work this morning at 8:00am, she had her thumpity thump trance "music" playing loudly above our bedroom, so that whole theory gets shot to hell.)

I'm sitting here, trying to recall Christmas'es of my scattered childhood. Thanks to a Military Brat upbringing, the chronicle of my early life can be broken down into near-exact segments. It's as if my memory is configured like a business office wall of mailboxes, broken down by age and/or geographic location. There is no simple answer from me to any question along the lines of "So, do you remember when you were a kid and...?" or "Where are you from?" I always have to respond with qualifying conditions such as "Can you narrow that down to a specific age?"

The earliest Christmas that I can clearly remember would be when I was 4 - 1968. We were posted in Pensacola, Florida while Dad was taking a 6 or 9 month communications course at the US Navy base there. I remember that we had a mini-tree which sat upon the coffee table, and for some unknown reason Santa gave me a Best Of Lawrence Welk cassette tape. Decidely not a White Christmas, though I was able to recite the lyrics to Moon River from memory before I was 5. We moved back to Gander, Newfoundland in early-mid 1969, with our new dog Duffy in tow. Moorehead's MacDuff was his official name. He was a Westie. Not long after we left Pensacola, Hurricane Camille wiped a large chunk of it off the map, including (I believe) the townhouses where we lived.

Gander was a winter wonderland. Tons of snow for both boy and beast to frolic about in. A time for snowsuits, snowmen, wet dog smell and real trees in the living room for both years we had Christmas in Gander. The first one, in 1969, I remember coming down the stairs of our pmq and seeing a Lionel train set under the tree for me. Lots of wrapping paper strewn about and a white dog snurfling his nose through it across the floor. In 1970, I remember coming home from school on the bus the last day of classes and seeing an unfamiliar car in the driveway. I knew at that moment that someone was going to stay with us for Christmas, but had no idea who. Regardless, the excitement of having a relative, any relative, visit us for Christmas made the sight of that car, glistening in our snow covered driveway, one of those etched in stone memories. It was my Grandpa, my Dad's dad, come all the way from Ontario with his black poodle Pepé to spend some time with us. They stayed a while too, well after I had to go back to school in January.

The first week back to school, January 1971, I was leaving one day to go catch the bus after classes were over. As I reached the edge of the few ice covered steps down from the entrance to the sidewalk, some still-unknown student came up behind me, yelled "Gotcha!" and gave me a shove. My feet gave way on the slippery surface and I went flying, landing on my back and cracking my head against the jagged corner of one step. I don't know if I lay ther for any length of time, but to me it seemed that I got up right away, albeit dazed. The perpetrator, who had a look of horror on their face, said "Sorry. I thought you were someone else." and took off. I made my way to the bus and climbed aboard. The driver had one look at me, closed the doors and drove me home as quickly as possible. Still woozy, I paid little attention to the fact I was his only passenger. When he stopped in front of my house, I disembarked and went in. The last thing I can recall is my Mom and our neighbour Elaine being in the kitchen and their sitting me up on the counter.

Mom tells me that when I walked in the side door, my head was absolutely covered in blood from the gash in the back of my skull where I hit the step. She says that she, Elaine and Grandpa did their best to clean me up, then Grandpa drove me to the hospital where I had to have 7 stitches in my scalp to close the wound. Looking back, I'm sure I must have been concussed by the blow as well, which would explain why I was woozy and have no memory of things after being sat upon the kitchen counter.

At the very least of it, a crack on the head does go a long way to explain my personality...