I Had No Idea

As a parent, you want to preserve your child's innocence and keep the light in their eyes for as long as you can. I was not allowed to work until I was 18 because school was a priority even if I was passing idly by with C's and some B's. My parents gave us the best life we could have; we grew up in a small house with one bathroom shared amongst five people, I shared a bedroom with my older sister up until my oldest sister got married and moved out. My parents shielded us from the fact that we had little to no money this was mostly due to the fact that my parents were immigrants from a communist country.

For Christmas we had to roll out the office chair and the piano chair, which the three of us would sit on altogether. Needless to say, we grew up with no money, but I thought this was a normal thing that everyone did. I thought that everyone got one or two gifts during Christmas, and it was normal to have foldable chairs in the dining room. I had no idea how much my parents were giving us or how they were able to afford Christmas shopping year after year. However, looking back at it now, I see it. My expectations are very low when it comes to Christmas gifts. There's a home video of us and we were getting so excited over gifts that my dad had bought in Office Depot; we received clipboards, pens, pencils and highlighters and there's me jumping up and down and saying "How spoiled are we" over and over again over something as simple as.... office supplies and a sticker book. I was so grateful for receiving these little gifts for Christmas. I used to make homemade Christmas presents some of them were straight up odd and strange like I drank a water bottle and gave an empty one to my mom for her to use at work, I was still very little then. Looking back, I should feel ashamed for that kind of gift. We used to be in the kitchen with my mom cutting out cookies with cookie cutters and then hanging them on the tree with a string and I remember sitting under the tree and while my oldest sister was dancing around and my other sister wanting to dance like her too while Bing Crosby played on the stereo and I was stealing cookies from the tree and eating them. Even though we grew up with no money we still had a lot of something that was far more valuable: the closeness of family.

My older sisters were my best friends, and we would hang out on summer nights on the playground or running in the field next to our house and it seems that in a blink of an eye everything changed- we grew up, we all got married and two of my older sisters have children of their own now and bought their own houses. We no longer wake up on Christmas morning excited to open presents or have brunch with the family. We don't share the pull-out couch to sleep under the Christmas tree with the twinkling lights like we used to. Every year it seemed that we got matching pajamas, and we would take a picture in them by the tree, but now with our own families we have matching pajamas sets and take a different kind of family picture. The picture had shifted and it seemed like it happened over night. My dad used to get the neighbor to ring the doorbell and leave presents at the back door making us believe in the magic of Santa, we would all peak out the door and look for someone, but there was never anyone in sight. Now, all we have left are the home videos and photos and some grainy memories of how our little Christmas used to be- simple.