Christmas Memories from High School (Christmas Club #4)

Here is this week's submission for Christmas Club, an exercise started by Sian of the High in the Sky blog, where she encourages us to post a memory of Christmas past.

At the beginning of A Child's Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas writes about recallinig Christmas memories this way: "I plunge my hand in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.  In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen."  Well, today, I plunge my hand into the bank of Christmas memories and out come memories of Jr. High and High School . . .

I'm not sure I knew it then, but I now realize that the Jr. High and High School years are so very fleeting.  I see it now as Henry is half way through his Sophomore year of High School and Clara is poised at the half way mark of middle school.  But I certainly didn't notice it when the picture was taken above.  I was in 8th grade and weighed about 80 pounds.  Because I was so small, I was chosen to be Santa Clause for the Reindeer Race.  We decorated a wagon as a sleigh, I dressed as Santa, my classmates put on reindeer antlers, they tethered themselves together and then they pulled me across the school yard.  Our wagon tipped over halfway through the course, and I came tumbling out, laughing and unhurt.

I plunge my hand back into the bank of memories and recall Christmas caroling with friends in high school, walking along the streets giggling and singing, occasionally being invited inside for cookies and cider.  Unfortunately, my friends asked me to sing more quietly because I am overly enthusiastic for someone who sings off-key.

Once more, I plunge my hand into the snow bank, and I pull out one last memory - visiting my favorite High School teacher and her husband. She was much more than a teacher because she coached our speech and debate team.  We travelled and competed in many tournaments throughout the year, and she always treated us as psuedo adults.  During the Christmas holiday, the team would go to her house for a party.  The highlight for me was when her husband would pull out a book with gorgeous woodcut illustrations and read in his beautiful baritone voice.  Each year, he would begin, "One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner, now out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. . . "