The next Christmas my friend Elbe and I had just arrived in Cape Town a few days earlier from New York via Europe and the Middle East. We were completely broke, but her parents gave us a grub stake to help us out until we got going on our jobs. Elbe already had a circle of friends from college who lived in and around Stellenbosch where she worked, so I often went there to visit on weekends. I have no recollection of the Christmas celebration as such, but I always enjoyed my time with that group. They even got me to drink coffee!! No, not the plain ole “cup a jo” we know, it was more like weak expresso, with more milk and brown sugar than coffee.

The next Christmas, 1970, I spent trying to visit Goa, a Portuguese territory on the western Indian coast, where they celebrate Christmas. I took a bus there because there was no train, and when the bus stopped I would get off each time to try to use the rest room. But they were all so bad, with piles so numerous there was no place to walk, so I just held it, for many, many hours. We arrived in Goa late in the evening. Because I would have had to spend the night alone on a dark beach, which did not appeal to me, I just stayed on the bus and rode it back to Bombay where I had started a couple of days before. However, the bus ride provided a nice view of the Christmas lights of Goa, which were totally different than anything we have here. That was the best part of my Christmas that year. I wrote to Mom and asked her to “keep Christmas on hold for me”, that I would be home soon. She kept the “wall tree” up, but everything else was gone by the time I got home, which was something of a disappointment. At least on my long bus ride I had time to enjoy a pleasant image in my mind of what it was probably like at home at that time.

Christmas was back to normal with the family for the next couple of years while I attended UC Davis, and then I headed for Crescent City to work at the hospital there. I met my husband in late October, so from there it was a short time until the holiday season. I don’t remember what we did for Thanksgiving, we probably ate with his folks. Then we traveled to my mom’s house near Sacramento for Christmas. We had our normal Christmas there with my brothers, who by then had families of their own. The holidays were celebrated at my oldest brother’s big house from then on for many years until his wife became ill.

But we stayed with my mom. Even the first year she insisted that KW, still only my boyfriend at the time, sleep in my bedroom with me. She said she knew that we lived together, so why pretend. He ended up sleeping on the floor because my old bedroom had only a twin bed, when I am sure he would have much preferred the couch. Poor baby. That Christmas Mom began giving me gifts for our home, adding to what I was using from my hope chest collections over the years. And unbeknownst to me she began to plan to buy a set of sterling silver flatware for me, something she felt every bride should have. She eventually gave us that for our wedding present. So now that we were a couple, and my Christmases had changed accordingly, I will continue with that chapter in my story tomorrow.