Well, Christmas 2014 is officially over. A quick trip out to the homeland for some turkey and all the trimmings (funny term that), and a day spent playing a Wii game, in which I almost had to go to the hospital for an injury.
As the years pass, I tend to reflect on how things used to be when I grew up. We would wake up early on Christmas, chomping at the bit to open some gifts. We would start our morning with sausage and eggs - the only time we had such, so it was a treat. Then it would be the gift opening, but....there were the cows and chores to be done first. Oh, how the time dragged by waiting for Dad to come back in. I usually knew what my brother and sister would get, since I would sometimes open their gifts up before Christmas and see what they got...hell, sometimes I even opened mine up.
You had to be very good to open the gifts and rewrap them without ripping the paper...I really should been in the secret service really.
Gifts were opened eventually, and the day would be spent playing cards or visiting relatives, and then the night chores had to be done.
Dad and Mom had milked about 30 cows, and shipped the cream away...something that does not exist anymore. We only have two to milk at times, and that does not have to be every day since the girls have their personal milkers with them.
Three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, the cows had to be milked, calves fed and eggs to be collected. Throw in feeding, mucking out the barn, making hay (all squares) and picking up bales with an International truck, it is amazing that we ever made it off of the farm.
But we made it off of the farm, going to neighbors, playing cards, visiting them at the lake, going to my aunt and uncle's in Grenfell for suppers (the 15 minute drive felt like forever as a kid). We may have not gone on any big holidays, but many micro-holidays.
Mom and Dad always had a horse, and my big thing would be to go around the block (8 mile ride) in the summers. We did not have quads, or skidoos. In the winter I would harness King on the stoneboat and he would be our skidoo. I bet nobody knows what a stoneboat is now.
We used to have about 100 or so chickens, selling eggs to the aboriginals... oh hell, to the Indians who lived north of us. There was always the threat that if we were really bad Mom would run to the reserve....she never did, so I guess we weren't that bad.
Sometimes she would call us jackasses, but rarely.
Now we have grown up and we have left home and made our own mark in life. Mine is full of animals of all sorts...but no pigs, definitely no pigs. Chris covers that area.
The only thing different from the holidays, is that Boxing Day is a huge deal around this place.
We could only spend the day with Mom and Dad - up at 6:30 am and back by 11 pm that night. We have the chores to deal with now...my only regret is that we don't have kids to share with those chores, or the anxiously waiting of Christmas.
I will, however, live that life vicariously through others.
May the season bring you health and happiness you all deserve.
