Well, when you are in your mid seventies, and get three different respiratory viruses. at the same time. Well, you have to stay away from folks for a bit. Especially when your Daughter is bringing your new granddaughter along...and that little girl is in the second most likely group to pick one of them up.
So that means all the family has moved to a new location...my other daughter's house.
And that means, they took all the socks hung by the fire (Okay, countertop) with glee. And that is where our own little family tradition started.
See that first sock, with my name on it? Well, that was given to me by my Sister Kathleen on my first Christmas. I was all of three months old...and to be honest, don't really remember her giving it to me. LOL
But every Christmas now, for 74 of them anyway...that stocking has hung somewhere at Christmas - stuffed with, well, stocking stuffer stuff.
Next to it, you see one that says: "Mum." Kathy got that one, our first Christmas together, 45 years ago, and strangely enough, just three months after we got married. The other two, well, copying my Sister Kathleen's routine, we got a stocking for each of the kid's first Christmases. And now, the Grandkids. So each of them will grow up, like me, with one stocking their whole lives.
And those stocking carry more than candy, small gifts, mittens, gloves, and even, on occasion- more socks! They carry the memories of who was there that year, where they were hung - for a few years we did have a house with a fireplace...so they were hanging in their natural environment. Sometimes it was a table, other times even window sills. But they were always there.
Tomorrow my Son in Law (the only truly health one left, everyone else is in the final stages of the Flu) and takes them all to hang in their house. Mine will stay here with me. I haven't even broken into whatever candy, goodies, or sweets are in there ...yet. But I will.
We didn't have a tree this year ...since the babies were supposed to stay here...so my favorite ornaments and the memories they evoke...well, they aren't up there to make me smile and go back in time a bit. But the stocking did just fine...it brought back, like any good Time Machine, laughter, love, and surprises from seven decades. If I squint enough down the tunnel of time, I can even see my sister Kathleen, putting it on the side of my crib when I was three months old. Or maybe that is just my imagination.