A Christmas Memory

I grew up a Roman Catholic, and back when I was a child, there were no Saturday evening masses, at least not in Frankfort. If you were Catholic in Frankfort and you wanted to go to mass on a Sunday or some other Holy Day of Obligation, you had to go on the actual day! If I recall, there was an 8 AM, 9:30 AM, 11:00 AM, and 12:30 PM mass. And one of the cruelest things I remember that my parents ever did was to insist that on Christmas morning--which was a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics whether it fell on a Sunday or a Tuesday or any other day of the week--we went to mass BEFORE opening presents.

I'm not sure what my parents were hoping for us to get out of attending mass on that morning. My mind was never on God. My mind was on the presents back home, the presents that we had seen lying under the Christmas tree before leaving for church, the presents that we had crept down the stairs at 4 in the morning to examine, to shake, to squint at in the dark to try to figure out whose name was on them.Occasionally there would even be presents that--because of their odd shape or sheer size--were not wrapped. I remember Kelly and Donald getting shiny green tricycles one year, and I remember the year we got a Foozball set. Each year, though, we'd have to leave these visible treasures behind, as well as the potentially even better presents hidden behind the wrapping paper, to head off to church to stand in what would be a packed building, people even lining the walls on this one day of the year (Well, two days, since Easter was similarly crowded).

One year stands out in my mind, though.

I remember one Christmas morning in particular, when I was maybe ten years old, sneaking out of my bed upstairs and tip toeing downstairs to see what booty had been set out (I'm pretty sure I'd stopped believing in Santa by this time). Our house had wooden floors, and I was trying to be quiet so I wouldn't get caught by my parents, but it seemed every board squeaked under my feet. I slowly crept down the stairs, each of which also seemed intent upon waking the house. When I finally made it to the basement, where my older brother and one of my older sisters slept, and where the tree and presents were, my feet hit the tile floor, which covered the solid, immovable, uncreakable, concrete below. I took off running for the other side of the family room, where the light switch was.

I never made it to the other side of the room, though. After three quick steps I felt something sharp strike me in my lower left rib, and I heard an "Oooof" escape from between my lips. A moment later I was crying out in pain at whatever I'd hit. I felt like maybe I'd been stabbed in my side by a sword.

So much for trying to be quiet. I heard both my older brother and sister rustling in their beds, and my older brother shouted sort of in a daze for me to shut up. And  I heard my parents get out of bed and come down to see what was going on, and when they flipped on the stairway light behind me there was enough light in the family room that I could see what the barrier had been: a new ping pong table had been set up in our family room, and I had run right into the corner of it. My mom came downstairs and checked on me. I had a scrape across my ribs, but otherwise I was going to be fine. I was scolded by my parents for getting up in the middle of the night and sent back to bed. I lay there with my side pulsing in pain.

But that's not the exciting part about that year. What I remember about that year was that--for the only time I remember--my parents let us actually play with a present BEFORE going to mass. Everyone was too excited about the ping pong table to NOT play with it. I have a photo of my younger brother Kelly and myself, dressed in our winter coats and stocking hats, ready to go to mass, but playing a quick game of ping pong against someone on the other side of the table.

What you can't see in the photo, though, is the bruise on my side.