LeeAnn Prescott - Escape From Nowhere

C is for Christmas

During Christmas 1979, I had just turned 8, and we were living at Camp Bayou in Ruskin, Florida. We had a pop-up camper that we called the Space Age Dumpster. It was an improvement from our previous home, which was a leaky canvas pop-up camper we had called The Dumpster. The Space Age Dumpster was fiberglass, and although it did not leak, in the morning the walls would drip with condensation and my blankets would be damp at the edges.

The week before Christmas, the campground filled with new people, including some children. I was excited to have playmates, even though I understood that they were on vacation and would not stay. I made a new friend one day and we climbed one of the crazy oak trees. While we were sitting in the tree, I asked her, “How do you think Santa Claus can find us when we are away from home? And how do you think he can get in the camper when there’s no chimney?” It was the first Christmas that I did not live in a house with a fireplace or a wood stove.

“Don’t you know there’s no such thing as Santa Claus?” she replied, surprised at my ignorance.

“That’s not true!” I yelled, aghast. “Then where do the presents come from?”

“Your parents,” she said. “How do you think you get what you want?”

I was still in shock. “I always write a letter to Santa Claus before Christmas! On Christmas Eve I leave milk and cookies out for him, and they are gone in the morning,” I explained, sure that this would prove Santa’s existence.

“It’s your parents that eat the cookies. Just ask them,” she said.

I could not believe that every adult I knew had been lying to me my entire life. 

“It’s not true!” I yelled, “There really is a Santa!” I climbed down from the tree and ran to the Space Age Dumpster where Cheryl was cooking. To my dismay, she corroborated the story.

When I got gifts for my birthday and Christmas the next day, I knew that Santa Claus couldn’t have made them – my second favorite gift after a Darci doll was a box for my dolls that Papa made from a drawer that was in the original Dumpster. He had taken The Dumpster apart and made it into a trailer that he could carry things in to sell at the flea market, and the drawer had become scrap material.  He had built dividers inside it, made a cover from wood paneling, and attached a suitcase handle to the top. My mother had painted flowers on the box to make it look like a fancy doll carrier.

Perhaps THEY were Santa's real elves, working together in secret while I played in the trees. Even then I sensed that elves in the North Pole couldn't have made mass-produced toys that had "Made in China" stamped on the back.

Here's the doll carrier. It still holds my dolls, although the sliding top is broken into two pieces after 30 years of use. Compare it to the photo of the 1976 official Barbie carrier that I found on eBay. Which one was made in Santa's workshop?

B is for Birthday

For kids, birthdays are all about presents. Presents and cake. Presents, cake, and a party. A party where all your friends come and give you presents, and sing "Happy Birthday" to you.

Being born on December 23 does not facilitate having a big party, which means your opportunities to get presents are limited.

All through my childhood, I was envious of kids who had birthdays in the summer. They got to have outdoor parties, and maybe go swimming at a lake. Their relatives and friends gave them presents for Christmas AND their birthday. I sometimes got cards from relatives that said "Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas," and contained perhaps a $10 bill. Were my non-Christmas-born cousins getting $10 twice a year? I could never know, but I somehow felt this was unfair.

We always had some sort of little party - usually just me and my mother and Papa, and perhaps a friend or two. My mother made it festive by making my favorite food - one year it was lasagna, another year tofu patties - and a cake of some kind with candles. They would do their best to divide up the gifts evenly between my birthday and Christmas. But I could never remember afterward which gift I got for Christmas or my birthday - except when I wrote it my journal, as I did in 1982 and 1983.

1982 (Benton, New Hampshire)

On my birthday I turned 11. I had Shanni, Angela, and Erika over. We went sliding. Alicia came over. I had a birthday cake with whipped cream and flowers on top. I got a blouse that Cheryl made, a hairless Garfield, and Italian porcelain doll, a Jordache pocketbook, some markers, crayons, a zodiac stained glass window coloring book, the 2nd Big Book of Amazing Facts, some Osh Kosh overalls, and my favorite was a stuffed horse from Marian, Pat and Alicia. We played pin the nose on the clown. Shanni won. Erika spent the night. We played barbie dolls the next day until Darci's hand broke off. Then we got bored. We made a snowgirl because it rained.

Here's a photo of me and Alicia on Christmas day that year. I'm showing her my new stuffed horse horse and my doll Erica (Darci's sister). I'm wearing the blouse and the overalls I got on my birthday. The feather barrette was a Christmas gift.

On my birthday the following year we were living in a little trailer RV in a KOA Kampground in Tombstone, Arizona. Marian, Pat and Alicia ("the Boudreaults") had traveled west with us and were living in the nearby town of Bisbee.

1983 (Tombstone, Arizona)

On my birthday I turned 12. The Boudreaults came over. For supper we had tofu patties, peas, baked potatoes, salad, and bread. I had a cherry pie with rainbow candles and a tofu-orange dessert. It was delicious.

For presents, I got an Indian crafts book, an Indian beaded ponytail holder, a big stuffed Garfield and a loaf of sweet bread (from Cheryl and Papa). From the Boudreaults I got a baseball shirt with pink sleeves and a Pegasus with a rainbow and stars in the background, in pastel colors. From our landlord I got a knitted snowman - the hat fits Sasha. Some people in the campground gave me a copper road runner pin.

That pegasus shirt became my favorite shirt, and I wore it until the iron-on design crumbled off. Note that my mother knew my dissatisfaction with the hairless Garfield I got the year before, and got me a nice furry one that year.

Now having birthday parties is difficult because most people are with their families for the holidays. But I'm far past the age of being present-hungry, and if two people show up and I get to eat some cake, I'm happy.

Alphabet: A History - A is for Apple

I stumbled across a group of blogging writers - Fog City Writer, The Contact Zone, Jade Park, Everything In Between, and Charlotte's Web - who are writing entries based on letters of the alphabet. Here's my first installment. I already know what I'm going to write for "Z," so I can't wait to get there!

A is for Apple

In New England, fall is apple time. People come from all over the country to view the fall foliage - mountains colored in a swaths of oranges, reds and yellow. Roadside stands selling bags of fresh apples, apple butter, apple sauce and apple cider dot the roadways. Tourists and locals alike enjoy steaming cups of hot spiced cider, filling their insides with a sweet warmth on the cool crisp days. 

There were several apple trees on our property, which had been pasture before it had grown into the young forest that my parents cleared to build our home. These sprawling trees stood out among the younger pines, alder, and cherry trees that had grown straight up toward the light through the brush, reminding us that once animals had grazed there, and had sat under the trees for shade from the sun or shelter from the rains, and eaten the apples that fell from the trees.

The apples were abundant on two of our trees - the tree by the roadside had small, hard apples that turned red, and the larger tree by the house and green apples that were also bitter and hard. There was a third tree in the woods, surrounded by tall pines that had grown around it. The pines had blocked so much light from the tree that it no longer produced apples, but was alive enough for Papa to build a tree house for me in it.

These apples were not good for eating - not nearly as good as the apples we could get at the roadside stands, or at Windy Ridge Orchard a few miles away. Yet my resourceful parents could not let this free source of food go to waste - my mother would cook up huge batches of apple sauce and can it in mason jars. The apple sauce tasted distinctly different depending on which tree the apples came from, and needed extra sugar to make it more palatable. Because we did not apply any pesticides to the trees, many of the apples were wormy, and I admired my mother's patience in preparing them.

McIntosh are the quintessential New England apple variety. They are soft, crisp, sweet, juicy and slightly tangy all at once. The sensation of biting into a fresh McIntosh is distinct from all other apples, but can only be experienced for several months a year. Sadly, their softness makes them bruise easily and thus not travel or store very well.

In high school, fall for me was also defined by cross-country running, and the coach would often bring a white paper bag of apples to practice. After the run, we would rush to the apple bag and stand around eating our apples as we went through the motions of stretching, far more interested in absorbing the juicy crispness that hydrated us and replaced our blood sugar. In this age of electrolyte replacement drinks and packaged energy gels, I still think that the apple is the best post-workout recovery food. And a fantastic snack when cut up and covered with peanut butter.