Jaci Dawn

I had one photo in particular I wanted to share but when I pulled out the old photo album, I got so nostalgic that I scanned several more photos.

Sniff, Sniff. (And I mean that because I got teary-eyed, not because it was a scratch-and-sniff photo album.)

1972. My sister was so proud of that coat. She was proud of those bell-bottoms, too. She never quit wearing bell-bottoms like that. Even into her late 30’s, she was wearing bell-bottoms like that. They call it “arrested development”: she was forever caught in the year 1972 when she first started abusing drugs and alcohol. But nevermind that: she’s so pretty in this photo and so happy. 13 years old.

Oh – see that gold “bust” in the background? That was an art project gone bad and it wasn’t mine. My mom did that. She had a styrofoam head she decided she should spray-paint gold. Only spray paint eats styrofoam. Somehow, Mom salvaged the head and we had it on display for years. No one outside the immediate family ever guessed that it was a project gone bad…

That same Christmas was the year my grandfather Wilcox died. Dad was in Idaho attending to his dad’s bedside. We all missed Dad terribly. Mom decided we needed a “stained glass window” so she purchased tissue paper and cut out a silhouette of the Virgin Mary and the Babe. I’ve tried to recreate that window but I have never quite captured it as well as my mom did that year. I don’t recall that she had a template: she simply designed it from an image in her head (just like she designed patterns for sewing).

Gramps died the week of Christmas. We got the news that Dad would probably not be home for Christmas. We all woke up on Christmas Morn and looked at the gifts under the tree longingly. No, we decided: we would wait until Dad got home to open them.

He got home late in the afternoon on Christmas Day to find we still hadn’t opened any gifts because he wasn’t there. I never quite knew if he was touched that we waited for him to drive home from Idaho or if he was a tad bit irritated (I’m thinking he was really touched and it came across as irritation because that’s just how he is).

Skip ahead to 1977. Another Christmas. Dad with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It was one of the last Christmases when we were all at home (1983 was actually the last one, but there were several years between 1977 and 1983 that I did not make it “home” for Christmas. And I can’t find any photos of 1983).

THIS photo bugs me. It is the only proof I have that my mom received the painting I did for her. We can’t find the painting in any of her stuff. It was oil on canvas board, all shades of blue. It bugs the heck out of me that we can’t find it in any of Mom’s things and I suspect my sister of removing it when my mom died. And all of my sister’s belongings were eventually lost…

This was the photo I painted for my mom: Mary Lou, age 14.

Wish I knew where it went…

But all of that nostalgia aside, the photo I was looking for was from 1972.

When I was growing up in Winnemucca, Nevada, we always had a fake tree. Made sense: there are no conifers close to Winnemucca and the price of tree lot trees even then was exhorbitant.

But we moved to Ely, Nevada in 1970. Ely sits at 6500 feet elevation in the heart of pinion pine, juniper, and blue spruce country. We begged, pleaded and cried until our dad went out and cut a real Christmas tree for us. One year he even cut a White Fir (piss fir) for us.

Why a “piss fir”? Because it smells like cat pee.

My mom was not real thrilled with the real tree that year. She left the setting up and decorating of said tree to my brother and I.

Terry had a heckuva time getting the tree to stand upright in the stand. He had string around it and string around his… FINGER.

Oh, I love this photo.

My mother was really NOT impressed.

My mother really hated vulgarity of any kind. You couldn’t even say the word “piss” in front of her. It was Not Allowed.

She had a lot of words she hated: piss, bitch, shit. She’d say things like, “When the ship hits the sand” to avoid saying “shit”. You did not make vulgar hand signs around my mother.

And then this.

She never did believe us that it was an accident and terry had the string wrapped around his finger as he tried to figure out how to stand the tree upright…

By the way: please note that Terry has HAIR in this photo. Yes, HAIR. Real hair and relatively long. He was really, really, REALLY young.

And it wasn’t an accident.