A Flame From The Past

17: Dinner Pt.1

"Since when is it too early to shop for Christmas?"I asked Ray as we passed by the small booth of Christmas ornaments, on sale from Christmas in July. The small town was getting prepared for the icy chills September brought, it was enough to make the people of Denver bring out their coats and say goodbye to their summer.

The smell of Fall filled the air, and it brought me to my favorite time, winter. I loved the need to bundle up, or bundle with someone else. I remember some nights with Ally we just turned the little heater she had brought home from work and we sat around it covered in blankets and comforters all piled on.

"It's not even November yet, what about Thanksgiving and Halloween?"he asked, listing out the months and making it very clear that there is 'September, October, November and December' in between my winter wonderland. My winter wonderland would come, just I had never seen snow for it to be considered winter precisely. In San Francisco, snow was a stretch that never could be reached. My mom was always busy, and my father knew it was football season so he was always more drunk than usual, he took this season the hardest. He hated it, but I loved it. I would pull down the Christmas decorations and hang up the ornaments onto our large but a bit bare tree, well the ornaments that I could hang up anyways.

I have that tree with me, it's in the apartment in one of the closets, we call it our storage compartment. I guess I stole it when I moved out, but nobody else even knew that tree existed, my mother knew just sometimes when she would come home and she would find it, decorated with lights and ornaments. Around this time she started feeling bad, bad that she landed me with another grown person to take care of at the age of 7.

But it never stopped her from going to work, no she was a workaholic, she wouldn't stop, she needed it, I didn't understand her thirst, even now as a person in love with my career, I never saw the need to do that much, to be that much. But she did, she made it clear to me every chance she had. Career over everything.

That's why every year in class, we have a sleepover near Christmas. It's just like Christmas Day, except a couple of days earlier. Some families had good Christmases while others, it barely felt like it was Christmas. So I give them that stable surrounding of a Christmas surprise with presents of course, well with a small amount of presents. It was all personal things, like from a conversation. And these things brighten their day, it showed them someone listened, someone cared. I loved seeing their smiles on that day, it made my job worth it.

We had a sleepover the night pretending it was Christmas Eve, as we sat around drinking hot cocoa and in sleeping bags. We would tell stories, and share what we cherished about each other. The night was surrounded with love, they were my family. I wouldn't change that. And then in the middle of night, Principal Edwards would stuff his belly, and come in while the kids were sleeping. The reason why I didn't do it myself, is because most of the class wants to know every year that Santa is fake. Well except for Rose, she doesn't care if Santa is fake or real at the end of the day it's something to believe in.

All I was excited about was Christmas, the winter wonderland of slightly colder weather and the smiles. Most kids found it the hardest this time of year, this time is all about closeness, and it's painful when you have no one to be close with.

"They're on sale, how am I supposed to refuse", I begged him, as he tried pulling me along. It was the first day we were here and he was already begging us to go to Luca's practice. He had casually invited us too, but to Ray he treated it like the most important event in his whole life.

And now he was pulling my shirt as we went past the window, yes we had passed it. I would be back in the middle of the night to find that sterling silver ornament that would jump start my winter spirit.