Most Memorable Holiday

It's a most wonderful time of the year.......

Thursday’s Thoughts: is holding a contest entitled: Your Most Memorable Holiday.

I think that, as a child, one of the most memorable Christmas's would have to be if you received a real live puppy or kitten.  I had one of those.  I don't remember my age (CRS) but I know I was under 8 yrs old.

Our Christmas's were pretty sparse when it came to presents, since my mother was raising my brother and I all alone.  She had divorced before I had any memory of my father.  Often Christmas presents were bought at the  soda shop store in our little town, they also carried a little bit of everything that they could, including cheap toys.

This one year was different though.. I had heard my mother talking to my older brother a few times about what we weren't getting or doing for Christmas, and so I expected.. nothing.

Sometime during the night a noise woke me.  I stayed in bed (my mothers bed that I had to share with her) and tried to go back to sleep.. when the  noise happened again.  It sounded a little like a babies cry. 

Finally, I crawled out of bed and quietly tiptoed to the doorway to the livingroom, from which lights still were on.  As I peeked around the corner I saw my mother and brother giggling and something jumping all around...

It was a puppy!

My mother spotted me and realized that the puppy would no longer be a Christmas surprise and so let me into the livingroom to see the puppy.

I was in love!

It was a little brown and white puppy with curly ears and little brown spots on it's white muzzle.  She was named almost immediately.. "Freckles" !

Now.. let me tell you a little about Freckles...  the puppy was given to my mother, free.. by someone at her work, who my mom knew had a Cocker Spaniel dog... and Freckles certainly looked the part of a Cocker Spaniel.   Well..  that is.. she looked like a Spaniel until she was 6 months old, at which time she resembled her father... who was a Great Dane!

But, when it came to Christmas, the year Freckles became my Christmas Present, it was nothing less than wonderful.  I was allowed to take her to bed with me and let her sleep under the covers curled up in my arms.   No one could have given me a more memorable or wonderful Christmas Present.  She didn't cost a penny and came with plenty of love.  Somehow my mother always managed to pull off some sort of Christmas for my brother and I.

Freckles will always remain one of those very special Christmas's that I've never forgotten.  May this be a Special Christmas for everyone......