UPS deliveries.

We were expecting one package to arrive today, sent by my cousin L up in New York. Not only did that get here, but UPS delivered another package with it. As I type, my dad's 1940's Nativity set is here, all set up now on the fireplace hearth. I have candles inside the fireplace, which will light up the inside of the manger when they're lit. My cousin L reminded me that my mother always put a blue light bulb inside the manger because it was a soft light. I do remember the blue light, because every Christmas, my dad would ask her if she wanted a white light bulb, but she always wanted a blue one. If I can hook up an extension cord to this manger, I will get a blue bulb for it.

My cousin L brought all twenty-two pieces of this Nativity set to UPS, and they packed them for her. The box is big enough to hold a huge television set or a small piece of furniture. They packed each piece in bubble-wrap, which made them three-times their size, then put in enough foam peanuts to fill up a bathtub. Overkill on the packing, but everything got from NY to TX safely. Considering that this set was purchased in France by my dad before he came home from WWII, my cousin L was concerned that it would get broken along the way.

I remember this set so clearly. As I unwrapped each piece, it was like being four years old again. There are six sheep in this set, and I used to take them out from under the tree and bring them in the living room while we watched Walt Disney on Sunday nights. My dad used to put straw all around and inside the manger, so when I picked up the sheep I had to be careful not to bring any of the straw with them. My mother saved the bits and pieces of straw from year to year-- she wrapped it all up in tissue paper and put the straw in a separate box with the angel.

The three wise men are very elegant, and so is the camel with its saddle and tapestry. There's also a shepherd for the sheep, a young boy for the cow, an old man (who daddy always said was the owner of the manger), and a servant to take care of the camel. The angel at the top of the manger has her wings spread out and it looks like she's just hovering over the roof of the barn.

Funny how when you're little, everything seems so much bigger. The camel is the largest animal in this Nativity, but when I unwrapped it, it didn't seem as big as I remembered it to be. It's all perspective and proportion-- my hands were a lot smaller (and my eyes a lot bigger) when I was three years old. When I was a kid, my hands fit easily into the front windows of the barn, which of course looked larger in my memory than it actually is. I had to be very careful tonight as I was arranging the figures of Mary and Joseph and the Baby-- and I put the donkey inside the barn with them, just the way my mother always did. She used to say that they wouldn't have left the donkey outside because Mary was riding on the donkey to get to the manger.

This Nativity set is nearly 60 years old. Originally from France, brought home to South Ozone Park, NY by my dad. Then taken to our house in Woodhaven when I was not even two years old. Then the set went back to South Ozone Park to my grandparent's house when my parents split up in the early 1960s. My Aunt Dolly used to set up this Nativity either on the front sun-porch underneath the Christmas tree or on top of the TV console in the living room. In the early 1970s, it went to Suffolk County, Long Island, to my cousin L when my dad gave it to her so she could enjoy it with her two little girls because they didn't have money to buy their own Nativity.

L has had it all these years, and displayed it every year except for the past five years since her mother passed away. It sat in a box in her storage closet but she felt it needed to come out of there this year, this first Christmas with both my dad and my mother gone. Now it's here in Texas with me, the original "little" girl who used to play with the sheep while the three of us watched Walt Disney in a house in Woodhaven. Looking at the manger, I can see my mother fussing over the angel and the blue light, and my father re-arranging the straw after I was playing with the sheep.

It is amazing to have this here. It's like having a little piece of my parents here in this house-- and not my parents as they were when they were old and gray, disheartened and very ill. It's just the opposite. I look at their Nativity set and see them as they were in the mid-1950's. My mother was the prettiest mom on the block; she dressed up every day and wore high heels even in the house. She planted daffodils and tulips by the front steps of our house, baked cookies even in the summer, and bought extra carrots at the A&P when I had a pet rabbit. She taught me songs while she cleaned and read me stories at night. My dad was handsome and funny and all the kids brought him their broken toys because they all knew he could fix anything. He walked down towards our house from the corner after a day's work and had a bag of M&Ms or a Hershey bar in his shirt pocket for me. Without fail, without fail, from when I was little until the last time we were together, his eyes lit up and his arms opened wide whenever he saw me. Even when we talked on the phone, hundreds of miles apart, I could hear the joy in my dad's voice. That's how I remember my parents; that's how I see them through the little windows of this manger.

I can't thank my cousin enough for taking this Nativity out of storage and sending it to me. She didn't understand when I told her that it had more of a nostalgic meaning to me than a religious meaning, but she knows that I love it and it will be part of all our Christmases from now on. I have also put my own little embellishments on the manger-- I found a package of gold and ivory straw that I had saved from a gift basket-- I sprinkled it inside the manger and on the roof. (That little touch not-quite but nearly matches the thick brown straw that my mother used to spread inside the manger.) And then, on the sill of one of the front windows of the manger, I put a little brown porcelain cat. The little kitten is totally in proportion to the other animals, and is one of the miniature animals that my dad used to buy for me at the local ice cream shop when I was a kid. (These little Hagen-Renaker porcelains cost just pennies when I was little, and now sell on eBay for many dollars.) There never was a tiny cat sitting on the windowsill of my parents' Nativity set, but there's one there now, looking quite content. =^..^=


The other package that arrived was a surprise from my cousins up near Chicago. When we went there this past summer, they brought us to Lou Malnati's for authentic deep-dish pizza. We loved it, and would have eaten there every night if we could have. So what was in that box from Chicago?--- four frozen deep-dish pizzas from Malnati's. Unbelievable... we were really surprised. We had spoken to them not too long ago and they asked us what our favorite thing had been during our visit-- and we told them "the pizza at Malnati's." (That and the Cubs - White Sox game at Wrigley!) So that's what they sent us for Christmas-- they couldn't get the Cubs, so they sent pizzas. Into the freezer they went. We bought lobsters today for our Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow night-- had we not done that, I'm sure we'd be eating deep-dish pizza tomorrow night. I'm really surprised that my husband hasn't already turned on the oven for one of those pizzas.


"No matter what happens in this world, life does go on in a sensible way," said a wise woman named Audrey.

It's going to be a great Christmas. It already is.