A purple patchwork cat

Each Christmas Even growing up, one of us was the recipient of a unique and wonderful handmade gift from our Aunt Mabel.

After the sugar rush of popcorn ball appetizers and M&M candies by the handful, delicious chicken and rice, peas, carrots and celery sticks and the cherry cheesecake dessert, we gathered around the largest Christmas tree that could possibly fit into the farm house on Mast Road and we would wait with anticipation for the sometimes wonderful, though quite often boring, Christmas gifts from our aunts, my father’s four unmarried sisters who lived in the same house in which they grew up. The tree had been cut from their own small forest and dragged up the hill to the house in preparation for the holiday. The house smelled of sugar and joy, the sisters were decked out in red and festive green, and every surface of that house was polished to gleaming perfection. The good China from the built-in cabinet was pulled out and set and almost immediately removed, washed and replaced in the cabinet once the last fork was set down (sometimes before).

My father and my siblings and I were the center of the sisters’ universe, or so we believed, and I still do. My mother never truly felt like one of them. They were protective of their youngest brother and this pushed my mother out. It was she who was the slow eater, the one still chewing when the dishes began to be collected. Funny that this didn’t strike me as odd then, only as I grew up and older.

Sometime in the very early 70s, my turn came for Mabel’s gift. They were my purple years, the early 70s. Lavender walls, purple velvet clothes (pants suits to be precise), groovy bell-bottom purple and lavender pants. Had it been an option, my hair would have been temporarily dyed purple as well. Alas, temporary hair dye wasn’t yet a thing in my small world.

I vividly remember opening the Christmas paper wrapped box, unfolding the tissue paper, and discovering the lavender ears of a patchwork quilted cat. My cat. My purple cat. My groovy purple patchwork cat.

I don’t remember a lot of the gifts I received as a child. There were years when I think we may have received a big gift. Maybe. I remember more the traditions, the family gatherings, the food, the cheek-pinching great aunts, the bigoted uncle, the church bazaars, the dragging of older brothers to church and to family gatherings, the annual family photos by the fireplace and on the front steps, the incessant bickering and the love. That is what I remember most, the love. And the purple patchwork quilted cat.