by K M Draughn

Created on: January 13, 2009

Ever since Christmas my mind has been wandering back, back to memories of my childhood. I can still smell the smells at Christmas I can still feel the cold. I guess what got me started was a can of hard candy, you know the kind some are filled some are not, they fancy kind that is always around during the holidays along with the chocolate covered cherries. My daddy loved those hard candies, I always gave him a can at Christmas no matter what else I had for him, that can of candy was wrapped up under the tree. There was always some of those in the candy dish on his mothers side board at Christmas when I was a little girl and daddy said she had been having them since he was a boy. The sad thing is 3 years ago I bought a can, wrapped them, put them under my tree, and we went to my parents for Christmas, we unwrapped our gifts, spent the best day ever, my daddy had a wonderful time with my boys, they shot guns, they cut down a big tree, they hung out, then we went back home, what I saw when I walked in was that can sitting there unwrapped I told my husband, I will take it to him the next time we go, three weeks later, he had heart surgery, and he really and truly never woke up after surgery, he was in ICU from January 14 until April 24th when he went to be with the Lord.

Some of my favorites Christmas times are when we would go to my grandmothers, my dad's mother, Big Mamma is what we called her, Big Daddy died when I was very small but I can still remember sitting in his lap also and him cracking pecans, using the rocking chair arm to crack them against.

We would make the trip to the coast, from North Louisiana usually leaving a day or so before Christmas, everything packed tight into the car, in the trunk and the back seat to where you only had a small place to sit. We would usually travel at night and then get there after the dew had fallen the frost would be on the ground by the time we arrived.

The fire would be burning in the fireplace, the smell of good pecan wood smoke filling the night air as we unloaded the car, we would go inside and Big Mamma would have a lot to talk about always, telling us what had gone on in the area, and who had come by to see her, she would talk on and on as we got ready for bed. She would pull out her latest treasures, the new Raggady Ann Dolls that she had just finished making, and other beautiful sewing projects she had gotten done. I always knew that there would be something she had made for me wrapped under the tree.

She would

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