There are certain things mothers don’t like to remember. Specific maternal goofs that make our skins crawl; things we manage to stuff into the very bottom of our memories, hopefully never to bubble up again. Unfortunately the basic premise of motherhood is that one has children. Children don’t forget. Even into adulthood. Even into their parenthood. And they are certainly tattletales throughout that process.
Thus every holiday season I must endure the Saga of the Grinch all over again. This year it was my grandchildren who wanted the story told anew because – wait for it – they were anxious to regale their classmates about how their grandmother once stole the Grinch from Christmas.
This was about four decades ago and great tidings were heralded in television land. Dr. Seuss’ gloomy green gremlin had been animated and was making his premier appearance in mid December. David, our grade schooler, was ecstatic.
He promised to be “so good,” to clean his room, take out the trash and do “anything else you want mom, anything else,” if we could just see the Grinch. I, of course, took advantage of this opportunity to teach this earnest little kid how to earn privilege. This was definitely a win-win situation, I told myself. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
After marking off each day on the calendar, the big night finally arrived. We turned off all the lights in the living room, except for the Christmas tree. But we didn’t even need those. David was absolutely glowing. In those ancient times he had to walk up to the set to turn the knob. He excitedly switched the set on to hear an announcer intoning, “Thank you for watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Hope you enjoyed the show.”
“We missed it,” whispered David and stared at me. I handled it with great maturity and started to cry. In 30 seconds the whole family was tearing up. Remember, this was the dark ages before VCRs, TIVO, or video rental stores. I had the wrong time!. All my fault. We couldn’t see it again till the next Christmas. And I would hear about it for the next 40 Christmases!
During the holidays of his high school and college years, his friends would tell me how David often recounted this great trauma of his tender childhood in Summerville’s fast food emporiums and Clemson dorm rooms. About 20 years ago he came home for Christmas carrying a narrow, yard-long box for me. When I opened it on December 25, out tumbled a soft sculpture Grinch, complete with deviously slanted yellow eyes. “It was sitting in the window of the North Pole Gift Shop when I visited Alaska last month,” David told me, and I knew this was the perfect gift from me to you.” It was. That grinning Grinch has been enthroned on top of my book shelf every Christmas since.
The grandchildren, thanks to their father and uncle, can all recite chapter and verse of this parable. None of them can remember, much less fathom, a time without television recording facilities. But they’ll probably share the tale as some sort of science fiction fantasy of the older generation. And if I make 40 more Christmases, I’ll get to hear 40 more versions!