Christmas Morning

     Page Eight.
     Only once in my life have I woken up and celebrated Christmas like a stereotypical Christian, as in: went downstairs wearing my pj's and opened up gifts with children.
     It must have been 1988. I was live-in Nanny to the Shapiros and usually they went out of town skiing for the holidays. For some reason though, that year they opted to stay home. It would be the only winter break in all the years I'd live with them that they would stay in Cleveland. (Side bar here: Dad was Jewish, hence the last name Shapiro, but Mom wasn't. The kids were not raised with any religion at all.)
     Every year they put up a beautiful Christmas tree by the fourth or fifth and I always helped them decorate, this year was no exception. We also bought each other gifts every year. But again, under normal circumstances I would exchange gifts with them after they got back from the slopes, typically around the first. And even this year, I was expecting nothing special on Christmas morning.
     I was going though a "Thing" at this point in my life. I attended midnight mass every year up at Saint Ann's Church over on Coventry Road. I must have done that every year for about a decade including '88 so I'm sure I was fast asleep by 2.AM by golly. Imagine my surprise when Scoot, one of the thirteen year old twins, appeared in my doorway at 7.AM the next day, woke me up and ordered me to get downstairs so he could open his presents. Now-a-days I could actually survive on five hours of sleep. In '88 I had to have AT LEAST nine or ten. I wasn't sure what he was talking about so he simply repeated himself, only louder and more obnoxiously, the way only a teenaged boy can do. I just wasn't expecting it.
     I ejected him from my room, equally obnoxiously I'm sure, but told him I'd be down in a few. He screamed at me to hurry. Once downstairs, coffee in hand, I gradually came to. I realized that as far as they were concerned, I was a member of the house-hold so I would, of course, join them in a traditional, old fashioned secular gift orgy. I really don't remember what I got them that year. But I do remember a couple things they got me: some rock 'n roll mags and some sunglasses with windshield wipers. I think my big gift was a gift certificate for rock concert tickets. (At the time I was one of those degenerate rock 'n roll whippersnappers.)  
     After gift exchange and breakfast, which I didn't have to make thank the baby Jesus, I went back to sleep and proceeded with my existence. But, I can always say that once in my life I actually contributed to a pre-breakfast, Christmas day legacy: creating mountains of gift wrap landfill. That memory is quite valuable to me.