This is a recording of Christine’s thoughts about Christmas time, recorded 16 Dec 2012. The transcription is below.
JD: So at Christmas time, you tend to think about you enjoy peppermint sticks and things like that. What else is it about Christmas that you really enjoy?
CR: About Christmas? Oh, I enjoy the fact that people are more giving at that time of the year and it seems like a brighter healthier more positive time because of all the bright lights and the flashing and the reds and the greens and the music, the Christmas music that plays generally throughout the malls and it just seems like a happier time altogether.
JD: Tell me about your – the best Christmas ever.
CR: The best Christmas ever (deep sigh)….Well I mean since I’ve been an adult I’ve had Christmases where I’ve gotten very very nice Christmas presents and you know I had my house nicely decorated and where I was able to shop as much as I wanted to but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best Christmas ever. I’ve always actually sort of had a… even when it seems that the times were the best…I was always separated from family and so I always felt that I was missing something. And as children we always got a Christmas present. I can’t remember ever not getting Christmas presents, like we would get my father would… I remember, I know it sounds crazy… but we were teenagers, we were closer to teenagers, we were like eleven, ten, nine and he bought us a stereo system for the three girls.
JD: The fourth one was just too young?
CR: The fourth one was just too young, so she got a baby doll and then we would all get watches – we would each get a watch and smaller gifts or a bicycle or each got a bicycle – so we always got gifts for Christmas. But then you know one day could be very, very happy and then the next day everything completely destroyed because that’s exactly how my father was. He would go out and spend tons of money for a whole new house full of furniture and then the next day it wouldn’t be unlike him to destroy the whole thing. So it was just always a cloud of uncertainty and bleakness and unforeseen tragedy hanging over our heads all the time that prevented any real sense of joy.
JD: So no stability in terms of the household environment then?
CR: Absolutely none, none. In fact I didn’t even know what security, a feeling of security was until I was married the second time, and then that was the first time in my life that I had a sense of what security was, but I had no idea of what I was missing. I didn’t know what I was missing until I had it.
Posted on Christine’s web site dedicated to her grandsons Elijah Robinson and Gabriel Robinson.
